If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing

The Dean would like a meeting with the whole department, including graduate students and non-academic staff. I hope it's an effort to make himself more accessible and to see all the people under his care, but I'm going to have a nervous wait.

On the office Internet Radio front, the old-time radio stations I like best still aren't working, but a third favorite, that does just mysteries, is fine. I can't fault the shows -- Suspense and Inner Sanctum and such are always reliable, and maybe more fun when they're arch to the point of self-parody. But the filler is odd; would you fill the pause between I Was a Communist for the FBI (talk about self-parody) and Murder at Midnight with the full version of the theme from The Addams Family? They also had a dramatization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World with such a slow narrative pace as to risk going backwards, but starring voices that, if they weren't Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie, are the best impersonators around.

I spotted on the news a new housing development outside Shanghai. Its theme is England. Their Thames Town will even be building a little local replica castle to look over Tudor houses. I suppose it's only fair after opening all those Chinatown franchises over the world that somebody should open an Englishtown (Englandland?) in China, but it's still a jarring sight. I wonder if it was built by cheap Irish immigrant labor ...

Trivia: The Department of Defense assigned 92 aircraft and 15 ships to support the Gemini IX-A flight. Source: On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C. Hacker, James M. Grimwood. NASA SP-4203.

Currently Reading: Cosmic Time Travel: A Scientific Odyssey, Barry Parker.