Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye!  I hereby declare this day in the AI lab to
be a day of celebration; of mourning; and of conspiracy.

Indeed, today let us celebrate all those AI students who have just
graduated.  Sunburnt and dehydrated from their morning hours in the
sun, these stalwart few have concluded their time in the Ivory Tower
of NE43.  Green with envy, those of us who remain behind can only
raise a toast to those who, on this day, have slipped the surly bonds
of grad school.  Congratulations to you all!  Your refreshments at
tonight's GSB are on the house.

But in addition to celebration, today let us mourn the impending
departure of our friends, these newly minted graduates.  They go now
to the halls of professorships, post-docs, chief technical
officerships, and other lofty positions from which graduate students,
far below, seem as numerous, as busy, as brainless, and as
interchangeable as ants -- ants that send innumerable resume's, that
is.

In a more selfish vein, today let those of us who remain behind also
mourn that far too few people are graduating to make room for incoming
students in the fall.  Let us mourn the filing cabinets evicted, the
big desks replaced with small ones, the three- person offices filled
with five, the HVAC units overwhelmed, the bathrooms ever-busy.

And today let us conspire against those spies from LCS who, faced with
their own office-space crunch, have been scouting out AI lab offices
for possible annexation.  Let us demonstrate the
full-to-overflowingness of our offices.  Let us redirect attention to
the empty-yet-claimed offices of those who have gone to startups.  Let
us compare the percentile growth of each of the labs.  Let us prepare
to repel all boarders by any means necessary!

Indeed, today let us work out the details of our conspiracy at
tonight's...

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******************        5:30pm  7AI Playroom       ******************