Wednesday, February 1, 2012

New Blog

 I have started a new blog today about my brilliant science reading. So far I just posted titles and authors of papers I find interesting on the arXiv.  In the future, I will read some of them and explain what I understand from them.  Eventually, I might organize them by topic and not by date and maybe expand to books I read, and then I'll have to switch to a wiki. For now, the point is to get in the habit to read more and understand what I read better (and sometimes why I read on a given topic).  Once this is accomplished, the means of communicating is relevant only if enough other people read the information. At this point, I am not convinced that my readings and thoughts will be interesting enough for the real world and so the documentation is mostly for myself.

The link is below:
 Ruxandra's Science Reading

Why a new blog? Because I did not want to clutter this one with 20 to 30 papers a week. I want to keep this blog for more important posts or at least important for me.

The Sultanate of Oman?

Mihai went for an interview in Dublin for a position at a military college in the Sultanate of Oman. This is a country I did not hear of before he received this job interview. Its neighbors are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. My brother is the ideal person to hang out with if you want to have an exciting life!

We do not know any of the details yet, but it appears that he will get the job - or at least this is what he understood from the interview. He would be department head in physics at an university in Muscat, the capital of Oman.  Once/IF he receives an offer, we will try to understand the contract and the region better. I am curious and hopeful that such a position will come with the freedom to build a good physics department, but Mihai seemed very worried and afraid to go to a 'military institution', which would involve teaching the mechanics of missiles and other related stuff.

Update: I still want to visit Oman or Dubai at some point, but Mihai never got the job offer. Maybe we'll visit next winter.