Beijing, Dartmouth and Physics Forums

I was going to start this post with news about my own life, but I am so excited for a business colleague of mine that I have to tell you about Martin’s Big Adventure. Next week he is traveling with a trade delegation to Beijing (China) and expects to sign an agreement with a Chinese company who does disposal of sewage. Now that may not sound so exciting to the average person, but re-use of poop is one of my main goals in life, and I am just thrilled for Martin’s shrewd business moves. Congratulations Martin and all your team!

Okay, next item of business is I received a recruiting letter from Dartmouth.  Dartmouth!  You know, that little, tiny IVY LEAGUE school in Hanover, New Hampshire. Or maybe I should say, that big little school that contains the tiny New Hampshire town of Hanover. I believe there are more students in the university that “regular” citizens of the town. But never mind the geography (for the moment).  They picked ME. I can hardly believe it. In fact I didn’t believe it at first, but I re-read the email earlier this week and realized it was not just a sort of “catch all” solicitation to every Tom, Dick and Albert who graduated this year with a Master’s degree, for reasons I don’t know, they actually picked me.  (I wrote a reply yesterday asking “why me”, and although I may not want to hear the answer, especially if it turns out it really was just a general sort of dragnet, it has left me very curious.)  Oh, yes, the other “thrilling” part about this solicitation is that they say that ALL their PhD students get a waiver of tuition and most other fees, and a “stipend” of about $27K per year. That’s more than I’ve earned some years when I was working at a job for a whole year (I keep moving from one “field” to another and having to start over at the bottom rung of the ladder, but I just accept and move on with it.).

Oh, yes, the third reason for posting this particular note is that I discovered a very interesting place for some serious discussions. It is called the Physics Forum. I joined just today, and don’t know all that much about it, but I did discover a “thread” of discussion about algae (one of my favorite subjects) that has been going on for about 6 years now. More particularly, I have found a person who seems to be both intelligent and from all those discussions and his background reading and accumulation of algae knowledge over all these years, could be a great source of information.  I hope he will be a sounding board for me.

Just in case you want to follow along on some of their interesting discussions they will be found at:

http://www.physicsforums.com/

I hope you find it half as interesting (or more) as I did. Pretty cool place.

Love

Stafford “Doc” Williamson