Immigration: Welcome to my Midlothian musings

I sent an email to a friend regarding Scotch Whisky. He asked that I taste as many as possible and blog about it. I drank some whisky. It made me tired. I decided to blog about it anyway, but not limit myself to whisky.

This is my blog about my year in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom. It's essentially for family and friends to track what it is I am doing over here as "research" seems suspect to most of you.

As with most blogs, the first entry is the easiest. The first entry is frequently followed by a second, but rarely does a blogger make it to a fifteenth. I hope to avoid that pitfall by encouraging myself to post something possibly totally useless from time to time. The goal is to post three times a week in one of the following categories:

Scotch (Whisky) - obvious
Scotch (People) - mostly awkward culture clashes
Maths - better explained below
Random - things that don't fit into another category
Running - boring crap about running when I can't think of something else to post
Trips - if I take some
Going Broke - it's expensive over here

I have completed a second entry.

So what about the Maths category? I call it maths since it is only called math in the USA. It's like measuring temperature in Fahrenheit; we're the only ones. It is here that I will attempt to explain in short bursts what the heck I am doing. This will range from possibly telling you how I do research, to what I am researching, to why it is that someone would pay me to do this. I intend to write this so that you understand; that's the hard part. Not because I am already calling you dense, but because it took me 21 years of formal education and two years as a post-doc to understand what it is I do. Anyway, I'll try. If I'm not doing so hot, let me know or skip the maths posts!