{"id":4600,"date":"2012-04-19T18:31:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T22:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2012-04-19T18:31:43","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T22:31:43","slug":"spring-in-the-virgin-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4600","title":{"rendered":"Spring in the Virgin Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing that a career in math or physics research can get you, courtesy of financial industry wealth, is a nice trip to the Virgin Islands.  A couple current possibilities are:\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Simons Foundation funds week-long <a href=\"https:\/\/simonsfoundation.org\/funded-programs-simons-symposia\">Simons Symposia<\/a>, at Caneel Bay, on St. John.  The next one is next week, on <a href=\"https:\/\/simonsfoundation.org\/mps-funded-programs-knot-homologies-and-bps-states\">Knot Homologies and BPS States<\/a>.  These are serious, invitation only, family members discouraged, events.  To get this trip you better be a top expert in a specific field of the Symposium.  The Simons Foundation plans to accept proposals for next years Symposia in the fall, see <a href=\"https:\/\/simonsfoundation.org\/symposia-rfa\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re a &#8220;renowned physicist&#8221;, preferably one with a Nobel prize, then you&#8217;re eligible for a trip to financier Jeffrey Epstein&#8217;s own Virgin Island, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Little_Saint_James,_U.S._Virgin_Islands\">Little Saint James<\/a>.  Epstein (described by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jeffrey_Epstein\">Wikipedia<\/a> as &#8220;an American financier and science philanthropist, and convicted sex offender&#8221;) a couple weeks ago &#8220;Convened a Conference of Nobel Laureates to Define Gravity&#8221;, according to this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pr.com\/press-release\/401973\">press release<\/a> from his foundation.  The event was organized by Lawrence Krauss, who is quoted as describing the situation as follows:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cRight now we&#8217;re floundering,\u201d Krauss admits. \u201cWe&#8217;re floundering, in a lot of different areas.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing that a career in math or physics research can get you, courtesy of financial industry wealth, is a nice trip to the Virgin Islands. A couple current possibilities are: The Simons Foundation funds week-long Simons Symposia, at Caneel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4600\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4603,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions\/4603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}