LSMS first annual meeting

Ostensibly I'm in Lebanon for the first annual meeting of the Lebanese Society of the Mathematical Sciences. I gave a talk on the first day (friday evening at 5 so no one showed up) but at least I went. It is nice for me to see Lebanon gaining some momentum in scientific research. At least it signals to me a relatively long period of peace. For too long the people have been concerned with protection and industry and all the other things that sort of lessen the effect or desire of scientific research. Moreover in times of war (at least in Lebanon) all the money has to go to immediately productive means, and science and scientific research just don't fit that bill.

Even with the momentum being gained for math(s) the majority is still applied mathematics. There were 35 talks and 20 of them were directly applied mathematics. Several others were in fields related to computer science and only about 1/4 were truly pure math. I guess I'm ok with that, but it was terribly boring for me to sit through nearly 20 talks on numerical methods for Partial Differential Equations when I have limited interest in even the most intriguing talk.

I should also mention that mathematics talks are generally boring. In fact, the common man needs no additional comment from this. It just appears to me that the mathematics community world wide is made up of some very clever individuals who have great dedication to an abstract art and have a very hard time communicating their ideas to others.

I think the only thing that I really noticed that was different about Lebanese mathematicians than others is that they dress nicely. Even that aspect of Lebanese culture hasn't escaped its mathematics community. All the Lebanese people dress nicely and that extends to the young generation and its mathematicians. I was told by two of my cousins that I needed to wear a suit to the conference and I said "it's not a business conference" but the entire older generation was wearing suits and the younger generation was wearing dress pants with nicely polished shoes, button down shirts neatly ironed with sweaters adorning them. That was probably the most bizarre thing about it. Otherwise it was another math conference nicely organized and the correct amount of boring.