So...can anyone tell me what Alabama is like?

[ThePilgrim101]

UAB is a decent school. Not the prettiest school and not in the best part of town. They have a long history of involvement with materials science research in space. One of the few universities in the country to have their own experiment on the shuttle in the Spacelab/hab era. They also get a lot of research funding. Lawrence DeLucas is there. Drop joshuas3521 a PM. Unless my memory fails me (and sometimes it does) he was at UAB a couple of years ago.

Research funding is always a good reason to pick a school. I've had several schools and programs this year express an interest, they just didn't have any funding to take me on.

That said, I can't wait for the interview. They have *so* many neuroimaging toys. I worked at Maryland for a couple years and thought that a single MRI, an MEG, and EEG stations were awesome. UAB has like five different centers for various neuroimaging, a hospital with eight MR scanners, and they're getting a completely new laboratory run by David Knight which is going to be principally for fMRI.

For those kinds of benefits, I can deal with the intense heat.

[Thumpalumpacus]

True.  When I moved to Lancaster, CA in high hopes in 1989, I was shocked to discover a place more proudly backwards and hateful than my native Shreveport, LA.  I remember people telling me to avoid one girl because she was a n*gger lover.  Sweet girl.  She preferred black men because they treated her nicer than white men.

Yep.  And the skinheads in Ventura, where I lived for two decades, were involved in at least two racially-motivated murders in the last eight years.

I've never been to Lancaster, but the ex- has some family out there.  The culture out there, from what I hear, is still atrocious.

[SvZurich]

Fortunately for Palmdale, the Lancaster City Council goes out of its way to inadvertently convincing businesses to locate in Palmdale instead.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's all desert shithole to me.  :)

[PopeyesPappy]

For those kinds of benefits, I can deal with the intense heat.

Yea it's going to be toasty in B'ham come July and August. On another note Birmingham is just a few hours drive from Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta and the beach. So it isn't hard to get out of town for a couple of days to do something else.