The head of CMU's Robotics Institute made the transition to Dean of the CMU Qatar campus during my time there. It was interesting to hear about the efforts the

The head of CMU's Robotics Institute made the transition to Dean of the CMU Qatar campus during my time there. It was interesting to hear about the efforts the emirate was making towards becoming a western country. They have $8M/citizen in natural gas. To put it bluntly: that's fucking insane. They are paying major US universities, the "best in field", to setup colleges in their areas. Georgetown on political science, Texas A&M for engineering, CMU for business & computer science, etc. http://www.qf.edu.qa http://www.qf.edu.qa What an excellent use of the ridiculous amount of wealth. For Saudi Arabia, my intuition is they will never be a real industrial power while half the population lives as second-class citizens (not counting the migrant laborers who could only be considered, err..., third class citizens). It still blows my mind that women can't drive.