Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Interviews with Bill McKibben who wrote Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

• Science Talk 4/21/10

• Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, Part 1

• Writer and activist Bill McKibben talks to Scientific American‘s Mark Fischetti about his new book Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet Part 1 of 2. Edited and produced by podcast host Steve Mirsky
• Science Talk 4/22/10
  Bill McKibben’s Eaarth, Part 2
  He has a good vision but is very weak in details as he admits it by himself.  He is focusing in the trajectory. To make his vision possible, he needs support from many strong scientists. His idea in technology is a bit naive even to people who sympathize him like myself.
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• John Rennie’s 7 Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense

• On the eve of the United Nations Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen and in the wake of the hacked climate researchers’ e-mails, former Scientific American Editor in Chief John Rennie discusses his ScientificAmerican.com article “7 Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense,” available at http://bit.ly/8bg9Fx

Graduate schools in humanity: Just do not go?

I encountered quite interesting articles. I was aware of the risks involving in going to graduate school. At least no physics and mathematics professor I know recommended me to go to graduate school without talking about risks. Or probably no one really recommended me to go to grad school even though I never asked their advice either. They told us that you will see other people who just do any given tasks easily and make you think their brain are made of unknown materials etc. Also many books already informed me the hardships of graduate schools.

But it is quite nice to see some one writes so clearly about the danger of going to graduate in humanity. I am really not in humanity but many things are true in science as well.

Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don’t Go By Thomas H. Benton

Just Don’t Go, Part 2

The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’
What to Advise Unemployed Graduates
Graduate School? Socrates Would Approve
An ‘Unsavory’ Appraisal of the Humanities Market

He described horrific life in graduate school, but life can be much worse than he described. Any case, no matter what people write, I would go to graduate school in science or engineer even if I had a chance to change my life completely. Of course I would plan it better than before. Depending on the topic of studies, scientists may show no sympathy to difficulties of graduates from humanity disciplines. Some of the topics they study seem to be just an extension of hobby, but the real value of education is hard to measure.

Coming to a university in Canada and USA

International students may experience different problems than people who grown up in a country where a school is located, but most difficulties can be overcome in the end. Some problems, though, can cause you to give up school and if that happens the life can be not so easy but this is the case for any one. Giving up school is sometimes better than being stuck on to a bottomless ditch. For graduate students, changing supervisors may help and for undergrads, changing schools or majors.

In regard to dealing with new people, I think changing elementary or high schools in your own country will give you more headaches; people in the US said same thing. There are many extremely smart international and domestic students; the best part of studying and living in a new place is you can meet many eccentric folks. On the other hand some graduate students in Canada are more interested in immigration than their studies and are happier to get their permanent residence card than their intended degree. Some always complain about their new places especially when people from a country get to gather