To clarify, according to the Wikipedia page, most of the non-zero g forces in a microgravity environment are due to tidal and other "differential" effects. From the figures given, the effects of gravitational attraction between, say, an object and a massive part of a space station (or, I suppose, between a station and docking craft) are less significant in probably most situations.

Had to work this out... 1 lightyear ~ 1e16 m, 1 solar mass ~ 2e30 kg, acceleration due to gravity = GM / R^2. So acceleration due to sun at 2 lightyears ~ 7e-11 * 2e30 / (2e16)^2 ~ 4e-13 m/s^2 ~ 4e-14 gee. Yep, pretty much unmeasurable.

However, according to Wikipedia the sun is about 30 000 lightyear ~ 3e20 m from the galactic core and is moving at about 240 km/s = 2.4e5 m/s relative to the core, so if we simply assume that's fully tangential, radial acceleration a = v^2 / R ~ 2e-10 m/s^2 ~ 2e-11 gee. That would be the acceleration due to the gravity of the rest of the stars in our galaxy, and is 500x stronger than the above figure (but as a force m*a on a person still probably not directly measurable).

Of course, getting yourself out there wouldn't really get you "more zero G" in practical terms, since as others have pointed out, free-fall is free-fall. (Although you wouldn't have to worry as much as to whether your trajectory will hit something, and there would probably be effectively no "microgravity" tidal-like effects.) But I'd better stop now before I start discussing the Equivalence Principle...

...which is obviously related to the problem of elementary teachers not having enough of a math background, on average. From the linked WSJ article, regarding a discussion with the head of a tutoring firm:

Kids have to resort to extra tutoring to hear that comparison?! Something like that should come up several times on the first day of doing fractions. But perhaps not, if the teacher is following the script of that flashy new unit, without the creativity (or confidence?) to "teach between the lines".

As others have pointed out, a good teacher will use many real-world examples of fractions - to focus too much on this vs that, or to continually revamp / reinvent math instructional methods, is to try and solve the wrong problem.

Indeed - and all those "gadzooks we've been wormholed to $SOMEWHEREPLACE" trips (and trips to "fix the timeline") leave the Trek universe with so many patched-up potential paradoxes that someone only has to look at someone wrong and the whole thing will collapse into a fuzz of GR technobabble.

For me it is the exact opposite, and I'm coming to accept I'm in the minority. If I need to concentrate (e.g. soldering, writing code, or doing math), I need silence. Even when I worked as a bike mechanic, I had to exact compromise on the radio volume from my coworkers*.

*The only way I could explain it was that it "grabs my brain" or "pushes things out of my brain". Say I'm working on a bike: I notice something I must check next, after I'm done what I'm doing. Then I notice something else that must be checked, but any time later. (I'll jot the 2nd one down when I get the chance, but right now I can't let go of what I'm in the middle of.) Now I realize I need to choose a more appropriate tool for what I'm doing right now (notice my stack is now 3 deep), so I turn to the workbench, just as the radio blares out the even more annoying part of that song or a sponsor starts yelling about used cars, and - BLAM, I've lost one of those 3 items. I have to go back physically and mentally to the same point and quickly rerun things to try and get it back. In short, it breaks the continuity or "flow" and I'm less efficient. (And more "on edge" too, as I try to tune it out.)

I know it also reduces my skills of observation - e.g. when doing something mechanical, noticing defects or that a manual process didn't go as properly as it should have.

And forget about doing anything clerical - most music (or esp. annoying commercial radio) "pushes numbers out of my brain" that you need to keep a hold of for several seconds at a time.

At another workplace, a colleague in the next cubicle was working on ACAD drawings - while rocking his head to something heavy metal-like. I just can't get that. Meanwhile, I'm working on some technical document, and had to ask him to turn it down.

Aside from the volume, in general it may be that music with vocals is worse for this effect.

Exactly as well. I did have a few profs that did an excellent job within the usual lecture mold, but I have wondered about a format where the lecture hours were more tutorial-like. The main reason is: when do you learn something, really learn something? Sure, while following some derivation in a lecture you may think "oh, cool"; but the true "aha" moments come at unexpected times later when, say, you're working a problem (not a turn-the-crank type) or reading another treatment of that tricky section, etc. - the key point being that you're in a more self-directed or iterative mode of learning when it happens. A tutorial format where one can focus on or re-approach particular issues, rather than a monolothic linear lecture, would seem to be more consistent with this.

...which induces one to not read ahead of time, since (a) you're going to have to be there for the entire from-the-ground-up hour anyway (for that odd gem or comment you don't want to miss), so you may as well spend the time on another problem set that's due; and (b) doing the assigned problem sets (in what I called "assignment cloning sessions", which you'd better latch onto even if you want to do them yourself) (and exam based on the problem sets) sometimes seemed a bit orthogonal to understanding the material at the level of dedication that may include pre-reading.

Part of that that I remember is how they transmitted some of their discoveries encoded in a single large integer (to annoy their masters on Earth), where IIRC the intervals between it's prime factors encoded characters. Between the good parts the message would tease and ramble, all the while getting harder and harder to decode as the factors increased in size.

Kiln People

Damn good read, BTW.

At least someone mentioned "copy/teleportation thought experiments" earlier - so just to underline the implicit important question: if the copy was "perfect" (i.e. continued on as "you"), did the original die? (Oops, not defining my terms, should've said "die"...)

If this transporter/copier was invented and everyone you knew started using it (and appeared none the worse for wear), would you?

(starts contemplating all those thought experiments again) ...Whoa! (shakes head) - time to log off and get some work done...

I've been wondering if the "obviousness" angle hasn't been emphasized enough, especially to the non-programming world. To rephrase above and earlier comments, if I've been able to sufficiently specify the goal of a computational task, there will be a few or at least one sensical implementation, and any competent* programmer will eventually converge on one. Furthermore, when this implementation is shown to another competent* programmer for review, for the most part they'll mutter "yeah... OK..." and although they may also mutter "oh... cool" they wouldn't doubt they wouldn't have been able to eventually do it themselves (aside from the use of any abstract algorithm they weren't aware of*).

OTOH, if I ask for a new kind of mechanical lock with a special feature, a physical implementation may or may not exist - and if it does, most locksmiths or lock designers, perhaps generations of them, will not imagine it. But one does, and all the others look at it and go "...ohhhhh..." with the sense of seeing genius at work. That "noninevitability" (and thus nonobviousness) makes it perhaps worthy of a patent, whereas the computational task, being inevitably solvable, is essentially obvious.

*or maybe we need "groups of programmers" to ensure all skill of the art is being applied