Manufacturing also. Most pcb etchers require and do business in imperial measurements. Many extrusions and dies are imperial. Just look at cyclists who get their fancy Italian bicycle parts and are all confused about if their 31.8mm handlebars will fit in their 31.7mm stem. Well... they are both the same size: 1.25 inches. Big money is tied up in manufacturing equipment and will dictate what industry uses. Common people are really irrelevant here.

I watched the video, and while I'm not a scientist, I play one in my off hours (I flunked out of my PhD pure math program...)

I have to say that I was really disappointed with the lecture. Now I know this is a "bring the research to the people" lecture which tries to give a more causal audience a view into cutting edge research, but there were a number of significant problems with both the tenor, style and some with the content. It might sound like nit-picking, but if you are taping a lecture for wide distribution and giving it an sensational title you might want to make sure that you have your details right. Don't attribute a Mozart opera to Rossini. Don't accept the audience response of "false premise" and then mumble something about it not being transitive, no wait, only the contrapositive is transitive when talking about logical conclusions. Don't hand-wave multiple times "...and this happens for entirely different reasons" and leave it when it sure looks significant.

And above all, leave all non-pertinent politics out of your scientific discussion. I'll accept that you hate Nixon, and that may even have a place in the discussion. But the "HFCS is Japan's revenge for WWII?" and "A hole bigger than the one in the USS Cole" among other polemic statements? Not even remotely defensible in an academic discussion.

I learned a couple of things, but much of it really isn't new to people who have been following nutrition research even casually. However, the tone really turned me off, and makes me thing that Dr. Lustig want to inflame more than he wants to inform, which is poor practice for a doctor (to teach, in this case being a physician at a research university) or a scientist.

I nearly stopped listening to the Dr. Lustig after he said "Rossini, you know, La Gazza Ladra, The Marriage of Figaro..." It's being pedantic, but, UGH.

I'm curious if you have the source for the "optic nerve refreshes at approx. 100Hz". It sounds about right, but I went looking around for details and it appears that not everyone is able to observe stroboscopic events under continuous illumination. This was a huge surprise to me, because I have always seen car and bicycle wheels start to "turn backwards" at a certain frequency in daylight conditions. I didn't realize that some people don't. Now I'm confused and am probably going to waste the rest of the week reading up on visual perception theories and research.

When I was doing some stuff at Lawrence Livermore Labs in the mid 1990s there was a very active group working on radiation and harsh environment resistant robots. They were boring, but highly functional, which is why no one paid any attention from the outside. While I haven't kept up on their work, I am confident that there are few labs in the world that have robots for this job better and more advanced than the DOE devices. They do, of course, have to plan for not only power reactor problems but also our aging weapons stockpile.

So he can do it. Good for him.

Ted Williams was the greatest hitter of the modern era of baseball. He sucked as a coach and a manager--because all the qualifications in the world doesn't mean that you can then get someone else to do it.

I don't disagree with you for the most part--but maybe you are pushing an extreme for the sake of argument? Mayer (UCSB) has some very, very good research showing how multimedia lessons, when well structured, can significantly enhance understanding and transfer. Yes, it's true that you won't have many resources for "gold standard" double-blind, same population proof for online education, but being in education, you must certainly know that no such study is even possible. Education research just can't happen that way.

Also, remember, OP is student teaching. Be gentle, there's plenty of time later to get beat up and depressed over ideas that don't quite work.

Please don't. I understand that this was a massive undertaking by a non-professional which merits some recognition, but it really isn't a good resource. Sure, it makes sense if you have learned all the topics, and it's pretty easy to follow, but I guarantee that it will fail to foster any transfer of knowledge, deep understanding or promote an interest in further investigation. This is Kumon, for free, and not even as well structured.

NASA has the best resources, but it can be tough to find them. My favorite, and most applicable for physical science (8th grade in most states), is the solar system simulator from JPL: Eyes on the Solar System But do search the link in parent, and be persistent as NASA's site sucks.

But how do you know where to look? Sure, we have very good search tools these days, but there is so much information out there that going into a blind search isn't going to be very helpful. So you would need to know enough to know what and how to find verification or help, and then know enough to evaluate if the source is trustworthy. And I would certainly want any doctor of mine to have these skills confirmed (tested) through the education and training system for their profession. No flawless recall needed, but there is a certain level of knowledge and proficiency that needs to exist, and that means testing.

I agree that cheating (as an aside, I actually prefer using lying, as cheating seems to have less weight these days) is a major problem, but I don't think you have it right about testing. Selected response assessments (common name: multiple choice) are still very valuable, and are indeed one of the best ways to assess a wide range of skills or knowledge. The fact that they are easy to score is a bonus, but more because it allows for deeper statistical analysis of items, strands and a means of comparing performance across many classes, schools, years, etc.

It would be more accurate to say that selected response assessments are overused, abused and frequently fail to meet the minimum standards for quality. However, this isn't the fault of the format, but the writers and people who use them. Performance based assessments (common name: project based, problem based assessment) still suffer from many problems: poor problem writing, unclear or incomplete scoring rubrics, bias in scoring, and more. Also, they are poor to determine the extend of student understanding. For instance, if you understand and can apply 80% of the subject material, but the second step of 20 for the solution is in the 20% you don't know, this scores as only completing 10% of the entire problem.

For a complete understanding of what a student knows, understands, has mastery of and can utilize, a variety of assessments are needed in a variety of formats. No single format is sufficient.

Cool to see they have a plan for getting info without causing harm. Hopefully it all works well.

The researchers involved on site have my respect. Here's some info about where they work:
Ave. winter temp: -65C, ave. summer temp: -30C
Altitude: 3488m
Record low temp: -89C. Good thing they are at altitude, as CO2 freezing point is -78C at 1atm.
Polar night for 130 days.

I like science... but I don't like science that much.

How about that the MiG-17 was generally considered a superior aircraft to the F-4 with a vastly inferior weapons platform? The Vietnamese aces all flew 17s rather than 21s and Yeager thought the 17 could have been a more potent plane than the F-4 when he flew one. The 17, of course, was a single engine plane that even relied pretty heavily on vacuum tubes in the electronics systems.

Of course there are few USAF pilots who don't think their shit doesn't stink, and I'm sure C-130 pilots think their stuff is awesome. However, the 16 is many years newer, and there are many who would not want anything to do with the 15, 18 and absolutely no one wants a 14 for anything these days. Everyone wants 22s.

But probably not for the reasons you think... It has very little to do with technical merits of each plane. The people who fly and work on the aircraft don't memorize and compare numbers--only young males not in the service do it. Your mission dictates your aircraft and some missions are more important these days than others. Getting 22s means you are really important. Not getting a new block of 16s, then attempting to switch to 15s means that you are afraid of BRAC.

Russian Ark is my favorite film. It is the ultimate antidote to modern movie ideals, even though there was a fair amount of technology used (cgi enhanced scenes like the storage room, hard tech like the steady cam). All those people, costumes and sets! And only a single night to do it.