As a hobbyist conlanger, I can say with some certainty that very nearly all sf and fantasy authors outsource alien names to infants. The only rule is "if their language consists of nothing but noises humans can't pronounce, just bash your head on the keyboard."

More perplexing still, the funding goal is half a million dollars. Not quite the shoestring budget that Kickstarter dreams are made of. At last, a crowdfunding project that has something for everyone... to sigh at!

For what it's worth, from TFA:

So it looks like the backlash is relatively minor.

That's the key. Make 'em once, and afterwards it's just quizzing and homework help. It's generally less work for the profs and TAs, especially since the students can re-watch parts of the videos at will. (You might be surprised at how many professors still won't let students record their lectures.)

The lectures are a whole hour long and take up the same amount of time that would normally be spent doing homework at home. By undergrad most students either live on their own or are preparing to, and they generally aren't so tied to their parents. Keep in mind these students are considered legal adults in most jurisdictions. You describe a crazy, strange world of high school and elementary school norms, not college.

In order to get full marks in the flipped courses at my university, you have to watch the videos online (having logged into an account to do so) and answer questions that pop up at set points throughout the video to show you're paying attention. Considering that giving marks for attendance is a proven method of getting students to show up, it's safe to say any undergrad not destined to wash out by Christmas would kick themselves for failing to try.

Given that exam scores are already percentages, usually percentages of them are discussed additively. The same can be said of most other surveys that incorporate comparisons between percentages, unless there's some election-trail-level obfuscation going on.

I'm TAing a "flipped" course like this starting next week; it's an intro to CS course for people with no CS background. Our lecture slots are purely homework help and Q there's little or no attempt at lecturing except in the first week. We also allocate tutorial sessions (an additional 2 hours per week) which are mandatory for the first couple of weeks and then optional; the point of them is to give students more opportunity to get help with homework.

With this material, most students don't need huge swaths of time to do the assignments if supervision is available. It's not appropriate for all levels of instruction or all subject matter, but when there are a lot of fundamental concepts that need to be grasped, the fact that you're no longer doing the work in isolation at home is the real source of the improvement. There's still a final assignment where the students have to prove themselves, in case you're worried of overdependent students.

We're not even discussing tenured vs. non-tenured. The study was about tenure-track vs. non-tenure-track. The comparison is between professors who do any research at all and professors who only teach. There are plenty of elderly teaching adjuncts, and they're extremely competent because it's their life-long work to teach.

Iain Banks. Douglas Adams. Sooner or later, Terry Pratchett, though he's not exactly SF. The season of longevity seems to have ended some time before 1945.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so extreme if writers were better at not dying prematurely.

Reminder to self: stick to day job, do not follow dreams of becoming writer. In event of success, death before 70th birthday due to disease is certain.

Mild objection—discrimination is also strongly wired into our brains. It's only been in the past century that the objectification of women has become so overt. As far as sensitivity is concerned, this event was backward from previous social norms, even though huge improvements in discriminatory behaviour have occurred over the years.

...Right, Pratchett. Yes. Agreed!

I'm not sure who or what "TP" is. Could you be more specific?