Google still says: 1 Astronomical Unit = 149 598 000 000 meters 1 Astronomical Unit = 8.79057469 × 10^10 smoots

I'm not a scientist, but I am an engineer. I don't claim to know or understand theoretical physics. What I do know is that I'm fairly often seeing news articles coming out of CERN that comes to little or no fruition. Generally about Higgs-Boson. Maybe it's not the scientists making a claim, nearly as much as it is the media snatching for coverages from the tech community. I just think there should be less media coverage until data has been verified and confirmed. I know they can't help media coverage but when statements are made to the press I see it as condoning.

I feel like some of the claims we're hearing these days in the theoretical science community are publicity moves. If they're disproved, so what? They get free advertising; the loss of credibility seems to be negligible. On the other hand if they're are right, they are first to publish and get the attention. I, for one, will be watching for the news in the next couple of weeks/months that says the independent verification failed and they found an error in their data.

I just recently graduated with my BS in Electrical Engineering from Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly University of Missouri - Rolla, UMR) in Rolla, MO. This isn't a huge change, although I never really understood it in the first place. I could understand lab fees and the added expenses for physical equipment and upkeep (although the rates were ridiculous), but we had to pay an "Engineering Supplemental Fee" for each Engineering course. So my 3 hour lecture for Circuits cost $986.4 instead of the expected $784.80; add to it the IT Use fee and Student Activity Fee (see below) the cost goes up to: $1123.38 [note: the student activity fee costs cap at 10 hours]... all for ONE lecture in a single semester. Current costs: Cost/credit hour: $261.60 Engineering Supplemental Fee/Engineering Credit hour: $67.20 IT Use Fee/credit hour: $13 Student Activity Fee/hour: $32.66 Total Cost/credit hour of engineering course: $374.64 for 3 hour lecture (not including associated lab): $1123.38 Source: http://enrollment.mst.edu/documents/Cost_of_Education.pdf The largest crock was the student activity fee. This was lobbied for and set by a council of students, so it could be said that the fault lies on the students, but this cost kept growing. It paid for student design teams (legitimate) and other extracurriculars. Ones I had problems with: Ethnic/Racial Associations (Black Man's Think Tank, India Association, Chinese Students Program, etc): Not that I am racist in the least, but its unfair to expect all students to pay for events and clubs that are racially, religiously, or ethnically biased on membership. Nonvarsity Sports: Clubs like Trap & Skeet, Paintball, and Rugby would require members pay a nominally semesterly or yearly fee (on the range of $15-30) but would have budgets in the thousands to pay for hobbies, IE Ammunition and Sporting Clays, Paintballs, CO2, Rugby jerseys (new one each year/person, each one costing upwards of $100 each).