Update those lesson plans

Some really interesting reads this week.

I like this opening piece in the April 21st Economist about the "third" Industrial Revolution. "The factory of the future will focus on mass customization—and may look more like those weavers’ cottages than Ford’s assembly line." It is a tenable thesis. The technology of 3-D printing, the demand for and the access to create custom products, anywhere, is a dawning reality. Buckle your seatbelts (and if you don't have one, download the design, tweak it, and print one out.)!

The other news comes by way of BroBill.  An assistant professor down the road at Binghamton University has used new data sets from 19th century census data to recalculate the death toll from the Civil War. His estimates put the deaths at 750,000 rather than the commonly cited 620,000.  His article in the New York Times Disunion series describes the efforts over the years to get a handle on that death toll as well as the impact of that number.