Links for April 28th

• 3quarksdaily >> Epidemic Thinking
  “the risks that kill people and the risks that upset people are completely different. If you know that a risk kills people, you have no idea whether it upsets them or not. If you know it upsets them, you have no idea whether it kills them or not. “
  Tags: statistics risk fear
• Warren Ellis » The Machines Of Desire
  I come from the classic British tradition, where science fiction is social fiction. Therefore, in my head, the most valid way to come to terms with The Age Of Giant Fictional Machines and the terrifying miasmic presence of the 21st century is in fact to frame the whole discussion in terms of monstrous chunks of implausible technology, remaking the world by drilling or blasting or generally stabbing it with nuclear-driven metal bits, trying to stop things from exploding, and having the Cigarette Of Victory afterwards.

  I think stories like these contain important lessons for our children.

  My child, of course, watches SUPERNATURAL and gets all her news from MOCK THE WEEK. So we?re all doomed anyway. But I wanted to note the thought down
  Tags: culture technology scifi British stories imagination children

• Op-Ed Contributor – End the University as We Know It – NYTimes.com
  The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages an educational system that has become a process of cloning. Faculty members cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.
  Tags: education academia university curriculum
• Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London | Books | guardian.co.uk
  It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy ? it looks like a large photocopier ? but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.
  Tags: books technology publishing innovation london printing
• The Long Now Blog » Blog Archive » Introducing The Long News
  Each weekday, The New York Times prints around 125 news stories. That?s just one newspaper; add in all other newspapers, plus television, radio, and the internet, and it?s clear thousands upon thousands of news stories are generated every day.

  But how many of these stories will make a difference next year? A decade from now? A century? Ten thousand years?

  That?s the idea behind The Long News: to try to identify news stories whose significance seems likely to grow, rather than diminish, over time.
  Tags: future time slow news journalism

• Stephen Fry lampoons Digital Britain
  Speaking at the Digital Britain Summit on Friday, Fry said that if people found value in the internet, they would naturally learn to use it, rather than be forced to. “We live in a world dominated by the car and it is useful to know how to drive, yet I don’t see debates and steering committees to tell people how to use traffic”
  Tags: UK digital traffic adoption learning
• Screencast-O-Matic
  free and easy way to create a video recording of your screen (aka screencast) and upload it for free hosting all from your browser with no install
  Tags: screencast video tools free
• Technology and Education – list of useful tools
  
  Tags: tools education games software free ict