The ReadQuick method may substitute speed for attention to detail. That would explain why it has a typo on its cover page.
Ha. They _claim_ increased comprehension. But, they would.
I got the free samples of Sugru, once. Then I lost it before figuring out what to do with it. True!
"sugru is the exciting new self-setting rubber that can be formed by hand"
When I read this, I though "artisanal condoms."
artisanal condoms
I thought that referred to sheep intestines.
The ReadQuick site is poor for reading: grey on white is horrible. Pale blue-grey on pale grey is even worse. Is it supposed to be a challenge? Because it is.
I've used sugru for quite a few things since it was first linked here. Bumpers on the corners of my phone (my old galaxy s2 which got stolen; not my swishy nexus 5), some feet on a little speaker to replace the ones that had fallen off, made a new loop on my car unlocker zapper when broke, fixed some headphones, etc.
I don't know anything about speed reading, though I'm a fast reader, but I don't see why Velocity's plan to have you read each individual word makes sense. Don't people become speed readers by being able to take in chunks of text at once, basically, and understand the words in context rather than in isolation?
HOW CAN YOU WRITE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE BESIDES THE NORWEGIAN X-COUNTRY SKI TEAM DISASTER?!?!?!
Wait, what's the typo on the ReadQuick page?
I can't bear to watch that cross country skiing, I hate how *awkward* they look. Am glued to the curling.
Although I was in the room for most of it. They said that for some previous race (I wasn't really listening) that 87.5% of Norwegians had watched it on tv.
12 is clearly based on a highly unusual definition of "awkward."
11: "See your speed increase overtime" should have a space between "over" and "time".
The Norwegian women were like in 9th place! The men are going to be at least 5th.
Related, I think this is the only event where the announcers have not even mentioned whatever Americans may be participating.
Northug is drooling.
If rabid, shouldn't he have extra energy?
They just look like they're moving so slowly for the amount of effort they're putting in. That weird bunny-hopping thing along the double tracks, yuck. There's an awful lot of filming them from in front as well, which makes it worse I think. It just makes my skin crawl.
They just look like they're moving so slowly for the amount of effort they're putting in
This must be an illusion; they go pretty fast. Seen from the side, they'd be wizzing by.
They should film it better then. Looks like swimming through treacle. Can't bear it. C watched the whole thing. Curling. There's a nice exciting sport.
"I've used sugru for quite a few things since it was first linked here" s/b "RTFA, ogged".
I took a reading speed test recently (I think sponsored by a company selling ereaders) and thought about linking it here. Then I thought it might end up like the 'let's disclose our SAT score' threads and decided perhaps not.
What's really exciting is British short track racers knocking over competitors like bowling pins.
My SAT scores were more than twice as high as my ACT scores.
Kid A has been looking at hairstyles and trying to describe what she wants. I just showed her a picture of Edward Furlong as John Connor and she thinks that's perfect.
OT: I admit nothing, but, hypothetically, if one's first thought after dropping somebody at the airport to spend a couple of weeks performing at a REDACTED music REDACTED in REDACTED were "Sweet! Now I can cold-soak those selvedge denim jeans in the bathtub without having to explain that, yes, this is the first time they have been washed," then one were not very cool.
Hmm, 26 looks like it would work for me if I go back to shorter hair!
26: Why not John Connor's friend??
30: I'm ashamed to admit that I have seen that video before. I'm not that far gone, damn it.
So, Flip, does she not know about the jeans obsession thing or does she disapprove or is it just more fun to have a secret shame?
Northug is drooling.
If rabid, shouldn't he have extra energy?
My theory is some sort of hex placed on the team by the Swedes. That or a saboteur, probably also Swedish.* I'm not buying the whole "wax gate."** Also, I'm not sure why the Norwegians*** are skiing like they've just been dragged out of bed following an all-nighter partying following doing a triathalon.
*If so, my bets are on a complex conspiracy involving Swedish royalty, crypto-Nazis, and possibly an alien landing cover-up.
**Can we really believe the top waxing team IN THE WORLD can't get it right, whereas every single other team can, including Kazakhstan?
***Including the women, who made cleaning out everyone else in the skiathalon look easy.
32: I think she knows but doesn't really understand.
I think I posted a sugru commercial to this very blog. Ingrates. Jammies uses it.
35: Dare we ask for what? Custom perm rods? (Sorry, Jammies, that I keep making fun of your hair. I'm just sort of baffled and impressed!)
Also, I'm not sure why the Norwegians*** are skiing like they've just been dragged out of bed following an all-nighter partying following doing a triathalon.
Now I can cold-soak those selvedge denim jeans in the bathtub without having to explain that, yes, this is the first time they have been washed,"
What's the purpose of this? What effects are being sought or avoided by doing this?
I'm not sure what "selvedge" means, so I'm going to assume that "selvedge denim" is the formal name for jeggings.
41: If you were being really authentic, you'd be sticking them in the freezer rather than letting water touch them.
(Sorry, Jammies, that I keep making fun of your hair. I'm just sort of baffled and impressed!)
It's okay. It's amazing.
He mostly uses it for repairing odds and ends around the house - soap dispenser, kids' toys, fridge drawer, etc. There have been some things that it utterly would not work on, I think, but on the whole it's pretty swell.
35: What does Jammies use the sugru commercial for?
43: He must indeed have amazing hair, to use it in all of those ways.
33: I haven't been following the Olympics, but I would like to know more about Scandinavians and their waxing, unless it turns out the wax goes on their skis, in which case never mind.
fridge drawer
I've had a broken bit of plastic that has kept the drawer from opening easily. And I had no idea how to fix it. Before now.
43 has to be one of the best comments to read out-of-context in a long time.
42: The freezer thing is a hashtag too far for me. I'd have to grow a beard.
Best RBI a did Olympics so far b bc commenter s which wee awesome but not sure if knownx in UK ans c in Us. Nowtdxveigans were a joke. Wax it all.
Um... Halford? Do you need us to call you a cab or something?
I don't want to pimp these apps, especially since I don't know how their features (read stuff from your browser, etc.) work, or whether they lead to horrible eye strain, but I did just download the cheaper one (velocity, three bucks) and I'm comfortably reading at 700 words per minute, which is way faster than my normal rate. And that's with what feels like excellent comprehension, unless there are too many quotations, which get a little confusing. Pretty interesting.
Nowtdxveigans still has more medals than Sweden, Denmark and Finland put together.
Finland - just 2 silvers? What has happened to Filand?
I fear Halford has taken this caveman experiment too far.
"I've used sugru for quite a few things since it was first linked here" s/b "RTFA, ogged".
The link in 52 shows that ogged has R some of TFA, at least.
I had forgotten that PZ Myers ever commented here. The internet was so small back then.
When I took that test, some time later, I got a terrible score (relative to other people here) in speed and not great in comprehension. But I still remember that post and a few later threads referring to it. So how's that for retention?
The internet was so small back then.
It really was. Even Glenn Reynolds commented here in the early days. It felt like there were twenty blogs.
56: it truly was.
Hey ogged my wife who comments here and I were talking earlier about how probably the analogy ban will be the greatest work of your life and should be extended to all realms. You should do maybe a manifesto or start a minor religion.
my wife who comments here
As opposed to your other wife, who is strictly a lurker?
It's already sort of like a religion.
Who said digital currencies aren't useful?
It was, right? And yet the only commenter here who ever commented on my blog back then was bob mcmanus.
the analogy ban will be the greatest work of your life
I've had that same thought (more or less, asshole). I think the secret to success here has been active participation by the posters, and the analogy ban. Usually, my subsequent thought is, but Aristotle is like, 80% analogies. Perhaps there's a lesson here.
In the digital future, the ancient philosophers will be known as the authors of some of the greatest trolling manuals in the history of the world.
Essear, I don't think I knew you'd had a blog. That's one of the things that was weird about moving from real-name blog to fake-name blog and now fb, that I don't know all the connections.
67: I think the secret to success here has been active participation by the posters, and the analogy ban.
"A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship"
*Can we really believe the top waxing team IN THE WORLD can't get it right
Brazil has a team?!
69: I had a short-lived group blog that no one here really knew about, as far as I know. We abandoned it 8 or 9 years ago, but someone bought the domain name and restored some of our old posts intermingled with Japanese text. Which is kind of odd.
Where by "I had" I mean "I was, by far, the least interesting and prolific part of".
70: Nice. I'll go out tomorrow and walk among them.
(Surely when Lee said seven hours ago that we should talk after the kids went to bed, she didn't mean when she got home after the kids went to bed since that's clearly going to be after midnight? And yet I can't in good conscience take any NyQuil until she's back here, so I have to wait and doze, I guess, since her phone seems to be dead again.)
67: I have, around the lab, mooted the idea of a measure of scientific achievement that combines influence and incorrectness, so it selects for peopel who have been massively influential -- creating whole fields -- and also just comprehensively wrong. Obviously, among living scientists Chomsky wins handily but I think the all-time champion has to be Aristotle.
52/58: Hrm, I was able to handle 1000wpm using the default spreeder text (almost twice what I got from the test linked in 52--I'm not sure if I ever saw that old thread before, which is probably for the best, because it--by which I mean de Long's score--was depressing) but when I cut-n-pasted a random article from my Pocket queue, I found myself missing a bit; it felt like not quite being able to keep up with a treadmill. Very interesting.
And 49 is awesome.
76: wow, that's pretty bullshit. My sympathies.
Oh, she brought a friend home and did some necessary apologies at dinner time, but then they went out again. And I really can't blame anyone but myself if I'm staying up too late online when the house is quiet, except maybe the baby for waking a lot, but she's been out for an hour now and so not even that.
70, 75: Alternative explanation is that the aviary is close by and they are planing a break out.
33: I haven't been following the Olympics, but I would like to know more about Scandinavians and their waxing, unless it turns out the wax goes on their skis, in which case never mind.
Well, the Swedes are better at it than the Norwegians, apparently ;)
49 pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue
49 out btocks btock. Nowtdxveigans, forsooth!
||
p.s. to thread about regional greetings: if you are in medieval Italian hell, you also ask about someone's mother, it turns out. ("Chi fuor li maggior tui?" I mean it's sort of the same thing.)
|>
It's true. In the spirit of humblebrag penance in the form of admitting my ignorance of absolutely everything, the above occurs in the context of stuff I am now reading about on the internet because I know exactly zero things about history. Guelphs! Ghibellines! It turns out there is this place called Italy. It is where pizza comes from, but also other things happened there.
It's too bad that one time in TFA when I tried to help those Italian kids on the subway I hadn't embarked on this project. I could have been like "stench! Abyss! Other word for stench!"
Did you ever do that thing where you have a new job starting on Tuesday at 8 am, and it's Sunday night, and you should be adjusting your schedule, but instead it just keeps getting later and later and you're still awake? Abyss!
The Canada Finland ice hockey match was amazing, except that the Canadians won. But the Finnish goalkeeper not only has a wonderful name (Tuurkku Rask) but equally alien reflexes.
Also, as a Swede I weep hot salt tears for the Norwegians. I do, I really do, I ... I ... seem to be speechless
At the hairdressers (me moaning that she wants my company there), clutching a printed-out photo of John Connor. And then found a (female model in a 'look book' with exactly the same haircut! So she showed the hairdresser that instead. Bit less embarrassing.
"You're the worst Norwegian," said Sundby's mom, Gro Johnsrud Langslet, on Norwegian television during the race. "You should go home."
93: There may have been some translation lossage.
91: Tuukka, not Tuurkku. He rules.
93: Hooray. That's a lot of pressure taken from me.
100 Swedes ran through the weeds pursued by one Norwegian - money line of a lullaby muttered by my grandmother, whose late husband was from Norway.
96: Tell me about it.
You know it.
You're the worst Norwegian
Maybe it's affectionate in Norwegian.
Maybe his mom needs to write a book about parenting. "Reindeer Mother" or something.
Huh, I know some Rasks here, didn't realize they were Finns.
Rask was a huge star in last year's Stanley Cup Finals, yet it's like people are just waking up to his existence.
I think the trend in all the major sports is for the towns in the Stanley Cup, NBA championship, Super Bowl or World Series to pay attention, and everybody else not so much.
I think this was less so in the past.
49 out btocks btock. Nowtdxveigans, forsooth!
This is very true. Obviously from now on all incomprehensibly drunken commenting should be referred to as commenting "paleo style".
Neanderthals' enormous thumbs made texting practically impossible on those tiny device keyboards. This being well before the advent of voice recognition software, they soon found themselves on the brink of extinction.
Yes. I'm not realky a pre-order kind of guy, but suspect I'll get some of those.
I am now officially loving the speed reading app/website.
93: Hooray. That's a lot of pressure taken from me.
What's a guy gotta do to get some recognition? Go on hunger strike?
Well, Anders, I think it helps if your name enters the dictionary.
I wonder if quisling is actually in Norwegian dictionaries.
Not the same thing, but the Norwegian Wikipedia has a section "Quisling som skjellsord", i.e. as invective.
Wait, no: http://no.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/quisling
Worst Norwegians: A Definitive List
1) Quisling
2) Breivik
3) past-their-prime Norwegian celebrities who become Nazi sympathizers and embarrass everyone*
4) Northung
5) Sundby
Sundby's mother was wrong, he's barely top 5.
*Hamsun, Henie, etc.
Hey, Sonja Henie was in her prime when she was a Nazi sympathizer!
Also, where does Karl Øve Knausgaard rank?
To be fair to Henie, simply because of when she was born, it would have been much harder to be a Nazi sympathizer after her prime.
Norway's various skiing lapses are excused by the new revelation that they have a female biathlete named "A.K.A. Flatland".
117: What with already having skiing and shooting skiils I'm thinking she should move into some kind of superhero gig where she can reuse the Batman theme.
Also, where does Karl Øve Knausgaard rank?
He loses style points for trying too hard. Definitely not top 5. He might not even make top 20.
Henie was arguably at the end of her prime wrt technical ice skating, though she probably only won gold in 1936 because she was friends with Hitler. Anyways, by modern standards at least 24 is ancient. At 24, Oksana Baiul was already an out of shape alcoholic trying to make a comeback, and Tonya Harding had already released a sex tape and started her second short-lived career as a celebrity wrestler
The big scandal with biathlon is why America sucks so much. You think with all our guns we could at least shoot accurately.
According to Wikipedia, Henie was romantically linked to Liberace. That would have been a sex tape one could be curious about.
Stupid slow development of technology.
. . . new job starting on Tuesday at 8 am
Congratulations.
89: Seconding NickS' congrats. Hope it's a good fit and that your coworkers remain charming for a long time.
Some hipster genius must be running the juke box. There was a German pop song about Rasputin and now something pretty great I never knew existed from Nancy Sinatra.
now something pretty great I never knew existed from Nancy Sinatra
Lets have what you remember.
The Boney M song, or is there another German pop song about Rasputin?
128: I'm told that's who it is.
126: A duet with someone who I thought was Willie Nelson but apparently was not.
Since everybody knows Something Stupid with Frank, when he was actually married to Mia and not merely paying post-conjugal visits, I'm guessing it was Nancy & Lee Hazelwood's cover of this Johnny Cash & June Carter song:
BOTH: We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout We been talkin' 'bout Jackson JOHNNY: Ever since the fire went out I'm goin' to Jackson, I'm gonna mess around (yeah?) Yeah, I'm goin' to Jackson, look out Jackson townJUNE: Well, go on down to Jackson, go ahead and wreck your health (hmm)
Go play your hand, you big-talkin' man, make a big fool of yourself
Yeah, yeah, go to Jackson, but go comb that hair
JOHNNY: I'm gonna snowball Jackson
JUNE: Go ahead and see if I careJOHNNY: When I breeze inta that city, the people gonna stoop and bow (ha ha)
All them women gonna make me teach 'em what they don't know how
I'm goin' to Jackson, ya turn-a loose-a my coat
'cause I'm goin' to Jackson
JUNE: Goodbye, that's all she wroteJUNE: They'll laugh at you in Jackson (I doubt it)
And I'll be dancin' on a pony keg
They'll lead you 'round that town like a scalded hound
With your tail tucked between your legs
Yeah, yeah, yeah, go to Jackson, you big-talkin' man
And I'll be waitin' there in Jackson behind my *Japan* fanBOTH: We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout
We been talkin' 'bout Jackson ever since the fire went ou-ou-out
Go to Jackson and that's a natural fact
We're goin' to Jackson, ain't never comin' backBOTH: We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout
FADE
We been talkin' 'bout JacksonTranscriber's Note: *Japan* is pronounced JAY-pan"
"Jackson" is one of the best songs ever. Ever!
70, 75: Confidential to Moby Hick:
Not in terrifying numbers, however.
I first heard Sinatra and Hazelwood at the Mineshaft. (Hmm, noting the timestamp, I'm sure I'd heard Some Velvet Morning before. But that was it.
132: Depends on your definition of terrifying. I'm just happy the cops arrested the fucker who was feeding them in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle.
133: "Hazelwood" was the name somebody said. I was getting confused because the 90s were on the TV (figure skaters) and apparently it was some other guy before the Exxon Valdez.
Not very well, once the Exxon Valdez is done with them.
I still hate them for killing Suzanne Pleshette.
The Boney M song, or is there another German pop song about Rasputin?
I don't know about Rasputin, but both "Moskau" and "Tovarisc Gorbaciov" are worthy of a listen.
"Jackson" is one of the best songs ever. Ever!
I've linked to this before, but the Carl Perkins / Rosanne Cash "Jackson" is quite good.
138: Sometimes I forget just how cheesy the 70s were.
if you are in medieval Italian hell, you also ask about someone's mother, it turns out.
Hell is other people and their Italian mothers.
I saw these people sing it a few years ago. Better than this video, though.
138 has some truly impressive deep cuts. Also the second video may or may not feature character actor Vincent Schiavelli, the biology teacher from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Moskau is a deep cut?! That's like the most famous Eurovision winner in history.
But it was their debut, and, as we all know, the first cut is the deepest.
138
There was a Dutch oompa band several days ago at the speed skating rink which played "Moskau" during ice resurfacing. They also played "YMCA." At first I thought it was a Russian band was was just really really confused.
p.s. if I could I would set it up so Moskau would automatically start playing every time you opened the comments page.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, those Russians.
146 has the wonderful implication that Russian oompa bands playing "YMCA" are just what you'd expect at any normal skating rink, but a Dutch one is weird and hilarious.
