whose fruit basket are you calling miniature?
It's not the size of the fruit, it's the sweetness of the juice.
Or, you know, something.
Also, now I feel compelled to research my favorite comment threads. Great. Like I've got nothing better to do. Curse you, Alameida!
It's not how long it takes, it's who's taking you.
I nominate the one in which I described my forthcoming research paper, "Differential Growth in Cock Parts".
Man, I can't remember one thread from the next. I did like the one where Weiner was casting us all as Wodehouse characters, but mostly I can't keep them straight.
Alert! The archives ate eb's fantastic linky comment! (The one mentioned here, as having fallen prey to the spam trap.)
Free comma to the first person who asks.
I don't read the comment threads.
5: Have you seen this? Chris McManus of the University College London published a short article in Nature (v.259, Feb 5, 1976) entitled "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture."
Chopper, if you're still reading, I responded to your question about lenses on that other thread.
Because the spam filter kept rejecting the comment SB mentions in 7 I saved it so I could retry later. To avoid the spam filter this time I'll post the links (there's no point in reposting the whole comment again) in three parts. Some of the references are already dated.
1. Who knew the word "stentorian" would ruin unfogged's original purpose? Oh well.
2. What led one commenter to wonder if he'd "overestimated the intellectual weight of this blog's participants or worse yet underestimated their humor." Ron Artest?!
3. When will this blogger's book come out?: I Said Heh, Motherfucker
4. Some people are amazingly fast readers with huge vocabularies.
5. Bring back Magik Johnson!
6. Bob writes the kind of post John Emerson and Hild/e dream of seeing.
7. baa gives some useful advice. I don't know that I'd have taken it (probably not) but it would have been nice if someone had given it to me years ago. But hey, at least I'm not 28-30, so that's...um...maybe I should stop this list here.
8. My ability to procrastinate apparently knows no limits.
I don't know about favorite threads, but I have a clear set of favorite unfogged comments.
Appropriate to unfogged, my favorite comments are completely free of substance.
(I can't find the link to my final favorite comment, but it was the O'lbuquerque comment. Can someone figure out how it was misspelled, and find the correct link?)
All three of those comments make me laugh whenever I think of them.
Has anyone tried any of those speed-reading programs? I think of myself as a slow reader. (That tests says that I'm average, and when I tried to suppress vocalization, I did better.)
I don't read that many blogs anymore; I check out a few others and occasionally follow links from here, but basically my blog reading has shrunk down to the Unfogged sphere. Following the comments here takes up enough time as it is.
I'm definitely an oral person, because I generally remember everything that people say. My reading comprehension isn't bad, but it's not great. I'm a pretty slow writer. When I write more quickly, as I try to do in comments, I tend to make a lot of typographical errors.
I'd love to try to work on this. Has anyone succesfully managed to improve their efw (words/min *percentage comprehended) or whatever it's called? I'm not trying to reach DeLong levels of proficiency, but I'd like to do what I can.
I'd like to find a way to read faster without skimming. My comprehension on timed, standardized tests has never been that good, but if I read something and discuss it, or read it more than once, there's a good chance I'll still remember a lot of it years later. That is a less useful skill than it sounds like.
eb,
I am exactly the same way. I remember more of introductory economics 12 years out than people who took more econ courses than I did. I remember the discussions too. I remember what sort of water, i.e., brand of bottled water, someone drank or where they work.
It isn't a terribly useful skill. I find that people tend to think that I'm smarter than I am or better informed than I am because of it. I really wish that I were as smart as some people would like to think that I am. (My 8th grade science teacher told my father that I was very well-read in science and wondered whether we subscribed to science magazines. My father said, "no." The teacher said, "Well, then, BG must remember everything she's ever learned in science." And my father said, "that could very well be true."
I also tend to remember weird and obscure details--particularly if something memorable happened in a classroom or over a conversation. Then people think that I've mastered an entire field, when really I know some advanced obscure point, but I don't know the basics.
I shine in conversation, but I can be shy sometimes too. (Sigh.) I'm not extroverted enough to be a salesman, but not speedy enough with the written word to excel in writing-based professions.
I'm pretty much a natural speed-reader. It's come in handy a few times when I've concentrated really hard and when it was really important. Like reading a 20-page essay in the five minutes I had before teaching it---I mastered the text that time, but I wouldn't ever want to rely on the skill.
More often, however, it's been a problem for me: I often have to come up with ways to force myself to slow down, process the information, listen for the style. And then so much of what I read comes up regurgitated as "I remember in this article by someone I read once, it said something like, wait, was it that?"
It really is possible to overestimate the usefulness of speed-reading.
It really is possible to overestimate the usefulness of speed-reading.
But combine it with long-remembering and you could rule the world!
Then people think that I've mastered an entire field, when really I know some advanced obscure point, but I don't know the basics.
I'd add that sometimes people also think I'm obsessed with something because who but someone who's read something many times would remember such an obscure detail? I remember once in high school talking about the scene in Fahrenheit 451 where the main character fears for his life while crossing the street and being asked how many times I'd read the novel. I think I said I'd just finished it, when I'd actually read it once a couple of years before.
Not that I haven't ever talked about, say, ongoing research at a level of detail that never should be reached in ordinary conversation.
Ok, going back to the original topic of the post:
The first two are perhaps a little chopper-centric (I am nothing if not a man of ego), but come on, 2 gave us w-lfs-n's "super-koranic fellatio panic" and many other fine momemts, including eb channeling William Carlos Williams.
Yikes. After "I Suspect Not," there are about 50 threads tied for second.
Ok, going back to the original topic of the post:
Random checking around brings me to this one. A thread consisting entirely of the sort of thing we can always use more of.
damn, that baa guy was rocking some good advice! nice to see that, in the true spirit of unfogged, ben totally ignored him.
Yeah, and now that I remember that I wrote that original comment last year, when I was not yet 28, oh well.
Actually, alameida, I did work for a year at a shitty dinky law firm.
The one where everyone debated the hirshman, with lizardbreath leading the defence. It's the most intelligent comment thread I've ever read, and I meant to email one of you afterward to tell you that that one thread alone justified the (admittedly rather paltry) sum I contributed for your server or whatever it was. And now I can quit feeling ever so slightly guilty for never getting round to doing that.
as for numbers two and three, everything else has sucked.
Hey, I thought of one -- the "Year of Yes" thread was fun.
juggernaut firm
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2005_06_26.html#003669
I love every thread I've participated in equally. Either that, or I don't want to look through them.
Is there at least a consensus that FL was/is the greatest commenter EVAR?
It being canonical that "I Suspect Not" is the greatest Unfogged thread evar, I would nominate "Innocence" for the #2 slot and this short but sweet thread for #3.
39: Not since his greatest comments disappeared into the denBestian ether.
One of the At Least Three Who Cannot Be Named!
this short but sweet thread
Oh yeah, that was a great thread. Extra poignancy, too, now that it ends with a spam comment for a yeast infection medication.
now that it ends with a spam comment for a yeast infection medication
Does it??? For me, that thread ends with comment 39 by SB.
Do your admin powers allow you to see comments that are invisible to the masses?
Oops, that's the juggernaut firm thread. Sorry to have misled.
I now have a scintilla of respect for w-lfs-n since he nominated that thread in which I punked him not once but twice, and conclusively. He may be a pedant and an insufferable ass, but he can take a joke.
I likes that in my bitches.