Back with nothing to say.

Maybe, never really went away, with nothing to say.

Here's some shadows made with rubbish.

Moving on, I have the new Harry Potter book, and am of course avoiding the spoiler haven that is the internet.  Normally I wouldn't buy the book, since I don't have the others, and then borrow Kenny's once he's done, but this time my mum came in with one for me, so there wasn't much point of not reading it then.  Despite the R.R.P., inside being £17.99 she got it for £8.99.  Amazing.  I wonder if anyone will ever pay full price for that book.

No, I haven't finished it yet.  I read quite slowly.  It's something I've been thinking about for a while.  I've looked up some stuff on the internet about reading faster recently in the hopes I can speed up.  I like to imagine all the time I could save and how much more I could get done if I could only double my reading speed or more.  In my travels I came across some very unlikely sounding statistics:

"The average person reads at about 200 wpm [words per minute] with about 60% comprehension.  With our techniques you can raise that to over 1,000 wpm with 85% comprehension."  People don't comprehend all of what they read?  That's either shocking, or bullshit.  Personally I read at around 250 wpm, which is the average according to other sites, but I get, unsurprisingly 100% comprehension.  Why would I spend my time reading if I didn't?  I just can't imagine looking at a text and keeping going even though I'm only taking in just over half of what's on the page.  What's the point of that?  I think the numbers must be wrong, for effect.  I know I'd keep going over a text again and again until I comprehended everything I was reading.  Sure, that might drop my reading rate to 30 wpm, but at least I'd be taking in the information.  If you're not comprehending everything aren't you just giving your eyes a several hour long workout, passing them back and forth over what could essentially be identical pieces of paper?  If that was your thing that'd be quite a space saver.  Instead of taking a novel with you on the bus you could just take a couple of sheets of paper and then repeatedly skim them.  You'd get the same enjoyment of the eye movements wouldn't you?

Speaking of taking the novel with you on the bus, save your manly pride whilst reading Harry Potter with these extra manly replacement covers.

So what have I been reading,  "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, which is a wonderful little book.  The way we're taught evolution in school is nothing like as well put as this book.  Perhaps they should be using it in class.  I'm moving on to "The Blind Watchmaker" next.  So what's "The Selfish Gene about?"  Basically it's an argument for the idea of the basic unit of natural selection being the gene.  It's a very simply and clearly written book, which is exactly what you need if you only normally understand 60% of what you read.  There's no point in me saying much more though because it's a really old book.  I think he revisits and expands on the ideas in it in "The Extended Phenotype" anyway.  Maybe I'll say more once I've read that.

What happens when your shoes turn to jelly? Anchors laugh.  Me too.  I laugh every time I watch this.

Do you know what else makes me laugh?  Community Channel on Youtube.  I'd give you a list of favourite videos, but we'd be here a while.  You should watch lots.  Oh, remember to watch "Just to say hello and stuff about my project.. blah" before "... i was the dancing girl (follow up on my project)" just because otherwise you'll not quite get it.  At the time this blog went to press the video on her main page was "random hello/harry potter/outtakes" which features a bit about the music on TV quiz shows which reminds me of this classic youtube video featuring someone on the French "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."  If there's a lesson to be learned from that it's never to ask the audience on the French "Millionaire."  You have been warned.  There's a lot of links to click there and if you're smart you'll spend the day watching Community Channel's videos so I'll leave you for now.  Reviews tomorrow.