background preloader

10 Tips to Speed Reading

10 Tips to Speed Reading
by Speed Reading Expert, Richard L. Feldman, Ph.D. (Columbia University) 10. Many people can double their reading speed and improve their concentration by reading the material that’s important to them early in the day. 9. Create three piles for your reading materials – important, moderately important, and least important. 8. Speed read for main ideas in nonfiction works like how-to books and educational texts. 7. Improve your reading comprehension, reading speed, and concentration by turning headings and subheadings in textbooks and other nonfiction books into questions. 6. Prop your book or magazine using a bookstand – angling your reading material at 45 degrees improves your reading speed and reduces eyestrain. 5. Improve your reading speed and avoid re-reading correspondence by jotting brief notes immediately after reading each piece of correspondence. 4. 3. Look through material first to get a sense of what’s interesting and important to you, and what you might be able to skip. 2.

Ethereal Macro Photos of Snowflakes in the Moments Before They Disappear Russian photographer Andrew Osokin is a master of winter macro photography. His photo collection is chock full of gorgeous super-close-up photographs of insects, flowers, snow, and frost. Among his most impressive shots are photographs of individual snowflakes that have fallen upon the ground and are in the process of melting away. The shots are so detailed and so perfectly framed that you might suspect them of being computer-generated fabrications. They’re not though. The images were all captured using a Nikon D80 or Nikon D90 DSLR and a 60mm or 90mm macro lens. You can enjoy many more of Osokin’s impressive photographs (16 pages worth, at the moment) over on his LensArt.ru website. Andrew Osokin Photography [LensArt via The Curious Brain via Colossal] Image credits: Photographs by Andrew Osokin and used with permission

10 Futuristic Materials Lifeboat Foundation Safeguarding Humanity Skip to content Switch to White Special Report 10 Futuristic Materials by Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board member Michael Anissimov. 1. Aerogel protecting crayons from a blowtorch. This tiny block of transparent aerogel is supporting a brick weighing 2.5 kg. Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material. Carbon nanotubes are long chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp2 bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond. “Metamaterial” refers to any material that gains its properties from structure rather than composition. We’re starting to lay down thick layers of diamond in CVD machines, hinting towards a future of bulk diamond machinery. Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (what I call amorphous fullerene) are stronger. Transparent alumina is three times stronger than steel and transparent. inShare28 Materials

Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed Our minds set up many traps for us. Unless we’re aware of them, these traps can seriously hinder our ability to think rationally, leading us to bad reasoning and making stupid decisions. Features of our minds that are meant to help us may, eventually, get us into trouble. Here are the first 5 of the most harmful of these traps and how to avoid each one of them. 1. “Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million? Lesson: Your starting point can heavily bias your thinking: initial impressions, ideas, estimates or data “anchor” subsequent thoughts. This trap is particularly dangerous as it’s deliberately used in many occasions, such as by experienced salesmen, who will show you a higher-priced item first, “anchoring” that price in your mind, for example. What can you do about it? Always view a problem from different perspectives. 2. In one experiment a group of people were randomly given one of two gifts — half received a decorated mug, the other half a large Swiss chocolate bar. 3. 4.

CodeBangers | A collection of solutions for the bastard programming problems. Beautiful Gardens From Around The World – 13 pictures | World inside pictures 1.Boboli Gardens The Bobobli Gardens, behind the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy were groundbreaking in the early 18th century for their open design. 2.Rikugien Gardens ”Rikugien literally means ‘six poems garden’ and reproduces in miniature 88 scenes from famous poems. 3.Claude Monet Gardens in Giverny The pool with nympheas, in Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny. 4.Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C. The Butchart Gardens at Todd Inlet, which lie around 14 miles from Victoria B.C., covers more than 55 acres of the 130 acre Butchart Estate. 5.Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens Table Mountain looms in the distance of this vista from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in South Africa. 6.Yu Gardens – Shanghai The 400-year-old Yu Gardens were built in the Ming Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Jia Jin, and restored in the 1960s. 8.Exbury Gardens – New Forest, England Amazing colors reflect on the calm waters of Exbury Lake.

Exposure | Understanding Exposure - ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed Explained What controls exposure? ISO ratings determine the image sensor’s sensitivity to light, each value of the rating represents a “stop” of light, and each incremental ISO number (up or down) represents a doubling or halving of the sensor’s sensitivity to light. The Aperture controls the lens’ diaphragm, which controls the amount of light traveling through the lens to the film plane. The Shutter Speed indicates the speed in which the curtain opens then closes, and each shutter speed value also represents a “stop” of light. When these three elements are combined, they represent a given exposure value (EV) for a given setting. ISO Speed ISO is actually an acronym, which stands for International Standards Organization. Aperture A lens’s aperture is the opening in the diaphragm that determines the amount of focused light passing through the lens. Shutter Speed Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second, and indicates how fast the curtains at the film plane open and close. Conclusion

blubbr - Play & create video trivia games FlowingData | Data Visualization, Infographics, and Statistics Diamagnetic Gravity Vortexes Diamagnetic Gravity Vortexes by Richard LeFors Clark Waves of gravity pour from an extraordinary (and imaginary) cosmic accident —a head-on collision of two black holes approaching from left and right. Kenneth Eppley and Larry Smarr used a computer to calculate and draw contours of the variable curvature of space that constitutes the radiation. Such a collision would convert about a thousandth part of the rest-energy of the black holes into gravity waves. (Photo: L. THE EARTH GRID, HUMAN LEVITATION AND GRAVITY ANOMALIES Knowledge of the Earth Grid or "crystalline Earth" is very ancient and has been utilized by a number of civilizations. While the subject of the Earth Grid has by now been covered in a considerable number of publications, one point in the Grid, marked by a long and strange history, at the eastern tip of Lake Ontario, is worth special mention. Daniel Home is the world famous levitator of the 19th century who lived in this Lake Ontario Grid point area. Diagram 8 and 9

Worksheets, Lesson Plans, Teacher Resources, and Rubrics from TeAch-nology.com Critical thinking will set you free! « Hornbill Unleashed By Sim Kwang Yang Our mind and our heart are our most precious and free possessions, and yet all through life, we allow our minds and our hearts to be enslaved by others and ourselves. We can free ourselves from such external or self-enslavement only through critical thinking. The imperfect Wikipedia gives the following various definitions of “critical thinking”: “Critical thinking is purposeful and reflective judgment about what to believe or what to do in response to observations, written expressions, or arguments. What a mouthful of words. Essentially, critical thinking is not just a skill, and it is far more than skills in problem solving. Critical thinking is not just about finding means to an end, but thinking about the end also. Critical thinking begins with questions. Critical thinking is also about questioning our own questioning. In a logic class I attended over 35 years ago, I was taught many “illogical fallacies” commonly accepted by logicians for being illegitimate. Like this:

Inspire Me Now 80+ Best Free Hacking Tutorials Learning to become hacker is not as easy as learning to become a software developer. I realized this when I started looking for learning resources for simple hacking people do. Even to start doing the simplest hack on own, a hacker requires to have in depth knowledge of multiple topics. Some people recommend minimum knowledge of few programming languages like C, Python, HTML with Unix operating system concepts and networking knowledge is required to start learning hacking techniques. Though knowing a lot of things is required, it is not really enough for you to be a competent and successful hacker. If you are thinking about ethical hacking as a career option, you may need to be prepared for a lot of hard/smart work. A lot of people (including me before doing research for this article) think that they can become a hacker using some free hacking tools available on web. Below are some really useful hacking tutorials and resources you may want to explore in your journey of learning to hack

Related: