There, I posted.

My grandmother noticed that I haven't posted recently, so here goes. Against my better judgement, I am about to make flippant remarks that may land me in trouble. Before you criticize, keep in mind that I entirely deny making the following remarks. I did never, ever, say these things:

Peter McKay's Antics in the House of Commons
This will definitely chill the MFA's ability to woo the ladies in parliamentary circles. Alleged comments such as those get back to mothers everywhere very fast, and meeting the parents becomes that much more awkward. In dating etiquette, the only vote that counts is whether the mom thinks you're in order or not. He may have to look outside the country for his next alliance, looking to a country that does not read nor care about the news in Canada (I'm speaking of a country OTHER than Canada). Preferably a relationship that allows him to mix work and pleasure, because that's worked out so well in the past, and never explodes in your face...

Garth Turner
When I heard that Garth was turned from the Tory caucus, I immediately got hives all over my body and started to get real scared. How will one lone MP survive out in the political wilderness, especially through the winter, with all those big scary dictatorial parties out to get him? I needn't worry at all. If there is one man who can look out for himself, it's the Garth. He has fundamentally understood the dynamics of a minority parliament. If you're not in cabinet, your greatest leverage is to keep people guessing about your vote and make them pay for it. This is much easier to do when you are not blogged down by the principles inherent in "team play", "party discipline", or other constraints on your own self/local interest. In fact, it is conceivable that Garth will get a cabinet job in return for backing the government on some crucial confidence motion in the future (conceivable, though not likely). Or, maybe he'll break up with Peter McKay to cross the floor and join the Liberal Party as a chief proponent of puppies and motherhood.

Read Faster

This message goes out to all the grad students out there who are flooded in reading, and are nearing the point of no return in the semester. That is the point where you realize just how little you've actually achieved in the month of September, and how much work is left to do before December. This little endorsement of speed reading lessons (available free and online, using the google search engine) may, if you are interested and disciplined, just increase your effeciency and give you that extra time at the gym to work out, or go for long walks on the beach with that special someone.

What "free beer" does to an undergrad's attention level, "read faster" should do to a grad student. Reading is to graduate education what attending class and regurgitating the prof's blackboard scratchings periodically is to undergrad education. It is the "centre of gravity", that thing that you cannot do without in order to succeed (I don't mean pass, I mean succeed. There is a quantitative and qualitative difference).

So if you have to do a lot of reading, it would make sense to do it faster. I have often ignored speed reading commercials and the like because they appear to be very gimmicky and I have a biais against anything that sounds too good to be true. I also have a biais against anything that is easy. As I suffer like many of you from the protestant work ethic, I take great pride in doing things the hard way. Why ask for directions? Why read the instructions? Why ask for help?

However, if a method exists for reading 3, 4, 5 times as fast as usual, why would I ignore it? Most people simply reduce the amount of reading they do to compensate for the fact that they are slow, tedious readers. As grad students, we don't have the choice. Either we read the stuff and understand it, or we get out of the business of pretending to want to learn stuff.

Think of reading like running. When you first try it, you are slow and inefficient. You find it hard and it takes discipline. You are uneven, and you don't have a good pace. You don't have good technique and your muscles have not "learned" to run automatically. You sometimes have to think through every step to force yourself to keep going. As you learn from experts, apply technique and enforce self-discipline, you fly with your legs and you love it.

Reading is the same. Like running, by mastering technique and disciplining yourself to go faster and smarter, you can improve 10-fold from the first time.

Finally, a note on technique and the philosophy of life. One key to faster reading is also, I believe, a key to a more fulfilling life. Faster readers learn to read in groups of words by using their peripheral vision to catch a short phrase in one quick glance. Focussing on one word at a time is not only time consuming, it is in effect, literary tunnel vision.

Think of the moment you were on top of the mountain in the Rockies, or another beautiful moment in your life. The picture you took doesn't capture the beauty of the scene. A camera is no replacement for the capacity of the human eye to absorb imagery and information. Reading every single word separately in your mind is like taking focussed little views of a panoramic vista instead of stepping back and sucking in the beauty of the whole.

I only spent a short time looking over the speed reading material, but already I am a true believer and missionary. If you are a drowning grad student, instead of reading this ridiculous blog, go read something that will save you tonnes of time over the long run. Here is a possible web site to whet your appetite for faster reading.

I wish I could do everything hard thrice as fast, and everything good thrice as slow.

The Eye

As if living in a 200 year old building was not freaky enough. As if the puce coloured paint and creaky 1950s radiators were not assez macabre. No. They had to go and add an eye wash station in the bathroom. How can an eye wash station be freaky, I can hear you ask, as if you were a ghost haunting my venerable barracks.

It's the Eye. On the eye wash bottle is an enormous painted eye that stares at me as I am shaving in the washroom. It sees all. It is omnivorous (or was that omniscient? Never mind. It is surely omniscient and omnivorous, and that's even freakier).

I guess that is another disadvantage to living in a fortress. Funny thing. I'm moving out tomorrow. Coincidence?

Eye thinks not.

On Training

I took the train to Montréal today. Actually, the train took me to Montréal today. I suppose from a metaphysical perspective, Montreal took me to the train.

No matter how you look at it, I have to agree with my friend Alex: "The train is the only civilized way to travel."

There are no guard dogs and lie detectors and toothpaste stealers in a train station. I suppose that's because nobody ever tried to hijack a train before.

I think hijacking a train would definitely be a career-ending move. I don't think that you get much respect in the pen for be a train hijacker. Train hijackers must be slightly above sexual predators in the prison hierarchy. I digress.

The beauty of a train, other than its non-hijackibility, which we have proved here by pseudo-humouristic inference, is that you have much more space and room to manoeuvre than on a bus. And buses are dirtier. And there is always one weirdo on every bus (much like subway cars, but again, I digress).

All things considered, the train is the only civilised way to travel.

The War on Error (II)

A few Wildeish aphorisms on error to make the day go by. If I could only make $1 per dumb aphorism...

When reflecting on all the mistakes that I've made up until now, I am forced to conclude that no one could have committed them as well as I have.

When ever I recall my greatest errors, I think about all the errors that could have been but never saw the light of day. If only they could have had the chance to live a full life...

If the aim here is to win hearts and minds, I propose that we go after the cattle. They have hearts and minds, and seem a lot less bent on killing each other.