Group items tagged

Designer Sebastian Deterding shows how our visions of morality and what the good life is are reflected in the design of objects around us.

preeder.com is free online speed reading software designed to improve your reading speed and comprehension. Spreeder is a free service provided by 7-Speed-ReadingTM.

Speed reading is the art of silencing subvocalization. Most readers have an average reading speed of 200 wpm, which is about as fast as they can read a passage out loud. This is no coincidence. It is their inner voice that paces through the text that keeps them from achieving higher reading speeds. They can only read as fast as they can speak because that's the way they were taught to read, through reading systems like Hooked on Phonics.

However, it is entirely possible to read at a much greater speed, with much better reading comprehension, through silencing this inner voice. The solution is simple - absorb reading material faster than that inner voice can keep up. In the real world, this is achieved through methods like reading passages using a finger to point your way. You read through a page of text by following your finger line by line at a speed faster than you can normally read. This works because the eye is very good at tracking movement. Even if at this point full reading comprehension is lost, it's exactly this method of training that will allow you to read faster. With the aid of software like Spreeder, it's much easier to achieve this same result with much less effort. Load a passage of text (like this one), and the software will pace through the text at a predefined speed that you can adjust as your reading comprehension increases.

o Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by a

To Mr Stiglitz, this inequality is the result of public policy being captured by an elite who have feathered their own nests at the expense of the rest. They have used their power to distort political debate, pushing through tax cuts to favour the rich and adjusting monetary policy to favour the banks. Many of the new rich are not entrepreneurs but “rent-seekers”, he says, who use monopoly power to boost profits. Mr Stiglitz's views are representative of clever, leftish America and Mr Stiglitz is (mostly) skilled at making his argument. Imagine, he says, what it would be like if the world had free movement of labour, but not of capital. “Countries would compete to attract workers. They would promise good schools and a good environment, as well as low taxes on workers. This could be financed by high taxes on capital.” The result would be a much more equal society. Mr Stiglitz's argument would benefit, however, from a better sense of history and geography. He points to the period between 1950 and 1980 as one where inequality was much reduced. But that was a highly unusual time. For much of recorded history there has been a huge gap between a wealthy landowning class and the rest; the Rockefellers and Carnegies were much richer (in real terms) than any modern plutocrat. Mr Stiglitz also views the housing boom and bust as another result of misguided American policy, but Spain and Ireland had property bubbles too—and they are much more equal societies.

When it comes to solutions to the inequality problem, Mr Stiglitz wants a top income tax rate of “well in excess of” 50%, targeted fiscal stimulus and greater bank regulation. Here, perhaps, he might have been more open about the trade-offs. Controls on bank leverage, caps on interest rates and greater protection for bankrupts are all likely to reduce bank lending at a time when there already is a credit squeeze. He admits that the 2009 fiscal stimulus was “not as well designed as it could have been”, but blithely hopes that the convoluted American budget-setting process will result in much better stimulus packages in future. Whether or not he has the right answers, Mr Stiglitz is surely right to focus on the issue. Across the developed world, the average worker is suffering a squeeze in living standards while bankers and chief executives are still doing very nicely. This dichotomy is bound to have social and political consequences.

Flowchart.com is an online multi-user, real-time collaboration flow charts service. It's Flowcharting made easy.

Collaborate together You can collaborate with your colleagues in real-time. All collaborating parties can chat and design flow charts at the same time. Flowchart.com does not require any software download, it works with your favorite browser such as: Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome. Flowchart.com works on any Operating System.

Five things you may want to know about buddhify 1. buddhify has been designed as a solution to the problem that there is a lot of interest in mindfulness-based meditation nowadays but most of the ways its taught are still stuck in the 20th century 2. buddhify is made by a team who are both properly experienced in traditional meditation and properly knowledgable about technology, innovation and understanding what people really want 3. buddhify aims to start a new wave of authentic modern translations of classic contemplative traditions, so if you don't like it please do make something better. Really 4. Over and above the many good and great meditation teachers who have influenced the app, the perhaps more surprising inspirations behind buddhify are Ira Glass of This American Life, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab, the late Steve Jobs and the emerging culture of urban and pro-social gaming represented by people like Hide&Seek and Jane McGonigal 5. buddhify is called buddhify because a) it's a cute name and b) it's a grateful nod to the roots of mindfulness-based meditation in Buddhism. However the app is for anyone with an interest in developing their mental wellbeing and is not interesting in pushing any particular belief system, religious or otherwise

"This is a book about science, technology, and love," writes Sherry Turkle. In it, we learn how a love for science can start with a love for an object—a microscope, a modem, a mud pie, a pair of dice, a fishing rod. Objects fire imagination and set young people on a path to a career in science. In this collection, distinguished scientists, engineers, and designers as well as twenty-five years of MIT students describe how objects encountered in childhood became part of the fabric of their scientific selves. In two major essays that frame the collection, Turkle tells a story of inspiration and connection through objects that is often neglected in standard science education and in our preoccupation with the virtual.