Centireading: Reading a Book 100 Times

After a hundred reads, familiarity with the text verges on memorisation – the sensation of the words passing over the eyes like cud through the fourth stomach of a cow. Centireading belongs to the extreme of reader experience, the ultramarathon of the bookish, but it’s not that uncommon. To a certain type of reader, exposure at the right moment to Anne of Green Gables or Pride and Prejudice or Sherlock Holmes or Dune can almost guarantee centireading. Christmas is devoted to reading books...

 Exercise of Directing a Child's Focus

OK, Nicole, while you’re lying still, move your eyes around the room. Even without moving your head, you can see the lamp over on the table. Now look over at your baby pictures. See them? Now look at the bookcase. Can you see the big Harry Potter book there? Now look back at the lamp. Do you see how you have the power to focus your attention all over this room? That’s what I want to teach you about, but we’re going to focus your attention on what’s going on inside your mind and body. ...

 Death by Phosphorous Poisoning

The autopsy of a person who had died from phosphorus poisoning would reveal inflammation a haemorrhage in the stomach and bowel, the liver would show fatty changes and both it, and the kidneys would be enlarged, greasy and of a yellow colour. But the most convincing proof of death due to phosphorus exposure would be to turn off all the lights in the mortuary and see its tell-tale glow...

 Einstein on Being Raise Religious

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofa...