The former Romanian prime-minister A. Năstase was recently sentenced to a four-year prison, of which he will probably do less than a year, but that’s another story.
It is the second prison sentence, after the one in 2012 (when he only did 9 months), when he apparently tried to commit suicide when police arrived at his home for arrest (wikipedia has the story).
The question is: why did he stop trying? 🙂

The thing I don’t understand about the suicide person is the people that try to commit suicide and for some reason they don’t die and then… that’s it. They stop trying.
Why?
Why don’t they keep trying? What is changed? Is their life any better now? No.
In fact, it’s worse, because now they found out ‘here is one more thing you stink at’…
That’s why the people don’t succeed in life to begin with: because they give up too easy.
I say pills don’t work, try a rope. Car won’t start in the garage? Get a tune up.
Do you know what I mean?
There is nothing more rewarding than reaching a goal you set for yourself…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gPJpzgPReE

The Romanian national airline company has a strange policy: if you book a round-trip and for some reason you want to use only the return trip, then you’ll find out that it’s not possible. Your ticket is cancelled the moment you missed your first trip of the ticket. In legalese, it sounds like that:

4. Coupon sequence and use
a) Carrier will honor flight coupons only in sequence from the place of departure as shown on the ticket. The ticket will not be honored and will lose its validity if all the coupons are not used in the sequence provided in the ticket.
In particular the ticket does not entitle the passenger to commence his journey at any of the specified stopover points if the first coupon for an international flight has not in fact been used for transportation.
Tarom’s Terms and Conditions

I don’t know if other airline companies have this policy, but this post is just a heads up – as I find this policy completely illogical. Since you paid for the both flights, I don’t see any rational reason why the company would cancel your second flight if you didn’t use the first one.

Some ideas that I want to note after reading the Speed Reading Book.

First, some basics. The reading speed is usually measured in words per minute (wpm), but it is always checked against the comprehension level. A speed of 200-250 wpm with a 60-70% comprehension are considered average.

Second, what not to do:

• Don’t use subvocalization (unless you are doing it voluntary).
• Don’t re-read the text (voluntary – regression, or involuntary – back-skipping).
• Don’t stop when you find a word you don’t know. You can figure it out by reading on.
• Don’t make yourself too comfortable when reading. It’s easier to be distracted when you’re reading in bed or on the couch.

What to do:

• Create a reading environment: you should read at your desk, maintaining a correct posture and making sure you have adequate light. Take regular breaks, but avoid distractions.
• Set yourself a goal before starting to read (usually a number of chapters)
• Keep the reading material at about 50 centimeters from your eyes (of course, the font size or the font face might force you to adjust this distance). Not holding the book too close from your eyes allows the peripheral view to kick in.
• Use your finger as a pacer and impose yourself a fast rhythm (the kids are using it, and so are you when looking up a word in a dictionary). It also helps maintain concentration.
• Aim for larger fixations (group of words that you read before moving your eyes). This is the reason why the narrow columns are easy to read: one line – one fixation.
• Preview the material before reading it. This is known as skimming, and it’s different from scanning, which means looking for a particular information in a text (ex – name in phone number book). Look for the summary, beginnings and end of sections, figures, keywords. This will give you an idea about what the text is about.

Remember that:

• Poor concentration and lack of motivation are the main obstacles of speed reading
• “it’s your brain that reads – your eyes are simply the very sophisticated lenses it uses“
• The kids are always right 🙂

There are also a major issue where I don’t agree with the author. This is the comprehension level. The author makes a point in stating that everybody can attain reading speeds of 1000 wpm, but without any word about the comprehension. The speed reading records of 2000-3800 wpm are presented without the associated comprehension levels. The idea that comprehension increases with the reading speed is only backed up by the fact that the brain reads better when the information is grouped in “meaningful bundles”.

So, in my opinion there are definitely things that you can do to improve your reading speeds. But as long as you wish to understand, assimilate and later recall the information you read, don’t expect to jump from 200wpm to 2000wpm.