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Reading at the speed of life - speed readingSpeed reading: Is it worth your training dollars? With the proliferation of e-mail and the tidal wave of information on the Internet, you may feel as though you are drowning in reading material. Wouldn`t it be great if you could read twice as much in half the time? Some trainers believe you can. The definition of "speed reading" depends on whom you ask. The average person reads at approximately 250 words per minute (wpm). So, in the literal sense, speed reading is reading at a level higher than 500 wpm. How that is achieved - and whether it is even desirable - is where reading experts disagree. It seems as if every trainer has a different technique. Many reading trainers do not want to be associated with the term "speed reading" because of the negative connotation it has garnered over the years. As a result, most trainers say they teach people how to read faster but that their methods include more than just training in speed reading. However, some techniques surface repeatedly in different combinations. Evelyn Wood, a teacher who is said to have discovered she could read 5,000 wpm by dragging her finger along the page as a pacer, introduced many of these reading techniques in 1959. Speed reading gained national prominence when President John F. Kennedy brought teachers from the Evelyn Wood Dynamics Reading Program to the White House to instruct his staff. Wood`s finger-pacing method is used to increase the rapidity of eye movements and to decrease the length of eye pauses. One reason people read slowly is because they lose their place and either re-read words or skip lines. The finger method is intended to keep a reader`s eyes oriented to the page and moving smoothly from one line of text to another. "What Evelyn Wood tries to do is to teach you to look at, and pull meaning from, words in groups," explains Al Tuve, an instructor for Evelyn Wood Speed Reading in Montvale, N.J. "The way you read with your hand keeps your eyes moving forward all the time. It makes it easier to keep your mind on what you`re doing." This philosophy presumes that individuals read with their eyes, and by training the eyes to move faster, one can read faster. This is true - to a point. For most people, eyes are the vehicles that transmit the words, but the brain provides interpretation. Consider a blind person reading Braille; he uses his fingers the way a sighted person uses his eyes. Both are reading. Obviously, if your eyes work better, you can transmit words faster. But if the eyes transmit faster than the brain absorbs the material, you won`t remember what you`ve read. That`s why many reading trainers also emphasize mental exercises. "The biggest challenge people have is thinking of 10 other things while they read," says Ed Strachar, creator of Reading Genius, a training program based in Eugene, Ore. His program includes music, relaxation exercises and memory-recall exercises. Another speed-reading technique teaches the repression of subvocalization, the act of sounding the words aloud or in one`s head while reading. People can read faster than speak, but when they subvocalize, reading speed is limited to speaking speed. Reading experts, however, disagree on the effectiveness of repressing subvocalization. "Subvocalization helps you concentrate and understand difficult material," argues Phyllis Mindell, author of Power Reading (Total Information, 1998) and president of Well-Read, a business communications firm in Pittsford, N.Y. The Disadvantages The potential danger with speed reading is that as you increase your speed, you decrease your comprehension. As Woody Allen put it: "I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia." Mindell concurs: "Speed reading suggests it`s possible and desirable to read extremely fast without sacrificing understanding. Innumerable research studies have demonstrated this is not possible." Cliff High, a computer programmer at Tenax Software Engineering, a research and design facility in Olympia, Wash., that develops speed-reading training software, agrees. "The Wood method would have you read faster by skimming," he says. "You could miss a word that has only three characters, such as `not.`" Tuve argues, however, that comprehension does not decrease with speed reading because, instead of reading a text once slowly, you read it fast several times. For example, instead of reading an article once in an hour, you can read it three times in 45 minutes. "You can go through it several times rapidly and it is much more effective." Repetition is a powerful comprehension tool, Tuve explains. But, Joseph Cannon, vice president of HR and compliance at First Coast Service Options Inc. in Jacksonville, Fla., says he took several speed-reading courses and one actually gave him a headache because of the way it "forced you to move your eyes." Critics say the success rates of speed reading can be deceiving because program authors rely on their own evaluations; there are no impartial evaluations. Some of these evaluations time a person while he reads a short text. Then the person answers some comprehension questions about what he read. Next, the individual receives the speed-reading training. Then the person is timed again while he reads either the same passage again or a similar passage, and answers more or the same comprehension questions. Quickdraw Marine QD25 Radio Control Boat Modeler , Oct 2001High-performance hop-up for the Zenoah G23 The kit comprises several components to upgrade the G23. It includes a two-piece crankcase, a head button and a water-jacket cover, all machined from billet aluminum. The cylinder itself is precision-cast and then CNC-finished. The sleeve is CNC-machined from steel billet and then honed. The kit also includes the piston, ring, front plate and all the required hardware to assemble the QD25. You will need to keep the following from your stock G23: crankshaft, bearings, seals, magneto, ignition system, starter and carb (with spacer and gasket). For this test, I substituted a set of M&D designs ZeroDrag crank seals and a big-bore Walbro WT-257 carb for their stock counterparts. These are not necessary, but they did contribute about 10 percent to the peak power output. OK; now that you know what`s inside and how good the QD25 looks, how about its performance? To answer this question, we completed a series of dynamometer tests followed by several on-water tests. The engine is a real powerhouse, producing more than 6 peak horsepower on regular unleaded pump gas. What is even more impressive than the peak output is the engine`s ability to keep pulling hard way beyond the peak-- power rpm. This broad powerband is what makes the QD25 really shine. just check out the dyno curve shown in Figure 1. Dyno-testing an engine is all well and good, but the real question is "How does it run in a boat?" The test bed for the first test was a Stryker catamaran from R/C Boatworks. It`s very stable, but being a cat, it demands pretty strong low-end power to get up on plane and good top-end to achieve a decent top speed. The first runs were made with a modified G23 turning an Octura X572 prop; rpm were 15,600 and top speed was between 51 and 52mph-quite respectable numbers for a heat-race setup. With no other changes except the addition of the QD25, rpm jumped to 17,200 at a top speed of 59.5mph. After I changed to an Andy Brown modified Octura 1667 prop, the boat hit a truly impressive 66.5mph! In fact, the engine comes on the pipe so hard that the boat "wheelied" over on a couple of occasions when I throttled it too quickly in choppy conditions. Video clips of the Stryker Cat test runs are posted on the video-clip page of the International Waters website (www.intlwaters.com). Next, I installed the engine in a Competition Marine Designs gas outrigger and attached an M&D Designs tuned pipe. It pulled 17,400rpm with an Octura V967 prop, but the water was too rough to make the long passes we needed for a speed-reading. Acceleration was immediate from any speed, thanks to the generous low- and mid-range torque. People may ask, "Why is the QD25 so much more powerful than a stock G23?" There are several reasons: * Larger displacement. * Larger exhaust-port area. * Four main transfer ports, compared with only two for the stock G23. * Billet crankcase set with wider ports to match the four transfer ports in the cylinder. * All parts are dowel-pinned for good alignment and fully CNC-machined for accuracy. In addition, the engine was extensively tested prior to production, so the product was proven before it hit the market. Whenever people talk about high-performance engines such as the QD25, many cost-conscious boaters worry that these engines will drive costs up and make it tough on newcomers to the hobby. Actually, the reverse tends to be true. As these new engines go on the market, many good used engines become available to budget-minded boaters, at very attractive prices! For this reason, the QD25 engine should be a winner for all boaters. The QD2S may even appeal to nitro boaters who haven`t yet considered going gas; the performance gap between nitro and gas is rapidly diminishing! The power of the QD25 coupled with the reliability and availability of G23 parts means good things for performance-minded gas boaters, and there`s more good news on the horizon: Quickdraw is also developing a new-generation, compact 35cc gas engine, and there is an all-new, all-- billet 35cc engine being developed by Jack Goukassian at J&G Racing. The QD25 and these upcoming products ensure that we`ll look back on 2001 as an exciting year of progress for the hobby. Stay tuned! Speed reading index
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