Personally, I definitely read by perceiving the words as "pictures" -
and have tested reading speed up to something silly, thousands of words per
minute. (I had the occasional bizarre experiment done on me as
a child - some of my classmates and I were once was hooked up to some sort
of scanner and made stare at a checkerboard with a single red dot on it for
what seemed like forever, because someone mentioned we were "good at
reading" to some student...Arrgh...)

But if your goal was to implement something that you can use to do
real-world programming in,  your minimalist implementation of Scheme
will not get you at all far.  I'd also question if you wouldn't be
better off with one of the existing fully-fledged implementations of
Scheme or ANSI CL for such a purpose.

And if your goal is only to exercise your implementation abilities,
then I'd suggest that implementing an equivalent subset of ANSI CL
will take you not necessarily longer (and might even be quicker), than
doing your Scheme implementation.

And it will offer you a much more graceful and preplanned upgrade
path, by adding pieces of ANSI CL library code to your implementation
as you need/want them.  And, given that with CMU CL there is much
public domain library code available to you, you can even skip some of
that work easily.

For such a "kernel" ANSI CL, you'll want to look at the 23 special
operators of ANSI CL, and add all the necessary allocators and
accessors (i.e. stuff like cons/car+cdr, and the package/symbol
stuff).

Regs, Pierre.

I figure (as before) I might have to write my own interpreter...

I could write a basic cl interpreter, maybe...
people keep suggesting compilers but then I would have to figure an
effective way to do code-generation in kernel space...

--

  Because they have no business in that context, and I have made this very
  clear from the start.  You, however, make it their business, and that is
  the only transgression relevant to them.  What you do on a newsgroup is
  not the business of unrelated business partners or colleagues.  How you
  deal with them is not my concern.  If you use your colleagues as a shield
  and claim that you can think clearly in comp.lang.lisp because you get
  into the graduate program at the Unversity of california at Irvine,
  Philosophy Department, I know that you are stark raving mad _here_, but
  if you manage to behave well in a different setting, who cares?  The
  problem only starts when you point to a person outside of the forum and
  _make_ him responsible for your behavior or somehow use him to claim that
  criticism of your actions here are false.  I really wonder what you will
  come up with after your advisors/department/whatever line has run out.
  Would you challenge me to write your mother?  After all, it is far more
  likely that she is responsible for your immature behavior and genetic
  insufficiencies than your advisors/department/whatever, and even more
  likely that you will succeed in using her as a shield instead of just
  defending yourself and standing by what you say.

| Why are you so scared?

  Huh?  Why do you think I am scared?  I actually know how harmful what you
  want me to do to you would be.  I want you to repeat the request so many
  times that you cannot defend yourself by claiming that I "misunderstood"
  you, and I want you to be very clear in that _you_ implicate these people
  in your newsgroup behavior, because I do _not_ want to implicate them.
  And the only thing I would do is to write them to ask if they are indeed
  responsible for your behavior and have guaranteed that you can think
  clearly.

  What is becoming quite clear, however, is that you have some _serious_
  coping problems and need professional help to get over your personality
  disorders and how they pan out in your daily life.  No fully rational man
  continues to harp on this idiotic line for so long.  I do not know what
  you think you gain by continuing, but that I am a coward for not going to
  people who have no business with your behavior here or that I am scared
  are both so ludicrous that I think people will know just how nuts you are
  from these stupid attempts at slander alone.  But keep going.  My intent
  is only to make bad people self-destruct.  You are well on your way.  You
  have an option to stop that you constantly refuse to exercise.

I want you to make your statements in print, in a way that is clearly
legally actionable, that's all.  I chose them, because that's an
easier lawsuit to prosecute, and it wouldn't cost you more than a
stamp to send the letter.

An ad in a US newspaper would do as well.  

I suspect not.

  You have made it abundantly clear that these are statements of fact.  As
  such, they are not libelous in any form.

  The _only_ reason that I supposedly cannot be held accountable for what I
  write here is that you would be held accountable for what you write here,
  too, and that would just kill you.  I enjoy this implicit admission of
  guilt from you.  But my god, you are _so_ stupid and childish.

| Merely that if I'm the horrible person you think I am--if that's more
| than rhetorical bullying--then you would have the courage to say it in
| some context where you'd have to account for it with your wallet.

  But what concern is it to people who do not actually have to deal with
  you that you are a horribly evil person?  They figure out soon enough,
  just as we have here.

  You see, this whole thing is tied directly to a personality disorder on
  your end.  You are actually _unable_ to deal with people other than in a
  personal manner.  The sheer lack of professionalism is a red flag to
  anyone who would ever consider employing you.  You have argued in favor
  of disloyality to your superiors previously, and that was what told me
  that you were a bad person.  I would never hire someone who has spent a
  huge amount of time attacking someone and not relenting, but just gets
  worse over time, like you do.  You do that, but you are too blind to your
  own evil that you do not even recognize your own behavior.  I mean you
  actually had the gall to post this:

Do I engage in massive flame wars everywhere I go?  Nope.

  Your inability to accept responsibility for your own actions speaks
  volumes about your personality.  Clearly, you hide behind the falsehood
  that you are not held accountable for what you write here, but you are.
  You will discover in time.  Would that I could be there when it happens.

| I want you to make your statements in print, in a way that is clearly
| legally actionable, that's all.

  Again, the _only_ reason you do not pursue this from the USENET angle is
  that you know that you would lose, big time if you even tried it.  I
  think you have gone whining and wimpering to a lawyer and this lawyer
  asked to try to provke me to do something that was pursuable, but you are
  such a fucking moron that you did not understand that I am in the clear
  as it is.  Your idiotic attempts to move this to a different forum is so
  goddamn retarded and so insufferably _lame_ that anything I say about you
  would be provable in court.  Your lawyer should have told you that what
  _you_ keep doing has made it possible for me to say just about anything
  about you, yet you continue, you escalate the animosity and you do not
  think clearly.  This is quite fascinating.  You are _clearly_ insane.

| I chose them, because that's an easier lawsuit to prosecute, and it
| wouldn't cost you more than a stamp to send the letter.

  Well, just tell me the name and the address of the people you want me to
  write to, and I shall consider it.  But you would not post their names
  and addresses because you have somehow figured out that you would be the
  perpetrator if you did.  I marvel at the magnitude of your insanity.  I
  also marvel at the ability of whichever lawyer you talked to who could
  actually get you into believing that such a move would not backfire.  You
  are such a retarded bastard, Thomas Bushnell, it is _tragic_ to watch.

| An ad in a US newspaper would do as well.  

  Unlike you, I am concerned with your behavior _here_.  You, and this S
  Campion/Adam Tissa/Israel Ray Thomas character, take out ads all the time
  to denounce me as a person, but I respond only to your actions.  You will
  in all likelihood never figure out the difference.  This is what makes
  you evil.  This is what makes it impossible for you to even sue for libel
  based on the interaction in this forum.  You are so _stupid_!

| Ah, again, that's legally actionable, but slander is miserably difficult
| to prosecute, which is why I wonder if you have the courage to repeat
| what you say in a forum where it would clearly fall under the libel
| statutes.

  This forum clearly falls under the libel statutes, already.  However, an
  independent scrutiny of what you have said here gives me the _right_ to
  express the opinions of your character that I have expressed.  You know
  this, you miserable chickenshit, which is why you have to try to pretend
  that I am after hurting you.  I am not.  You will never figure this out,
  either, because you are the kind of person who are after people.  This is
  why I have said that you need to stop projection yourself onto me, which
  you seem unable to do, so it must be outside your sphere of control.

  You need _serious_ professional help, Thomas Bushnell, BCG.  Seek help
  before it is too late.  People like you make such a mess when they figure
  out what they are made of.

Thanks,
Mike

Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."

  > Erik Naggum <e...@naggum.net> writes:
  >
  >   * cr88192 <cr88...@hotmail.com>
  >   | when I was younger I was supposedly mildly dyslexic, if that has any
  >   | real bearing on reading speed.
  >  
  >     So was I.  Thosuands of hours of hard work cured it completely.
  >
  >                   ^^
  >                   !!
  >                   :)
  >

  It does illustrate a point - Thosuands and Thousands
  are very similar "pictures" - and thus such a mistake has
  very little bearing on reading speed if you are seeing the words
  as pictures, but if you are still stuck at the
  sounding-out-words-in-your-mind stage then it could
  trip you up.

My understanding of recent case law in newsgroup type things is that
all conversation is pretty much enclosed in a "my opinion is..."
quotation and that these charges are hard to carry though.

If you do want to make the charges, Thomas, please do it in court.
They have people employed to read and care.

I'm not a lawyer but my armchair opinion (offered free of charge, not
because I support "free law" but because the advice I'm offering may
well be worth what I'm charging) is that you will find the same
problem as Falwell's mother had in going after Larry Flynt for the
arguably slanderous statements made in Penthouse magazine.  In order
to make your case of damage, you will have to first show that anyone
in their right mind would have believed Erik in the first place.  But,
ironically, the only way to show that is to show that what he's saying
has an element of truth...  If what he's saying is outlandish on its
face, it isn't injuring you.  If it's not outlandish, that is, if it's
something a reasonable person having seen and observed you firsthand
here might still believe, it's not slander because truth is (in many
venues, at least) a defense.

The practical fact is that no one is listening or caring. All anyone
sees is "blah blah blah blah. not over yet. blah blah blah. this won't
be my last message. blah blah blah." So it's hard for them to form an
opinion other than the obvious opinion that this isn't about Lisp.

Please, everyone, just save the breath and just stand down.  There are
more than enough Lisp things to spar over.  And the great thing is, in
talking on-topic, it doesn't matter if you're a person of good
character or not.  It only matters whether what you say is relevant to
the topic on the floor.

  There are many ways to learn to read (much) faster, but the first step is
  generally to acquire the motor skills and to learn to move your eyes and
  refocus at a very quick and steady pace.  This takes quite some time,
  because, naturally, comprehension will suffer during this training, but
  the key is to focus on the speed and let comprehension follow, not to
  believe that missing something is so fundamental that you have to go back
  and re-read it or slow down.  Then, learn to see a larger area of the
  line -- most people read in an area on the paper only a quarter of an
  inch wide, but you can expand this to at least one and a half inch,
  sometimes two.  Reading glasses that correct for astigmatism is necessary
  to make this work well, as even a slight case of astigmatism may produce
  blurry vision and cause a strain to recognize words unless they are dead
  center in your focus area.  It follows that you can read at a greater
  distance from the screen/paper and using smaller fonts the better your
  corrective lenses are.  This effect should not be underestimated.

  Also, approach reading as you approach other sensory input: increase your
  observational skills by learning to soak up as much as possible as it
  flows by.  Nature has no rewiding button -- treat reading the same way.
  This is generally a question of concentration and reading with a definite
  purpose to understand or visualize what is presented to you.  In this
  sense, reading faster is just a case of increasing your internal clock
  speed.  Most people can do this with no problem, but few people make a
  habit of it, because it does require more mental energy to be spent both
  in increasing and maintaining concentration.  I believe it is a question
  of whether you can also "listen" to a text instead of wanting to make
  sense of it or make it fit your preconceptions of what it "should" say.

  Some people seem to approach the world with a prescriptive attitude -- or
  forcing the world they deal with to conform to their current thinking --
  while others never stop observing it in order to form their current
  thinking.  Most of the former are unable to understand that the latter
  type even exists because they are guided by their preconceptions, not
  their observations.  In any case, those who are able to observe the flow
  of information thet they are subjected to, can also learn to read fast
  mechanically and decide to focus more or less on what they read, somewhat
  like having CNN or some news-only radio station run in the background.
  The sensory input to which we are naturally prepared to be subjected is
  truly vast, and so much more than reading a page or a screen offers, yet
  the amount of information that becomes the subject of conscious awareness
  if quite limited -- unless one concentrates on absorbing first and
  selecting afterwards.

  Strangely, many who start to read faster observe that they get much
  better reading comprehension from reading mechanically faster and
  "letting go" of their need to comprehend fully at all times, because they
  allow more of the comprehension to proceed less linearly.  This also
  relaes to how we deal with speed.  One of the major reasons that older
  people drive more slowly than younger people is that their processing
  speed is so much slower that sensory overload incurs below 40 mph, while
  a younger person who has been trained to speed up his cognition can
  easily drive more safely at 100 mph.  Things like talking to another
  person in the car, listening to the radio (with varying focus) or talking
  on a cellular phone (handsfree or not does not make any difference) eats
  away at the concentration and require reduced speed.  The same goes for
  reading, although the ability to block out annoyances has no safety risk
  associated with them.

  In a nutshell, this is all about concentration.

-Mike

sometimes I am annoyed by those who cannot see change, to realize that the
past was not like now and the future will not be like now... or for them to
realize that they might be wrong...

my problem is that I still read slow (measures of between 80 and 140 wpm).
but often when I am tested after reading a section of text I make very few
(if any) mistakes. in this mode however I do process stuff immediatly.

I can also "skim" (if I understand the concept right) which consists of
reading fast but doing little immediate processing (this however does not
seem to work on tests, as when I get to the test fragment the info is not
fully processed). I have not been tested in this mode...
oddly I can more quickly skim code than I can written text...

Regards,
Julian
--
Meine Hompage: http://julian.re6.de

I love reading and I personally find the ability to
set my pace over a large range increases my enjoyment.
Not to mention I can read MORE...

hehe, YMMV :-)

Regards,
--
Nils Goesche
"Don't ask for whom the <CTRL-G> tolls."

As Woody Allen puts it:
I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes.
It involves Russia.

"Erik Naggum" <e...@naggum.net> wrote

  When you started to learn to read, it was all like this.  It was pretty
  hard work by adult standard, but then you got the hang of it and it
  became effortless.  The same goes for reading faster.  Indeed, all
  thinking skills are very hard work when you are not training for them.