Reading and reality

Maybe these guys are saying "Slow Down!"

If life is all competition, then finishing first is "winning," when the stopwatch is out. But what if the goal is thinking new thoughts, and enjoying the artistry of someone else's words? What if it were museums we were talking about? Would moving through an art museum and seeing all the paintings and sculptures in fifteen minutes be better than if it took two hours? What if someone could train you to retain memories of what you had seen, and to comprehend it, even though you had walked as fast as you possibly could have and looked as briefly as possible at what took the artist months or years to create? Would you "win"?

Forget the hoity-toitiness of da Vinci and Jane Austen. How about a car show? If you run through the lot and see all the restored antique cars faster than anyone else EVER HAS, are you better at going to car shows than those who look closely at details and talk to the owners?

That's from this page on speed reading:
http://sandradodd.com/r/speed

...which I came to and spruced up because there's a new page on comprehension:
http://sandradodd.com/r/comprehension

and that's a cousin of another page on "real reading":
http://sandradodd.com/r/real