The hardcover bestseller may well disappear, but since I don’t read them now, I won’t miss it. I’ll still be reading novels, though.

Or perhaps there’s a profit motive lurking here?

“The objective is the design and development of a decision support system through the fusion of biometrics signals for behavioural diagnostic applications. The design and development of the system will be completed over 3 phases. The system will be based on the automatic processing and the classification of data stemming mainly from Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings and tracking of 3D stereoscopic facial characteristics. This processing should provide the integrated system capability, including vital signs, stereoscopic cameras and EEG, to quantify and provide automated diagnosis of the stressors that may affect the operational readiness of Canadian Forces (CF) operators and identify behavioural patterns with the aim of detecting hostile inten(t).”

Next question: how would you feel about a machine reading your face and deciding you’re too tired to work?

A bit more on this here http://is.gd/4HkgW if you’re interested.

Your thoughts, Eliot?

BTW – your page layout and graphics are so much easier to read and look great!

Robert Anton Wilson came up with a simple strategy for using the forbidden word in a way that retains the spirit of E-Prime: always preface any sentence that contains it with a phrase like “It seems to me that…” or “In the opinion of some scientists…”.

A good exercise for the astute reader involves finding all the ways the “to be” concept got buried in the apparent E-Prime of this post. The really astute (or those with tons of time on their hands) should take care to phrase their analysis in E-Prime.

As you rightly point out, E-Prime arose from his ‘thinking’ but he himself did not advocate the radical excision of all forms of the verb ‘to be’ from the English language. The suggestion to do so and the E-Prime program came later from one of his students, David Bourland.

If you spend all day scowling or all day smiling eventually your face will naturally relax into scowling or smiling, is that what people are picking up?

Britian is trying to have it both ways: Blair as EU President and EU as an international org.

Embodiment and Metaphor

My partner’s comment on this one was to ask, “Is the Higgs Boson doing this in all the universes or just in ours?”

I was amazed at the large number of people who answered ‘yes’ to the question. It never occurred to me that there are such strict cultural expectations about trick-or-treating.

Of course this applies only to diets of choice rather than those required by food allergies and sensitivities.

Yeah, my numbers have steadily decreased over recent years as well. (And it’s very rare nowadays that any post garners more than 1 or 2 comments.)

I’m sure a lot of it is just people moving onto greener, or more consistently-updated, pastures — there’s a lot more options in the blogosphere than there was 10 years ago.

That being said, I’ve also gotten the sense that many of the readers have, yes, moved to RSS feeds. Or, since my posts are now in my Facebook feed, that takes care of a lot of former readers too.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and screw the numbers. :) If we were in it for the readership, I suspect we’d have folded up shop long before the coming 10-year-mark.

This entry was a bit of a shock… I fear you may decide it’s not worth the effort.

I can offer one explanation from my own experience. I don’t use RSS, but in general, over the past year I find myself doing less daily blog-reading. The problem is overload; once I start, I can pass many enjoyable hours linking around to the multiple ideas to which each interesting blink leads — too many hours, in fact. As a defense I’ve cut down somewhat on the number of blogs I follow (mainly, political blogs; I mainly follow TPM now). For the remaining ones, I “concentrate” my reading to fewer days. E.g., your blog is still very high on my list (as it always has been), but I tend to check only 2 or 3 times a week now, whereas in the past I checked several times a day. However, I still read (and appreciate very much) everything you write, but if you gauged my interest from how many hits you got from me, it would seem to decline over the past year.

Follow Me Here is one of the best blogs I know, one of the ones that is dearest to my heart, and it’s simply amazing that you have produced such a steady flow of stimulating ideas for so long. I know one day you may get tired of it and stop (as you did a few years ago), but I very much hope that day is still far off.

-Ray

ACM – you might like Mama-Om — some interesting ideas on helping kids cope with their feelings (and other aspects of parenting). http://mama-om.blogspot.com/