Blagojevich on Maddow Wordle
Rachel Maddow just did an excellent job interviewing Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Here’s the Wordle:
Click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image. Don’t know what this says, but here it is. And this is the transcript. I edited out the MADDOW: and BLAGOJEVICH: parts, also the introductory definitions of the participants.
A real semantic network analysis of Obama’s inaugural speech
I’ve been watching inaugural events all day, and noted the numerous Wordle examinations of the inaugural. Here’s an example of a true semantic network analysis of the inaugural via leximancer, a semantic network analysis software that doesn’t look as cool or as pretty as Wordle, but provides a more quantitative analysis. Leximancer weights the concepts based on their association with various words and provides a map of how the concepts are related (brighter circles equal greater emphasis, for instance).
Some short explanation: the circles represent concepts, the lines represent associations between concepts. The only reason I know about this is because of my dissertation.
Thoughts? Comments?
This land is your land
great job, pete!
Random Idea: Liquidation sales map
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Okay, so this idea is sort of sad given the state of the economy, but it’s something that might make your news web site more useful to your community.
Last week, we learned that Circuit City was closing its doors and laying off 34,000 workers. That means they’ll be liquidating all that electronics merchandise they have on hand. There are other retailers who are closing their doors in this tough economy. So why not put together a map on your web site with information about liquidation sales? It could include addresses for all the Circuit Citys in your area, along with store hours and information about the liquidation sale.
Ditto for other retailers in the area who are closing.
Thoughts?
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Catholic Google name changed
An update on a previous post about TSEFKACG (The Search Engine Formerly Known As CatholicGoogle): the site has changed branding – removing the Google color scheme and the name – and is now branded as Cathoogle (although the catholicgoogle.com URL still resolves there). (Thanks to the German-language fudder for the info)
I still have some qualms about the whole idea behind Cathoogle (censoring sites so that sites that that conform to your church’s ideology are preferenced), but that’s my bug, not theirs. Ultimately, I will be curious to see whether the search engine really gets a lot of traffic from Catholics, or whether they will use their own minds to sift through the available information.
And I should mention this is nothing against Catholics in that respect. I’d have similar troubles with Baptist Google or Mormon Google or Liberal Google or Conservative Google.
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Random idea: the office of WTF? in chief
Following up on the “semi-success” of the Unicorn Chaser idea, here’s another one that might be worth some time from the media industry, even though the idea itself isn’t solely aimed at the media industry:
The WTF? In Chief
I’ve been working on an interactive graphic for the Obama inauguration. Here’s a preview:
click to see larger version
The idea is, you get a visual representation of all of the things the new president has “on his plate” when he takes office. It might be instructive to compare his “plate” to what previous presidents had on their “plates” when they took office.
Honestly, I probably won’t get this finished by the time the inauguration rolls around (classes starting this week and all), but I might assign it to my interactive reporting class to finish up. 
So the WTF in Chief idea would be to have an official appointee whose job it was to explain WTF?!?! to the American people.
Not the press secretary, but someone whose sole job is to respond to the righteous indignation of the American people about the seriously messed up state our nation is at the moment (and if you don’t think we’re in a world of doo-doo, then I don’t even want to deal with your denial of reality). Maybe that’s Obama’s job ultimately, but it might help if we had someone who could respond on a semi-regular basis to commiserate with us.
Someone whose job it would be to explain:
- WTF happened to our $350 billion in bailout money?
- WTF happened to the recovery from Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Rita?
- WTF is going to happen to those who authorized torture at Guantanamo Bay?
- WTF is going on in Iraq?
etc. See this report from the Center for Public Integrity for a list of 128 major meltdowns in the executive branch over the last 8 years. I think you get the picture.
The idea also got me to thinking about a similar position newspapers could adopt – think of it as sort of the ombudsperson for the financial meltdown. We already have Alan Mutter doing this from the outside, and others who are content to lob information from the outside, but wouldn’t it be a good thing for some newspaper company execs to come out and lay everything on the line for their loyal readers and “stakeholders” (I hate that word)?
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Hulu rocks and infuriates
If you haven’t been following Hulu, you miss out on some great TV and film on the Internet, stuff you might never remember to check out. Below the fold are a couple of videos that recently popped up that are worth a view.
Of course, Hulu can also be infuriating, as I found when I went to watch The Big Lebowski again, and found that they’d pulled the movie and now only had a smattering of clips. That sucks.
Glad Delta Airlines is spending my $15 baggage fee on necessary upgrades
Delta, Northwest, and all the other big airplane companies thought they’d found a way to raise prices without raising prices last year. When gas prices rose so high, they seemed to really NEED that $15 per bag that they started charging on top of the actual – you know – ticket price that you’re supposed to be paying to fly on their overcrowded airplanes.
I’m really glad they’re not spending the $15 per bag fee on B.S. commercials and independent films.
Oversight in financial markets
- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Look, I’m no economist, but it doesn’t take one to figure out that hedge funds and all the other various complicated financial instruments need to be brought under greater oversight by the federal government. You don’t have to argue for bloated bureaucracy to realize that transparency and regulation can be a good thing when multimillionaires are pissing away money with no limitations.
Case in point, witness the oil futures market, where they are blaming the flight of hedge funds for their latest low price woes:
“The new speculators—those who were caught up in a herding mentality and helped to cause the bubble trouble—have exerted added momentum to the swift price declines,” says Bart Chilton, a commissioner with the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which regulates oil trading.
So put some requirements on them. Make them declare where they are investing money, and – more importantly – WHOSE money they are investing.
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Digital TV switch: Delays? Again?
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Barack Obama is signalling a desire to delay the full-scale switch to digital television that is set to occur Feb. 17.
Federal officials said this week that the billion-dollar program to distribute $40 coupons to defray the cost of the boxes has run out of money and that the 1.1 million consumers already on the waiting list might not receive them in time for the Feb. 17 transition.
Projections suggest that the number of consumers on the waiting list to get a coupon could climb to 5 million by early February, increasing by hundreds of thousands every day, the Obama transition team said.
“With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient, and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively-mandated analog cutoff date,” John Podesta, co-chair of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, wrote in the letter to leaders of the Senate and House commerce committees.
Judging from the amount of poorly-produced, hokey promotional advertisements I’ve seen over the Christmas holidays – not to mention the numerous web sites about the transition – there’s some serious fear in the television industry that a sizable percentage of consumers won’t be able to make the DTV switch smoothly.
If you were psychoanalyzing the TV industry based on those ads, you’d surmise that there are going to be angry villagers with pitchforks and torches storming the gates at TV stations come Feb. 18.
But the problem is this has been something that’s been in the works for over 10 years. Congress first started down this road in 1996!
Broadcasters dragged their feet making a transition to DTV for years until they finally got a mandate for Feb. 17, 2009. Now, everybody wants to move the yardsticks again.
Personally, I’m not affected by the transition, but I do think it says something wrong about our country when we can’t even manage to make this transition smoothly. Industry and government share blame for mismanaging something that’s been on the calendar for a long time now.
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