palewire

Behold. A wordle.net depiction of the most common words found in the comment thread attached to the LA Times’ obituary of Sen. Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.

I had a little excess energy available tonight while watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance on Bill Moyers’ program, so I dumped the transcript of his new statements into Many Eyes and ran it against what the Guardian bills as an “excerpt” of his famous post Sept. 11 sermon.

See anything interesting?

Here’s a word cloud I cooked up real quick over at Many Eyes comparing today’s opening statement from Iraq commander General David Petraeus to his previous Congressional visit last September. As Dana Milbank has noted, you’ll find less focus on Al Qaeda this time around, and more mentions for Iran.

Note that this isn’t his entire testimony. Just the opening statements. So, it doesn’t include the many questions he’s fielded.

With the presidential primaries working up to their full fury, it can sometimes seem like dark forebodings are blooming all around us. I know all the political rancor can get people down. But look on the bright side, public angst always makes a good season for what my favorite comedian, Bill Hicks, dubbed “the comedy of hate.”

For instance, when I emailed my uncle a couple of the goofy tag clouds I’ve cooked up at work lately (ex. one, two), here was his response, unedited:

Maybe you can do one for me that shows the frequency of
words I use to describe politicians.
Like:

asshole
liar
ego-centric
disingenuous
opportunist
insincere
dishonest

Can you do thin in real time as I write? Huh? can ya?

His personal motto: “Never vote, it only encourages those people.”

I don’t agree with him. But, come on, that’s pretty funny.

If you visit the new link I’ve added to the sidebar, you can play around with a dinky Web toy I made this afternoon. It’s a series of tag clouds that report the words most frequently found in reviews of this year’s indie hype monster, Arcade Fire’s “Neon Bible.” It’s hardly revelatory — and a long toss from scientific — but it can still make for a bit of fun.

If nothing else, it’s clear that the band’s lead singer, Win Butler, is getting more attention that his mates. And a bit interesting, though hardly surprising, that the band’s debut album, Funeral, played pretty high in most reviews.

How about how often “war” makes its way in?

I made the hypecloud using a free application developed by a bright guy named Chirag Mehta. You can check that out here. Mehta has done some cool stuff with it, particularly an excellent cloud that displays the most commonly used words in presidential rhetoric since the founding of America.