The analysis of the SOTU (State of the Union address for those of you beyond the Potomac River) is in full gear: parsing the sentences, inferring meaning, who was that in the balcony and why were they there? Though it costs to subscribe to the New York Times Select (~$5/month), today they earned my money (that, and the great Op-Ed columnists).
On the site is the text of each of President Bush's SOTUs that you can interact with to do semantic analysis and get the context in which the word was used in each one. How many times did he mention 'Iraq' or 'Iraqis' last night? 34 - the most ever. And the previews were that he would try and avoid the subject! Social security? Twice, after using the term 15 times in his first address to Congress in 2001 and 18 times in 2005 (guess that reform initiative is over).
How many times did he mention health? 18 - more often than the economy (8), oil (9), and environment (3), but edged out by terror (22). The word 'health' was most often used as health insurance (11 times) and health care (4 times). No mentions of health in the context of health promotion - something that he last did in 2004.
The site is (obviously) engaging for some of us. And for the people who know that what is in the SOTU and what is not IS A BIG DEAL, tres cool!
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