Jan Freeman writes The Word column for Ideas.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
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Christopher Shea writes the Critical Faculties column for Ideas.
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« The Bush-Kennedy Bible | Main | Sing, o muse, of the harbor sludge » Wednesday, January 24, 2007Bush speech on the InternetsThe New York Times has a very cool feature on its website today -- I think I remember them doing something similar last year -- that allows you to search the text of the president's State of the Union addresses since 2001 for a particular term ("Social Security," for example, or "Bin Laden"), and then to compare the frequency of that term, year by year, against other terms.  The term "freedom," for example, appears eight times in Bush's 2001 address, 14 in 2002 ("freedom's price," "freedom's power," "freedom's victory," etc.), five in 2003, eight in 2004, then a whopping 21 in 2005 (all in the last half of the speech) and 17 in 2006 (mostly in the first half; what to make of this shift?), and then a paltry three last night. One could spend all day monkeying with this software... Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:12 AM
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