it does a body good (?)

here's a quote from someone commenting on somewhat spurious results in metaViz, specifically, the metaphor that "America is like milk":

I disagree; I do not think that America is very much like milk at all. Milk is thick, smooth, and sweet, while America is rather...gritty. America is like Metamucil.

some of the replies are just as good.

Yet America very rarely gives you your daily recommended fiber, so, perhaps America is just muddy water?

America is like milk in the sense that new immigrants tend to get homogenized.

absolutely fabulous, I couldn't have asked for a better alternative metaphor.

a new metaphor on election day

how long did you stand in line to vote? I spent about an hour and forty-five minutes at my local polling place this morning. and based on what I hear from other parts of the country, that wasn't even that bad.

while you're hanging around waiting for the results to be counted (which is probably starting about now on the east coast), here's an interesting metaphor that metaViz turned up recently: a candidate is like a theory. I think it provides a great alternative to the common adversarial rhetoric surrounding political campaigns (even the word "campaign" is reminiscent of war). click through for a full description and a link to the visualization.

metaphors in political speeches

as I mentioned previously, I've been spending a lot of time recently working on metaViz, a computational system designed to identify conceptual metaphors in political blogs. metaViz also includes analysis of the campaign speeches from McCain and Obama (presidential candidates from the two major political parties). there's a UCI press release that gives an example interpretation of some of the results. I think the major value of the press release is that it shows how the system is meant to be used and how one might go about interpreting the metaphors that it identifies. check it out, and let me know what you think.

metaViz (i.e, what I've been up to lately)

I'll admit, I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like to this summer. most of my time has been spent developing metaViz, an application designed to allow blog readers to see potential conceptual metaphors in political blogs. here's a blurb about the project:

metaViz is a system that finds conceptual metaphors in political blogs, displays the metaphors in an interactive visual fashion, and lets you look at the different ways in which many concepts are framed in those blogs. For example, a 'campaign' is often talked about like a 'war' -- both are 'fought,' 'won,' 'lost,' 'survived,' etc. The goal is to foster critical thinking, getting people to think about what's being said not just by the words themselves, but between and behind the words.

if you have a chance, check it out, and feel free to pass it along to anyone you think might be interested. if you have any thoughts about the project, drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you.