Friday, January 20, 2006

Algorithm detects Canadian politicians' spin

Stephen Harper: 73
Jack Layton: 88
Paul Martin: 124

According to a new deception-detecting computer algorithm developed at Queen's University, Paul Martin spins the most of the candidates.

Developers define spin as “text or speech where the apparent meaning is not the true belief of the person saying or writing it”.

The program analyzes text for the diminished use of personal pronouns, among other things.

New Scientist has the details on this breaking news.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I need some explanation on how you and other Harper supporters can accept the beliefs of people like Tom Flanagan?

I refer you to the excellent article in Walrus Magazine by Marci McDonald about Harper, two of his most intimate supporters and advisors, and how Harper took over the Conservative party.

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=05/05/09/2119243

Please explain these points in the article:

- Flanagan and Harper more as "symbiotic partners."
- Flanagan [was] one of Duke's [UniversityĆ¢€™s] most conservative students
- Flanagan's contention that aboriginals were simply conquered peoples who'd been bested by Europeans with a higher degree of "civilization,"
- There's a fundamental racism that underpins his view,"
- an introductory political-science textbook [Flanagan] co-authored was dropped from Ontario's approved list of high-school texts because of its "racial, religious, and sex bias" against women and Jews,
- Flanagan and Morton U.S.-born, but Cooper is a member of the Bohemian Club, a fraternity of Republican movers and shakers
- They're [Flanagan and Harper] are intellectual soulmates, philosophical soulmates."
- how do we fool the world into thinking we're moving to the left when we're not?"
- All these positions which Harper cherishes are there because of a group of people in Calgary Flanagan most prominent among them

Anonymous said...

So, Harper spins too?