Software determines that Obama spins the most

David Skillicorn, a computing science professor at Queen's University, has devised a program that analyzes the candidates' speeches to see who is putting the most political spin on their message.

John McCain shoots the straightest, Barack Obama spins the most and Hillary Clinton falls somewhere in the middle.

Mr. Skillicorn created the software to look at the candidates' speeches between January and mid-February this year.

By examining how frequently various qualifiers, negative words, the singular "I" versus "we," action words and "but" and "or" are used, the software calculates the "spin" -- defined as the way politicians slightly alter what they say to appeal to the widest audience while ensuring they aren't crossing the line into fiction.

Comments

[Louis]

One guy's opinion. What is his bias? Are his principles valid?

More spin.

[seeker]

Read the article and decide for yourself.

[Cineaste]

If you plugged 2or3.net into that software program, you'd find no other political candidates don't come close when it comes to spin and obfuscation. The all time champ of spin would undoubtedly be FOX (faux, fixed) News.

[Benjamin9]

Shocker!

[seeker]

I dunno, too bad there isn't a way to determine that. I know that I did plug our site into the Blog Readability Test, and got back that we are discoursing at a Graduate Level, as far as vocabulary is concerned. Now if only our rhetoric was also at that level!

[seeker]

Doh! We used to be at Grad level, now we're at GENIUS! Must have been my use of the word 'soteriology' ;)

[Cineaste]

That's because Louis and I are commenting a lot. We liberals have a much larger vocabulary than you conservatives. :) Especially Ben. He had to look up "obfuscation" in the dictionary, I'm sure.

[Benjamin9]

Obfuscate dis ... :)

[Aaron]

I think the move to genius coincides with my sporadic posting. ;)