The New York Times has produced a wonderfully interactive infographic that includes the most commonly used words from each of the US Presidents’ inaugural address. This is a really great way to get a sense of the scope of this country’s history. I came away from this infographic with a better sense of the challenges that faced the nation at different times, and also with a sense of how young this country really is.

The New York Times infographic presents a very intuitive timeline, featuring portraits of the presidents, along with a representation of the text of their inaugural address. The words have been scaled by frequency – more frequently used words appear larger. Words shown in yellow are special, in that they are quite different from the words used by the previous president.

Scroll through this infographic, just paying attention to the yellow words. You can instantly grok the big issue that a certain president is dealing with, and I think that reflects very positively on the value of this infographic. Next, scroll through the timeline, paying attention to the biggest words, and you can get a feeling for how the presidents ideologically approached their term. Great work!

RTFA: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/wash…

A look at the language of presidential inaugural addresses. The most-used words in each address appear in the interactive chart below, sized by number of uses. Words highlighted in yellow were used significantly more in this inaugural address than average.

RTFA: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northame…

Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her.

Last September, when her auction came to light, she had received bids up to £162,000 ($243,000) but since then interest in her has rocketed.

The student who has a degree in Women’s Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself.

Miss Dylan, from San Diego, California, USA, said she was persuaded to offer herself to the highest bidder after her sister Avia, 23, paid for her own degree after working as a prostitute for three weeks.

To get a better sense of this story, I highly recommend listening to a radio interview she recently conducted. The audio of this particularly irritating radio episode, hosted by Laura Ingraham, is available from Hot Air. Hot Air’s Allahpundit says:

I’m tempted to call it comedy gold except that there’s no punchline. It’s just 15 minutes of Ingraham trying to shame this woman into regret. And failing utterly.

I have to agree that this verges on comic gold, simply as a result of Ingraham’s irrelevance and bankrupcty, which provide absolutely no traction against Dylan’s marginally rational argument. I take that back: Dylan is actually quite rational, but because she comes across with greater honesty and sincerity, it provides for an incongruous comparison with Ingraham’s attack vector. The radio segment takes the format of an interview, but is actually a thinly veiled judgment carnival, attempting to heap shame on the basis of a completely relative, entirely unarticulated framework.

In case you aren’t hip to the Catholic Radio circuit, Ingraham has a allegedly-sizable following. From Wikipedia:

Laura Anne Ingraham (born June 19, 1964) is an American radio host, author, and political commentator. Her nationally-syndicated talk show, The Laura Ingraham Show, airs throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network. According to Talkers’ Magazine, The Laura Ingraham Show is tied for fifth among most-listened to talk shows, with an average 5.5 million weekly listeners.[1]

…continuing…

Ingraham launched The Laura Ingraham Show in April 2001, which is heard on 306 stations and on XM Satellite Radio. The show was originally syndicated by Infinity’s (now CBS’) Westwood One, but is now syndicated by Talk Radio Network. Ingraham is also the official guest host of The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and a weekly contributor with her segment “The Ingraham Angle.”[3] Laura anchored a three week show in June 2008 called “Just In with Laura Ingraham”.[4][5]

As of 2008, Laura Ingraham is rated as the number six radio show host in America by Talkers Magazine. She was as high as number five in the past according to the same publication. [6]

Just a note: “Talk Radio Network” is biased towards so-called “conservative” topics, which is secret code for we’re fascist, and we want to enslave you.

On a separate note, what’s a good term for “moralizing” when the framework you’re pushing is, in fact, morally bankrupt? The Germans would just slam two oxymoronic words together, a la “schadenfreude,” but we Americans are more of the Orwellian persuasion, tending towards doublespeak. With that in mind, any suggestions?

UPDATE 2009-01-16

Here’s the whorehouse where Dylan is running the auction:

http://www.bunnyranch.com/bunnybabes/bunnybabes_NOPQR.php

She’s the first “bunny” on the page.