A conference on text analysis in Pisa
In the US we were told about a conference on text analysis in Pisa in Italy the next summer. Irmtraud really was interested in this conference. So in the summer we went for the first time together to Italy. The conference took place close to the area with the Baptistery, the Cathedral and the skewed tower. The view was overwhelming not because of the skewed tower but due to the very unique architecture. We had not yet seen Florence.
The conference gave us some new ideas and contacts. First of all there was impressive work done to determine by a computer program the content of texts based on a general codebook. The system called the General Inquirer was introduced in 1962 by a group of researchers under the leading of Philip Stone. One of the members was Zvi Namenwirth who was Dutch but now lived and worked in the USA. He had, for example, used the General Inquirer to show on texts of platforms of the American parties that the importance of different value orientations formed long waves through time like the long economic waves.
There was also a group of researchers who did not like the use of codes to detect the content of text. Iker and Harway suggested that texts are in general so redundant that one could also derive the themes in texts without codes. They called their procedure "UHH" which stands for "Untouched by Human Hands". They derived the themes on the basis of co-occurrence of words in sentences of paragraphs.
We were surprised by both procedures and invited Zvi Namenwirth for a visit to the Netherlands to get more familiar with content analysis using codes like in the General Inquirer. On the other hand we thought that we would try to do an analysis of the speech of Nixon about Watergate to see if we could detect the themes of his speech without using codes but by the procedure "Untouched by Human Hands".
The conference gave us some new ideas and contacts. First of all there was impressive work done to determine by a computer program the content of texts based on a general codebook. The system called the General Inquirer was introduced in 1962 by a group of researchers under the leading of Philip Stone. One of the members was Zvi Namenwirth who was Dutch but now lived and worked in the USA. He had, for example, used the General Inquirer to show on texts of platforms of the American parties that the importance of different value orientations formed long waves through time like the long economic waves.
There was also a group of researchers who did not like the use of codes to detect the content of text. Iker and Harway suggested that texts are in general so redundant that one could also derive the themes in texts without codes. They called their procedure "UHH" which stands for "Untouched by Human Hands". They derived the themes on the basis of co-occurrence of words in sentences of paragraphs.
We were surprised by both procedures and invited Zvi Namenwirth for a visit to the Netherlands to get more familiar with content analysis using codes like in the General Inquirer. On the other hand we thought that we would try to do an analysis of the speech of Nixon about Watergate to see if we could detect the themes of his speech without using codes but by the procedure "Untouched by Human Hands".
A short stop in Lucca
On the way back we stopped in Lucca. This is an old town surrounded by a wall. So I had to leave my car outside the town and we went in the town with our luggage. We asked at several hotels for a room but they were all full. Then we reached the beautiful square of the photo and we decided to have a drink.
On the way back we stopped in Lucca. This is an old town surrounded by a wall. So I had to leave my car outside the town and we went in the town with our luggage. We asked at several hotels for a room but they were all full. Then we reached the beautiful square of the photo and we decided to have a drink.
After that Irmtraud would go around to ask for a room while I would stay with the luggage at the terrace. It was a beautiful place again but I was waiting there for 15 minutes, 30 minutes 45 minutes and Irmtraud still did not return. Honestly I did not trust much the Italians with a nice young woman. I also was not sure if Irmtraud would find the square again where I was waiting because her orientation is not optimal. So I got more and more nervous. But after an hour Irmtraud came back and said that she had found a nice room for us in an old house. We went there and I was really surprised because it was a room with a painting on the ceiling like in the Sistine Chapel (which we had not seen yet). Quickly the sorrows were forgotten and we went very early to bed in this beautiful room to look at the ceiling of course.