The Power or Lack Thereof, of Language

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to this interesting challenge from Intapunk:

"I propose an exercise to be perfomed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months' worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin's infamous '7 Dirty Words.'"

. Within two hours of posting by Reynolds, the News Buckit had this reponse.

And this is what I found, using what I deemed -- through a mix of TTLB and 2006's Weblog Award lists -- to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. I couldn't account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn't make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.Emphsis in original.

In fact, the results were so oneside, that four, yes four out of 18 Leftie sites, had more of the seven dirty words than all 22 of the right side blogs combined. While Patrick Ishmael's selection criteria may be skewed, he does carefully explain his methodology. I hope others will chime in with their results and confirm the experiment.