We ran our trend detection tool
Signi-Trend
(published at KDD 2014)
on news articles collected for the year 2014. We removed the category of
financial news, which is overrepresented in the data set. Below are the
(described) results, from the top 50 trends (I will push the raw result to
appspot if possible due to file limits).
I have highlighted the top 10 trends in bold, but otherwise
ordered them chronologically.
Updated: due to an error in a regexp, I had filtered out too many stories.
The new results use more articles.
January
2014-01-29: Obama's state of the union address
February
2014-02-07: Sochi Olympics gay rights protests
2014-02-08: Sochi Olympics first results
2014-02-19: Violence in Ukraine and Maidan in Kiev
2014-02-20: Wall street reaction to Facebook buying WhatsApp
2014-02-22: Yanukovich leaves Kiev
2014-02-28: Crimea crisis begins
March
2014-03-01: Crimea crisis escalates futher
2014-03-02: NATO meeting on Crimea crisis
2014-03-04: Obama presents U.S. fiscal budget 2015 plan
2014-03-08: Malaysia Airlines MH-370 missing in South China Sea
2014-03-08: MH-370: many Chinese on board of missing airplane
2014-03-15: Crimean status referencum (upcoming)
2014-03-18: Crimea now considered part of Russia by Putin
2014-03-21: Russian stocks fall after U.S. sanctions.
April
2014-04-02: Chile quake and tsunami warning
2014-04-09: False positive? experience + views
2014-04-13: Pro-russian rebels in Ukraine's Sloviansk
2014-04-17: Russia-Ukraine crisis continues
2014-04-22: French deficit reduction plan pressure
2014-04-28: Soccer World Cup coverage: team lineups
May
2014-05-14: MERS reports in Florida, U.S.
2014-05-23: Russia feels sanctions impact
2014-05-25: EU elections
June
2014-06-06: World cup coverage
2014-06-13: Islamic state Camp Speicher massacre in Iraq
2014-06-14: Soccer world cup: Spain surprisingly destoyed by Netherlands
July
2014-07-05: Soccer world cup quarter finals
2014-07-17: Malaysian Airlines MH-17 shot down over Ukraine
2014-07-18: Russian blamed for 298 dead in airline downing
2014-07-19: Independent crash site investigation demanded
2014-07-20: Israel shelling Gaza causes 40+ casualties in a day
August
2014-08-07: Russia bans food imports from EU and U.S.
2014-08-08: Obama orders targeted air strikes in Iraq
2014-08-20: IS murders journalist James Foley, air strikes continue
2014-08-30: EU increases sanctions against Russia
September
2014-09-05: NATO summit with respect to IS and Ukraine conflict
2014-09-11: Scottish referendum upcoming - poll results are close
2014-09-23: U.N. on legality of U.S. air strikes in Syria against IS
2014-09-26: Star manager Bill Gross leaves Allianz/PIMCO for Janus
October
2014-10-22: Ottawa parliament shooting
2014-10-26: EU banking review
November
2014-11-05: U.S. Senate and governor elections
2014-11-12: Foreign exchange manipulation investigation results
2014-11-17: Japan recession
December
2014-12-11: CIA prisoner and U.S. torture centers revieled
2014-12-15: Sydney cafe hostage siege
2014-12-17: U.S. and Cuba relations improve unexpectedly
2014-12-18: Putin criticizes NATO, U.S., Kiev
2014-12-28: AirAsia flight QZ-8501 missing
As you can guess, we are really happy with this result - just like the
result
for 2013 it mentiones (almost) all the key events.
There probably is one "false positive" there: 2014-04-09 has a lot of articles
talking about "experience" and "views", but not all refer to the same topic
(we did not do topic modeling yet).
There are also some events missing that we would have liked to appear;
many of these barely did not make it into the top 50, but do appear in the top 100,
such as the Sony cyberattack (#51) and the Fergusson riots on November 11 (#66).
The other day I received from my Japanese teacher an interesting article by Yamazaki Masakazu comparing garden styles, and in particular the attitude towards and presentation of water in Japanese and European gardens (page 1, page 2). The author s list of achievements is long, various professorships, dramatist, literature critique, recognized as Person of Cultural Merit, just to name a view. I was looking forward to an interesting and high quality article!
The article itself introduces the reader to Shishiodoshi, one of the standard ingredients of a Japanese garden: It is a device where water drips into a bamboo tube that is also a seesaw. At some point the water in the bamboo tube makes the seesaw switch over and the water pours out, after which the seesaw returns to the original position and a new cycle begins.
The author describes his feelings and thoughts about the shishiodoshi, in particular connects human life (stress and relieve, cycles), the flow of time, and some other concepts with the shishiodoshi. Up to here it is a wonderful article providing interesting insights into the way the author thinks. Unfortunately, then the author tries to underline his ideas by comparing the Japanese shishiodoshi with European style water fountains, describing the former with all favorable properties and full of deep meaning, while the latter is qualified as beautiful and nice, but bare of any deeper meaning.
I don t go into details that the whole comparison is anyway a bad one, as he is comparing Baroque style fountains, a very limited period, and furthermore ignores the fact that water fountains are not genuinely European (isn t there one in the Kenrokuen, one of the three most famous gardens in Japan!?), nor does he consider any other water-installation that might be available. What really destroys the in principle very nice article is the tone:
The general tone of the article then can be summarized into: The shishiodoshi is rich on meaning, connects to the life of humans, instigates philosophical reflections, represents nature, the flow of time etc. The water fountain is beautiful and gorgeous, but that is all.
I don t think that this separation, or this negative undertone, was created on purpose by the author. A person of his stature is supposedly above this level of primitive comparison. I believe that it is nothing else but a consequence of upbringing and the general attitude that permeates the whole society with this feeling of separateness.
Us and They
Repeatedly providing sentences like Japanese people and Western people have different tastes.. ( ). About 10 times in this short article expressions like Japanese and Westerner appear, leaving the reader with a bitter taste of an author that considers first the Japanese a people (what about Ainu, Ryukyu, etc?), and second that the Japanese are exclusive in the sense that they are set apart from the rest of the world in their way of thinking, living, being.
What puzzles me is that this is not only a singular opinion, but a very general straight in the Japanese media, TV, radio, newspaper, books. Everyone considers Japan and Japanese as something that is fundamentally and profoundly different from everyone else in the world.
There is We the Japanese (and that doesn t mean nationality of passport, but blood line!), and there are They the Rest or, as the way of writing and and description on many occasion suggestions, They the Barbarians .
A short anecdote will underly this: One of the favorite TV talk show / pseudo-documentary style is about Japanese living abroad. That day a lady married in Paris was interviewed. What followed was a guided tour through Paris showing: Dirt in the gutter, street cleaning cars, waste disposal places. Yes, that was all. Just about the dirt . Of course, at length the (unfortunately only apparent) cleanliness of Japanese cities and neighborhoods are mentioned and shown to remind everyone how wonderful Japan is and how dirty the Barbarians. I don t want to say that I consider Japan more dirty than most other countries just the visible part is clean, the moment you step a bit aside and around the corner, there are the worst trash just thrown away without consideration. Anyway.
To return to the topic of Us and They I consider us all humans, first and foremost, and nationality, birthplace, and all that are just by chance. I do NOT reject cultural differences, they are here, of course. But cultural differences are one thing, separating one self and one s perceived people from the rest of the world is another.
Conclusion
I repeat, I don t think that the author had any ill intentions, but it would have been nicer if the article wouldn t make such a stark distinction. He could have written about Shishiodoshi and water fountains without using the Us They categorization. He could have compared other water installations, could have discussed the long tradition of small ponds in European gardens, just to name a few things. But the author choose to highlight differences instead of commonalities.
It is the Us against Them feeling that often makes life in Japan for a foreigner difficult. Japanese are not special, Austrians, too, are not special, nor are Americans, Russians, Tibetans, or any other nationality. No nationality is special, we are all humans. Maybe at some point this will arrive also in the Japanese society and thinking.
Wow. 3G delta. I haven t booted this laptop for a while I think I m finally ready to make the move from gnome2 to gnome3. There are bits that still annoy me, but I think it s off to a good start. Upgrading perl from 5.10 to 5.14.
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Just back in from an amazing concert at the
