@lj – I know what you mean about soft, squishy things. I have to confess that I’m getting more and more anal about keeping my knives sharp, and I find if a non-serrated knife (there must be a term for a ‘standard’ knife that doesn’t use ‘serrated’ in the definition?) is sharp enough, tomatoes, onions, and other challenges are no match. In a woodworking class at Carleton a visiting professor showed us how to sharpen a knife blade to the point where you could hold up a piece of paper with two fingers in one hand, and slice through it perpendicularly with your freshly sharpened blade. It was a pretty exciting moment.

@hannah – I’m glad you were ranting about this too :) It’s funny because I agree that the data can be useful (and fascinating) in certain circumstances. There are subtle observations that come out of this type of data. But in the context of starting a discussion about the speech as a whole I think it’s such a silly tactic. It’s up there with “he had to wait for applause 23 times” or “he shook 37 members of congress’ hands” … “what does that say about the speech as a whole?”. Well, it depends on a lot of other factors!

The only time I can see word occurrences being useful is someone analyzing a book they themselves have written. Then I think it would be of personal interest, and potentially helpful in the editing process.

I disagree on the usefulness of serrated knives. I think they’re good for bread and soft, squishy things like tomatoes. The one problem is that I don’t know that you can easily sharpen them, so perhaps most serrated knives in the wild are dull.