for the old-schoolers who don't know a tag cloud from a methane cloud: in a tag cloud, words that appear more frequently are shown in a larger text size. (stop words, or common words like "the" or "and", are removed from the data.)

so let's take a look at some blogs and see what they're talking about. tag clouds courtesy of wordle. you can click 'em to view 'em larger (and to create your own), but you'll need to have java installed.

shorter advance indiana:


in contrast, here's shorter blue indiana:


obama is the top subject at both blogs. but republican blog AI hasn't been talking nearly as much about mccain as has liberal blog BI. note also that words like "state" and "Indiana" are used frequently at BI but don't appear at all at AI.

shorter masson's blog:


shorter hoosier political report:


shorter stAllio!'s way:


i've been talking way too much about abdul lately, but that'll pass soon, as he's generally not worth paying attention to.

shorter commonplace book:


it's funny that "tags" is the #1 word here. that probably should've been treated as a stop word.

anyway, i could keep this up all day, but i need to get some work done. feel free to create your own and link to 'em in the comments. ¶

a couple of the links are broken, i think. ¶

fixed. wordle gives you the embed code pre-mangled and forces you to fix it. i guess i didn't do a perfect job. ¶

yeah i dont know why they do that.

t3h dumm. ¶

That's a useful tool for self-analysis. Apparently I'm not talking about anything much in particular. The words that stand out to me for my blog are: good, just, accountability, roads, highway, problems, want. ¶

News Tip:

Sometime in August Mayor Greg Ballard will be meet with a few local pastors to discuss funding programs dealing with crime fighting (prevention and intervention). Some of the discussion has already occurred with a list of FOB (Friends of Ballard) being created by Deputy Mayor Williams and the Front Porch Alliance Director. This list only include pastors who agree to the following:

1) Play nice during Black Expo (No criticism of the Mayor or his staff during Black Expo)

2) Distance themselves from Amos Brown and Radio One and if they do appear to speak non-negatively about the Ballard Administration.

3) Allow the Mayor and his staff access to their churches periodically during the remianing years to talk positively about the grant dollars given to them by Ballard, in support of their program.

4) Embrace the "Peace in the Streets" program and coordinate all crime fighting efforts supported by the grants with the Christamore House to assure a consistant message. No a bad plan really.

So if you want to get on the list talk to Deputy Mayor Olgen Williams, but you need to be sly about it because officially the list doesn't exist. ¶