Attention, Cunning Linguists!

If you like having fun with the visuality of language, I recommend having a play with "wordles".
Wordles is a tool for generating 'word clouds' from text you provide.
If some words appear more often in the text than others, they're given more prominence. You have the options of changing colours, fonts, layouts...and then using them in any manner you wish: perhaps as a visual aid in a presentation, a T-shirt, you could even select lyrics from your favourite song to create a poster. Here's one I created using text from this blog. Enjoy!

The Setting Sun

Pop culture took a big hit today, with the deaths of two iconic characters.
Those old enough to remember the original '70s TV series Charlie's Angels will sigh at this legendary poster of Farrah Fawcett - a picture that adorned many a teenage lad's bedroom wall. Actually Farrah made far more income out of this poster than she ever did from Charlie's Angels: let's face it, she won no Oscars for acting but she was tops for just lookin' good! In the last few years she's battled cancer and passed away at 62.

And those a bit younger will always remember where they were today, when Michael Jackson died of a heart attack at 50. An incredibly talented performer and artist, Jackson's abilities were latterly overshadowed by his many demons: his constant plastic surgery, reclusiveness, mounting debts, allegations of child molestation and hush-money payments...and within two hours of the news breaking, I'd received four jokes via text about "Wacko Jacko". It doesn't take long to tear down our Tall Poppies, does it? I don't say that to defend him: more a comment on humanity in general. Curious too how the vilifying media, who bayed for blood during the court case, are all running tributes and appearing to be his best friends! Hmmm....

As we all age and morph into completely different people than who we started out as, perhaps it's better to remember the poppies for who they were and what they gave us, rather than how they ended their time.

$8.9million of Apathy!

Voters receive information soon about a Citizens-Initiated Referendum (running July 31-August 21) asking: “Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?”
This follows 2008's removal from law of the "reasonable force" defence, for parents or guardians who hit their children. More than 300,000 signatures were collected to attempt a reversal of this decision...and yet PM John Key says, regardless of what the voters say, the Government is unlikely to change the law.
So we'll get a complete re-hash of arguments we heard when the original law was passed. We'll ride the see-saw of differences between smacking and thrashing, abuse and discipline, violence and firmness... and it won't mean a thing!
"I think it's important that governments listen to the public, but the test...is..if I don't think the law is working I will change it," says Our Leader. "To date I have not seen any evidence that it is not working." So John thinks it's fine, to hell with voter opinion...and all this costs $8.9million!
As long as these referenda can't change things, what is the point in having them? Hey! Let's have one asking: “Should Citizens-Initiated Referenda be binding on the Government?” Hmmm, wonder what John would think of that?