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I was interested to see what would happen if you Wordled the two political speeches: Obama’s acceptance and McCain’s concession. So, what the heck, I did it.

This is Obama:

I like how change and hope and world and new are out front (wordle takes text and recasts it based on frequency). I guess you can’t give a political speech when you win the presidency without saying America over and over again, right? But notice some of the smaller words and how they seem to capture details of ideas and policy. Interesting.

Here is McCain’s (which I had to edit the various “boos” and chanting from the text version that I was using):

Country is certainly front and center, and notice how differences is pretty prevalent, too. And, to give McCain credit, he noted the achievement of Obama in his speech. And of course, he mentioned Obama by name more than a few times (as opposed to Obama, whose reference to McCain barely registered in Wordle).

McCain should be commended for this line: “…he (Obama) managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”

What do you think?

Kevin

And here is a video and song that I wrote back in February as Obama was in the midst of his primary against Hillary Clinton. I think the message still rings true for me.

Peace (in change),
Kevin

I am trying my hand at an animation site to see if it has possibilities for my students. The site is called Fuzzwich and it’s a bit tricky to get a handle on it, but once I got started, I figured it out. It might have possibilities for the classroom.

Check out my election video:

Peace (in aliens),
Kevin

This video is interesting, as it reminds us that before the digital revolution, there was an underground community seeking out art, music, books and movies that fell outside the view of the common culture. The theory of the “long tail” sort of ruins that sense of backroom discovery, I guess.

The ease of digital downloads and digital uploads means we do this kind of discovery from our own home, and we don’t fall into serendipity when uncovering that band or movie or book that will completely shake your world. And it is the hunt for the art, and the process of discovery, that makes the effort even better. (Kind of like the experience of reading a physical newspaper and coming across an article that you would never otherwise have ever seen if you were narrowing your focus).

Or, at least, this is the premise of this video.

And yet, ironically, if not for the digital world, I would never have seen this video in my life, I suspect. There are some strange ironies that go on all around us.

Peace (in discovery),
Kevin