Text Town

Manifesto Update

2010-08-28T17:46:00.000+01:00

My previous post examined the 3 manifestos of the major UK political parties. I thought I'd update this and take a look at what the Lib Dem/Conservative coalitian party had to say and how drastic they may have had to change their collective tunes.

Here is the viz:

Text source: http://www.libdems.org.uk/

It's interesting to see that during the election campain these parties were trying to differentiate themselves from each other. However, when it came down to actually running the country the one thing they couldn't emphasize too much was that the 'parties agree' on many of the issues.

Surprisingly the terms 'liberal', 'democrat', 'democrats' appear more than the term 'Conservative' which did not feature in the top 50 of words.

What do you think?

Manifestos (vs Guardian)

2010-04-20T23:16:00.002+01:00

I was inspired to create some new wordles based on an article in the UK newspaper The Guardian. Take a look at the Guardian article comparing Labour vs The Conservatives here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-compares-labour-wordle

I like the summary they have posted which includes:

We wanted to see how the Tories' use of language compares to Labour's, and have again harnessed the power of Wordle.net to show that - see what we did yesterday with Labour's manifestos.

And the answer? Not as much as you might think. The big words of the manifesto are eerily similar: "people", "new", "reform". Interestingly, they mention "Labour" more than Labour mentioned "Conservatives".
But is the election coming down to key buzzwords that no-one can disagree on?

I thought they could have done a better job with the visuals and since they asked, here is my attempt.

Notes:
a) I've set the words in alphabetical order so the similar terms can be compared
b) I've also limited the words to the top 50 only. I think this gives a better idea of the messages each party is trying to send out.
c) In this day and age of image and digital content I thought it was important to display the leaders of each party. I went to Google images, typed in each leader's name, and used the first image displayed.

Conservative Manifesto:

Labour Manifesto:

Liberal Democrat Manifesto:

Here are some observations I've made:

1) There looks to be very little difference between the Red and Blue image

2) If anything stands out in the Blue it's the word 'government'

3) If anythng stands out in the Red it's the lack of the word 'government'

4) If anything stands out in the Orange it's that their manifesto seems to talk about issues and how the party is going to tackle them.

5) The word 'will' is not heavily used by Orange as it is by Red and Blue. however the word 'ensure' is a little bit bigger than the fellow primary coloured images

6) Finally, it's interesting to note that all the photos have the men facing the same direction, and with their hand in view. Is there a difference in the perception of the leader if his hand is in a fist, blurred or open?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

Aneez

In deep, end dance.

2009-07-02T20:35:00.008+01:00

North Americans in the North Americas celebrate all over North America and across the world their independence from the British Empire this week. Canada celebrated on July 1st, and USAicans celebrate on July 4th. I decided to compare the documents of each nation. Here are the visual results, colournated:

It looks as though Canadians based their charter on rights and freedoms, while the Americans based it on the relationship between people and government. There are also a lot of military terms used in the USA one.

I got to thinking of other documents of independence and wondered what one would look like if it were communicated by women...so courtesy of Destiny's Child, here is what they have to say about being independent:

It may look ridiculous, but the words talk about the current state of the world...

- 'Hands' and 'feet' instead of 'The right to bear arms'
- 'Honeys' show concern for the declining bee population and threat to global food stocks
- 'Women', 'girl', 'ladies'. C'mon fellas, you gotta admit those are nice words!
- ...and hey ladies, don't miss the 'shoes', 'rock', 'dollas','car','clothes'
- 'Buy', 'profit', 'house' economy, economy, economy
- 'Depend' amongst the capitalism, there is still room to help each other out
- 'Question', so philosophical even!
- 'Angels', religion balances out the philosophy

I could go on, however I'd like to know what you think...

Magna Carta

2009-06-30T19:30:00.016+01:00

Below you will see the top 50 words used in the translation of the Magna Carta. It is interesting to note that if this document were written in 2009 language, many of the same words such as 'justice', 'liberties', and 'peace' would still be used today and within the same context. However I wonder if words such as 'without','debt', and 'service' would still have the same meaning.

What do you think?

Click here to see the full image.

Aga Khan - Alberta - June 9, 2009

2009-06-29T11:59:00.004+01:00

Speech by His Highness the Aga Khan at the Graduation Ceremony of the University of Alberta.

"In today’s community of nations, a country’s standing is no longer recognized simply by what it can achieve for itself, but just as much by what it can do for others. In this context, Canada has become a world “power” in the best sense of that word."

Click here to see the full image and full text of the speech.

The Boss

2009-06-28T11:10:00.001+01:00

Clue: He's not 007. Who is he?

Godfather of Grunge

2009-06-27T11:09:00.001+01:00

This note's for you...

Mimi

2009-06-24T05:40:00.002+01:00

Name that Diva...

King of Pop

2009-06-14T09:34:00.001+01:00

Lots of hits by this artist who is called...

Just the King

2009-06-13T09:18:00.001+01:00

Who is singing these songs?

Mookie Blaylock

2009-06-12T09:16:00.001+01:00

These are words from the titles of songs of which rock band?

Familiar to Millions

2009-06-11T09:11:00.001+01:00

Can you guess the band with these words in the song titles?

Mitchell Report

2009-04-30T09:49:00.000+01:00

As most of you know I'm a huge fan of the game of baseball, and as I write this I'm also watching a battle of first place teams, the Toronto Blue Jays vs the Royals of Kansas City.

In order to prevent forgetting the past I thought it was time I took a second look at The Mitchell Report. This was Major League Baseball's investigation into the widespread use of illegal drugs amongst it's players.

Instead of re-reading my personal copy of the report I decided to look at it from a different angle...

The image below is an illustration of the words used in the report. The bigger the word appears, the more frequent it was used in the report. They say the devil is in the details and I've highlighted a few of the devilsh details which do not stand out at first glance. Here they are:

Clemens
Canseco
Bonds
McNamee

and one of the most frequent words: Radomski

Which of these 5 words have you heard of the most in relation to baseball and steroid use?

Why has Radomski, an admitted drugs dealer, had relatively little media attention when compared to the 4 other names mentioned?

Arguably, as a provider of illegal substances, he has had more impact on the game of baseball than any player in modern times.

Anyway, I'll end there before I get carried away on my soapbox, I just thought the word cloud thing was cool and wanted to share it with you.

Back to the game..

Aneez