More Words and Wordles

OK, by now every blogger in the world is familiar with Wordle and word clouds. Its just occurred to me that a word cloud generator can be used as a quick indicator of how focussed a blog post or other piece of writing is. By dint of enlarging and highlighting all the words used most it gives a pretty good visual representation of how important something is to the writer. If your cloud has a lot of poor common English words, it will show (as in "get" in the cloud below). If you figure too highly in it yourself it will show.

Here is the cloud for the last few blogs on this page:

The Core

I sometimes hear (usually students) say unbelievably ignorant things like "why do Christians keep going on about the cross so much?" To borrow from the movie, it is inconceivable that a man should die for the sins of the whole world and rise again, and for Christians not to be obsessed about communicating the cross.
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Indiana Jones and the Scandalously Absent Plot

It occurs to me that the excellent pseudo-historical adventures of Lost Ark and Last Crusade are much more natural settings for adventure. The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are plot objects of gravitas and the historical setting rich in connotation. And as well as architypal plot objects it had architypal villains. Swapping this for a pseudo-sci-fi setting lost the rich connotation and rendered the plot objects and villains weak because they lacked the architypal nature needed to make a Jones movie a success.
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New Light!

The electrician has just left. After weeks of redecoation we now have lights back in the house! No more stumbling around in the dark.

  • In the dark you hurt yourself against things you didn't know were dangers
  • In the dark you don't know where you are going
  • In the dark you fall down the stairs
  • In the dark people do wicked things, thinking they won't be seen (not, hopefully, in my lounge)
  • In the dark you get frightened and lost 

It's great having the light back on.

 
Isaiah 50:10:  Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.

Isaiah 42:16:  And I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.