Since we seem to be on a musical theme for titles this morning.

Cool story, found originally over at Taegan Goddard's joint, but which can actually be seen at Pollster.com. Probably everybody in the world except me knows all about "tag clouds" now, but if you've been hiding the fact you don't either, check this out. The particular examples given here are Tag Cloud boxes for the words most frequently used by each candidate in the Dem debates the other night.

As the esteemed Mark Blumenthal puts it,

Obviously, this feature is a bit off-topic for a site devoted to polling methodology, but it does deal with the graphic analysis of political data. I can certainly see potential applications of this sort of graphic for those that conduct and transcribe focus groups and other "qualitative" analysis.

But enough wonkiness. Readers, what do you see in these clouds? Our comment section is wide open...

As, of course, is ours. Just for fun, leave your droppings at both places --do you like tag clouds, find them informative, just entertaining, actively loathesome?

Some people find them about as amusing as a box of Refrigerator Magnet Poetry slips scattered about a metal surface at random; others think there are clues to be learned from them. I need to learn more about how they're compiled and what the precise meaning of the varying sizes of words are (I know bigger word=used more often, but there are about six different sizes down to "unreadably teensy" and some quantification for varying circumstances would be helpful).

In the same post is a list of the total number of words spoken by each candidate. Joe Biden should clip this out and blow it up and take it with him on his next round of Sabbath Gasbag appearances in an attempt to dispel a certain accusation often leveled at him. No, not the one that he's a craven coward on the important votes, one of the other accusations.