Divorce Word Cloud

Recently, I seem to have a fascination with depicting words. I have seen visualizations of words in the media. With iPhone apps people can now do things that use to take expensive software. I was please to see I could get a free app that would create word clouds. A word cloud is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict the frequency of each word shown with font size and/or color. The assumption is that important words are larger and in a different color. The word cloud above is a visualization of the documents necessary to start a divorce action in court in Arizona. I had to increase the frequency of a word appearing to at least 20 times and taking out some common words or it would have not been readable. It is interesting to see how the words COURT and YOU are the biggest and most frequent and the word attorney is in the smallest font. The word child is somewhere in between. I am not sure if this is a significant statement about the divorce process but it certainly is interesting. Unfortunately, the word mediation did not show up at all. As I write this, I think I will do another word cloud using the Divorce Memorandum of Understanding and Consent Decree and see how it compares.

As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM(233) 10/27/11

Divorce and Ambigrams

I am sorry I have not been able to blog for awhile. Just did not seem to have the time. I enjoy blogging and missed it and will try harder to blog at least once a week.

I was fascinated by ambigrams before I knew what they were called. My initials WM and my license plate zwmz are both ambigrams. I learned the name for the first time when I read Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons.” For those of you who don’t know what an ambigram is the following quote from Wikepedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambigram) explains:
“An ambigram is a typographical design or art form that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation. The words readable in the other viewpoint, direction or orientation may be the same or different from the original words. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a "calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves." Different ambigram artists (sometimes called ambigramists) may create completely different ambigrams from the same word or words, differing in both style and form.” The above drawing is an ambigram for the word divorce.
My daughter says I can make anything into a blog about mediation. As usual, she is correct. This in part the case because I believe in synergy which may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable. In this case I am taking ambigrams, divorce and mediation.
In mediating a divorce the parties must look at things from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation but hopefully come up with a similar result. With an ambigram we look at a word in a different way (usually upside down) but see something not only similar but the same. When we do this in mediating a divorce we come up with new and creative solutions to the problems the couple is having resolving their case.

As always, you can post any comment about this blog or Divorce Mediation, or just Mediation by following the directions at the right in the green column or at the bottom of this website. Learn more about mediation at http://www.center-divorce-mediation.com/ WM(232) 10/20/11