05 November 2006

Originality on the Tree of Life

words and phrases
on the inner orbits
of the yahoo zodiac
are more common

those in outer orbits
less common

color the common ones yellow
the rare ones red
with a full orange gradient
between

when a person posts
a rare phrase (or word)
to the web
put a red star
on the Tree of Life

(a common phrase
yellow)

or if they speak
a rare or common phrase

or even think one

now step back

and look for patterns
of red vs yellow

people with large
active vocabularies
use redder words

poets and children and lovers
redder phrases

bad schools
enforce yellow conformity

communities are sometimes visited
by red topics

authors gather
red phrases
into notebooks

trying to turn
yellow pages
redder




[color version]