An amusing new service: "Google Trends", which offers a graphical display of the volume of search and "news" activity for one or more terms. For instance, comparing earth, air, fire, and water reveals:

Air (red: air travel, air quality, air force, etc.) usually wins, though water (green) blips up when floods threaten, and recently earth (blue) has become competitive. Fire (yellow) usually isn't close. Playing rock-paper-scissors shows:

Rock (blue - music!) trumps paper (red), though in the news they're almost tied; scissors (yellow) lags far behind — unlike in the children's game where, according to expert players, it's one of the best moves (^_^) ...

TopicScience - TopicProgramming - TopicHumor - 2006-05-27

(correlates: Epicentric Rant, WeightOfOffice, PhallusyAndWombatism, ...)