In his famous book Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman points out how our present use of language can be a fairly accurate predictor of future success. Seligman explains how he was able to predict outcomes of sporting events with reasonable accuracy by comparing the language used by the coaches and players in interviews before the event. Basically what he did was count all the positive words and the negative words in published pre-game quotes from the players and coaches, and then he calculated the ratio of positive words to negative. The team with the higher ratio was the one picked to win. There is some subjectivity in deciding whether a word is positive, negative, or neutral, but if you try it yourself, I think you