Snowclone analysis

A "snowclone" is a multi-use template into which many things can be substituted. For instance:

• ___ is the new ___;
• There are always more ___ in the ___;
• Keep ___ and ___ ___;
• Once a ___ always a ___;
• Dude, where's my ___;
• The new ___ on the ___;
• You say ___, I say ___;
• Yo Dawg, I herd you like ___, so I put a ___ in your ___ so you can ___ while you ___;

Snowclones make relatively attractive targets for meme frequency analysis and phylomemetics - since there are many related variants, and the surrounding phrasal template often makes it easy to find and identify them.

To help illustrate the idea, I did some meme frequency analysis on Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous snowclone:

Nothing in ___ makes sense except in the light of ___

The results:

• Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution (560,000)
• Nothing in medicine makes sense, except in the light of evolution (20,200)
• Nothing about protein structure classification makes sense except in the light of evolution (8,220)
• Nothing in glycobiology makes sense except in the light of evolution (4,690)
• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of DNA (1,750)
• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of ecology (754)
• Nothing in morality makes sense except in the light of evolution (337)
• Nothing in biochemistry makes sense except in the light of evolution (124)
• Nothing in psychology makes sense except in the light of evolution (119)
• Nothing in economics makes sense except in the light of evolution (81)
• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of phylogeny (74)
• Nothing in politics makes sense, except in the light of cultural evolution (55)
• Nothing in human psyche and society makes sense except in the light of cultural evolution (10)
• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of genetics (9)
• Nothing in Nazism makes sense except in the light of evolution (5)
• Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of fitness landscapes (5)
• Nothing about human cooperation makes sense except in the light of cultural evolution (3)
• Nothing in physics makes sense except in the light of the big bang (3)
• Nothing in economics makes sense except in the light of ecology (3)
• Nothing in physics makes sense except in the light of information (2)
• Nothing in biology (including psychology) makes sense except in the light of evolution (1)