Fun With Google Trends

[ritaxis]

This is Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's fault. She looked at some trends here. I thought I could be sillier than that, and this is one truly goofy result, and this is one that could actually be used in a stupid argument to say something really meaningless about genre fiction. Honestly, I don't see how Google Trends could be used to say anything that wasn't utterly loopy. On another front, well, it rained again today, which is not really that astonishing, but the rainy season is supposed to be over. At least I didn't have to water the yard. On still another front, the inside of the human colon is gorgeous. So pink and sinuous and warm looking, with delicate traceries of red blood vessels. Like a sculpture of some rosy marble, polished, glowing: but also alive and motile. That is, that's what it looks like through an endoscope, when it's alive and unbreached by the surgeon's knife. I've always suspected that, actually. That human organs would be beautiful if we could see them in a context that didn't remind us viscerally of damage and death.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I tried "science fiction, fantasy -baseball, magic realism, cyberpunk, fanfiction" to see if it would smooth out the top line--it got more jagged instead, but all the specific news stories were now science fiction.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Some years back, I had all sorts of tests, most of them disgusting (especially to me, the participant). One day it was endoscopy. First they gave me some vomitous decayed-tasting blue liquid to stifle (overwhelm?) my gag reflex, then the tube went down my throat. They let me have a peek when I asked for it. The next day it was a sigmoidoscopy, which looked into me from the opposite approach. My request was anticipated -- they simply put a second eyepiece on the device, and I got to witness the entire "fantastic voyage," as it were. I only wish they'd put it on video.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

The problem with your second goofy result is that the word "fantasy" is used in all kinds of contexts other than referring to genre literature.

Any idea why there are recurring mild spikes in the word "potato" in the last quarter of the year? Perhaps an increase in the use of the phrase "couch potato" around Thanksgiving?

No hyphen in "Nielsen Hayden", by the by.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Actually I thought the thing about "fantasy" being used in all those different ways was a revealing feature, though I can't say why. Certainly I can't think of anything that's revealed by it now.

Nor can I say where that hyphen came from. I know that no hyphen belongs there. But it's in there, and no fingers touched this keyboard but mine.