On this day: the first American IVF baby

 The first in-vitro fertilized baby born in the US, Elizabeth Jordan Carr was born on today's date in 1981. She was newsworthy then, and has been checked in on by the press from time to time since, although IVF is so common now that she's not particularly noteworthy:

What's interesting is that while today we might call her an IVF baby, we would not have done so, at least not until several years after she was born. The term in-vitro fertilization reached its peak relevance in 1989, and has leveled off and fallen some since.

IVF, on the other hand, wasn't used until 1984, and was then only used sparingly until it climbed dramatically in the late 1990s, probably when the Internet and assorted communication changes made for more abbreviating.

On this day: tsunami vs. tidal wave

It was December 26 in 2004 that the tsunami hit. There have been other tsunamis back through the years, but it was the one in 2004 that caused the most damage, or was at least the most widely reported. Before then, tsunamis were rarely in the news, but since 2004 (and 2005, when most of the coverage occurred), they show up quite often.

Still, it seems bizarre. Were there really no tsunamis before 2004? Was 2004's so big that it blew coverage out of proportion to this degree? Nope. The difference, of course, is that befre 2004, we were more likely to call a tsunami by its misnomer, a tidal wave.

 Tidal wave coverage also peaked in coverage in the mid-2000s, but in 2004, not 2005. Many early news reports were about "tidal waves" but, presumably, editors got on board with "tsunami" and the term tidal wave ebbed."Tsunami" has stayed significantly higher since 2004, and "tidal wave" has dropped to pre-1990 levels.

A couple more notes. First, you can see that there were tidal waves in 1946, and 1960, although it becomes more muddled after that. Second, if you look at recent uses of tidal wave in the news, it is more likely to be used as a figure of speech, "a tidal wave of trash" or "an olympic tidal wave" or "a tidal wave of rage." In the past, it was more likely to describe the wave itself. When will we talk about a "tsunami of public outpouring" or a "a tidal wave of applicants"?

The Internet (or the web, or the tubes …)

This medium, which makes this blog possible, has evolved rapidly in the last couple of decades, as have its many names. Remember when everyone talked about the World Wide Web to the extent that three Ws still often precede web addresses? The term was almost a flash in the pan: it was coined in 1989, the term's usage peaked in 1996, and has declined dramatically since. We still use "the web," we just don't call it that.

The term the web peaked later, but still pre-2000.

The term www rose to prominence somewhat later, peaked, for some reason, in 2006, and has declined since.

and the net is similar to the web.

So, the web is now called the Internet, right? Well, not completely. Like the other terms, internet peaked in 2000 (with the dot-com bubble and all) but while the others have declined and leveled out, the term "internet" has resumed growth and is being used at almost-2000 levels:

So where does that leave us? Are we really talking less about the internet now than we were in 2000? Sure, 2000 had the dot-com boom, but this medium which is so oft used no longer has a definitive name. Almost no one had high speed internet back then, now everyone does. Rather than coalescing under one name, the Internet has split in to many terms—in just two decades names have fallen, and risen, and it is now often referred to with jargony names which have arisen from, well, from the internet. To wit:

That's the chart for interwebs, an entirely jocular term which has increased dramatically since 2006. The peaks before that are from Houston Interweb Design, a once-publicly traded web design firm (remember when everyone went public in the 90s?) which has ceased to exist.

Then, of course, there's the intertubes

which come from a "series of tubes"

for which we have Uncle Ted Stevens

to thank. Or as you may know him, Senator Tubes.