"data is" and 'try and"

A couple days ago, one of the pinko blogs I like reminded me that Google has a feature that lets you trace language usage over the last century and a half or so.  Kevin Drum was interested in seeing how "data" has, more and more, been used as a singular noun (which he, quite incorrectly, sees as a good development), and he used Googles Ngram Viewer to generate this chart:

 

Which reminded me of one of my pet peeves, the use of "try and" instead of the correct "try to."  So, of course, I investigated and found that "try and" is not becoming more common (at least in the Google database); quite the contrary, as a matter of fact:

 

But the reason I'm mentioning all this is because in the process of looking for my earlier "try and" post I wound up looking at all my posts from February 2008.  And I have to say I liked most of them.