Language Evolution driven by Prudishness

The operators of online games that are used by children go to great lengths to prevent their young players from swearing.  However, these attempts are doomed when faced with the inventiveness of children when it comes to language.  Last night, I looked over Zoe's shoulder as she was playing Runescape and noticed that every third word that she and her friends were saying was aids.  She explained that as they weren't allowed to use proper swear words, and as AIDS was something bad, they used that instead.

Update on Fri 2008-03-07 by Tristram Brelstaff

There is a good precendent for using the names of a disease as a swear word.  Here is Paul Halmos talking about John von Neumann:

Once the telephone interrupted us when we were working in his office.  His end of the conversation was very short; all he said between "Hello" and "Goodbye" was "Fekete pestis!", which means  "Black plague!".  Remembering, after he hung up, that I understood Hungarian, he turned to me, half apologetic and half exasperated, and explained that he wasn't speaking of one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but merely of some unexpected and unwanted dinner guests that his wife just told him about.

Egyptian Geese Again

I went back up the University lakes this afternoon. Zoe pestered me to take her to see the goslings. I took some more photos including this one.

Egyptian Gosling

One of a brood of 7 Egyptian goslings (Alopochen aegyptiacus) that hatched out in the past week. Photo taken this morning beside the large lake in Reading University grounds.

Byzantine

From the top of the Wikipedia page on Byzantine Fault Tolerance:

"Byzantine generals" redirects here. For actual Byzantine generals, see Category:Byzantine generals.

Stemonitis Slime Mold

Another awesome photo by Kim Fleming, alias myriorama, Queen of Slime Molds.