shitpicking
The New York Times’ Archives Are Remarkably Scatological
In an article on online real-estate gossip and lawsuits in today's New York Times, the paper delicately refers to a "Web site, whose name is too scatological to be published here." The site in question is Shitty Habitats. A quick search of the Times' archives reveals that the paper has decided the word shit is somehow not too scatological to print; the most offensive fecal matter is contained in the -ty, apparently. But it's the Times; somehow that extra-special fussiness isn't exactly shocking. What does come as a bit of a surprise is an archival search for shitty, which turns up no fewer than 841 hits. It seems that somehow in old-timey Times that have been scanned and uploaded to the site, the word thirty renders as shitty in search results. Either some programmer had a lot of feelings about approaching the big 3-0, or he did a rather scatological job on that project.
