Russian obscenity
The New York Times profiles two Russian scholars on opposite sides of the obscenity-censorship issue. Aleksei Plutser-Sarno has just published The Big Dictionary of Obscenity, Volume 1, a 390-page study of a single word. (The Times adds, "The one-word subtitle of Volume 1 cannot be repeated here. Not even in Russian." Daze Reader would love to print the word, in English and Russian, but doesn't know what it is. Google has no other English-language references to this book.) Meanwhile, Vatanyar S. Yagya has launched a crusade to outlaw swearing in public, which he hopes would "force citizens to turn to Russian's trove of expressions to make their points and help keep the language rich."
