Av***ance char**ters

Fun piece in Language Log about the cat-and-mouse game that ensued as Chinese censors tried, and sometimes failed, to insert "avoidance characters" in articles by the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof. He details it in an op-ed piece today (sub req'd). Apparently, there is so much net traffic that the 30,000 internet censors (!) can't keep up! You might want to browse through links of earlier posts on Language Log about the contortions through which publications put themselves to avoid printing certain words.