Washington Post prints the F-word

So, Dick Cheney swore at Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, and the Washington Post printed the epithet ("fuck yourself") without asterisks or other cartoon punctuation. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder if it will get them in trouble. I guess the FCC doesn't control print media (yet). Some amusing quotes from the story:

As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the "Defense of Decency Act" by 99 to 1.

[...]

There is no rule against obscene language by a vice president on the Senate floor. The senators were present for a group picture and not in session, so Rule 19 of the Senate rules -- which prohibits vulgar statements "unbecoming a senator" -- does not apply, according to a Senate official. Even if the Senate were in session, the vice president, though constitutionally the president of the Senate, is an executive branch official and therefore free to use whatever language he likes.

The Washington Times was more delicate: "According to the aide, Mr. Cheney then responded with a barnyard epithet, urging Mr. Leahy to perform an anatomical sexual impossibility."

Washington Post: "Washington Post prints the F-word"

Thanks to wonkette for keeping us up to date: the Washington Post interviews itself about printing obscenities. Apparently they've done it before, for the Starr report, the GWB/Adam Clymer "major-league asshole" quote (Cheney: "big time"), and for some death row story in 1992. "[R]eaders need to judge for themselves what the word is because we don't play games at The Washington Post and use dashes." It's a fun game: what else might "F--- yourself" be? "Flog yourself"? "Fret yourself"? "Fail yourself"?

Make progress every day.

I hate debugging. It's tedious, painstaking, and frustrating. It's like when you try to untie your shoelaces but you end up with a knot instead, and you have to sit and carefully untangle the knot when you just really want to get your damn shoe off.

What's worse is that once you finally fix a bug, no matter how sure you were that it was going to be the last one, there'll usually be another one hiding behind it. It's pretty much impossible to estimate just how many bugs are in your way—it could be one or a hundred, but there's no way to tell until you're done.

But it sure is a great feeling when you find out that you just fixed the last one! After finally getting this particular feature to work after three weeks (when I thought it would take one), now I can start actually using the feature and taking it for a spin. Wheeee!

(Minor bright side: now I know a lot more about online partial evaluation than I did before. Maybe someday it will come in handy again.)