Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/26/war-on-words-nyc-dept-of-education-wants-50-forbidden-words-removed-from-standardized-tests/

  Btw, even if it made even some semblance of sense to ban such "offensive"
words from school tests, there are some words listed in the article that
still don't make sense even in that context.

  For example banning the word "dinosaur" makes no sense. The rationale
given is that it could potentially offend creationists. But if you look at
creationists, the *love* dinosaurs. Every single "creation museum" in
existence probably has a big dinosaur on its facade (or at the very least
inside), as well as every single piece of creationist childrens' book, etc.
If there's one animal that creationists just adore, it's the dinosaur.

  Banning the word "dinosaur" makes exactly as much sense as banning the
word "reptile" or the word "bird".

  And if they ban the word "dinosaur", are they also going to ban all
the orders, families, genuses and species that belong to the superorder
dinosauria? (If "dinosaur" is banned, what stops some teacher from using
instead something like "theropod", "coelophysoid" or "efraasia" if he
wants to be clever?) And how about other extinct clades such as the
trilobites or ammonites? How about "living fossils" such as the coelacanth?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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