* Perhaps my favorite search engine query that brought someone to this site: “”robert frank” schelling infatuation”. Economists in love!

* In other query news, a reader sent me this link to a Language Log post about taboo avoidance. I’d forgotten about it, but am still delighted by the hilarious Wall Street Journal quote:

2. Circumlocution, paraphrase, and allusion.

The Wall Street Journal (like the New York Times) generally avoids asterisks and the like, in favor of work-arounds, sometimes elaborate and coy ones, as in this article (of 8/18/06) about the movie Snakes on a Plane:

Also, the filmmakers added new scenes to the film, including one where Mr. [Samuel L.] Jackson’s character delivers an exclamation similar to one a sound-alike had uttered in a fan trailer. In it, Mr. Jackson repeatedly uses an Oedipal expletive to describe both the snakes and the plane.

(Thanks to Jake Seliger. More Snakes on a Plane material from Ben Zimmer here.)