Reality: Reharding Yankev’s comment about Dillinger’s penis at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, this is from the Museum’s frequently asked questions page on their Web site:

That was Neurodoc’s comment.You have attributed this to the wrong member.

43. Do you have 20th-century gangster John Dillinger’s penis in the collection?

No. There was a photograph published after Dillinger was killed that showed him lying on an autopsy table. He’s naked except for a towel on his midsection and it seems to indicate he has a very large penis. Because the museum was the only place showing body parts people thought they must have cut it off and sent it to us. We don’t have it, but we get a lot of phone calls asking if we do.

The Den Mother: I’m almost more horrified by the missing comma than I am by the unfortunate typo.

Of course…

Yankev: Spell checkers can give you interesting results. I remember leaving the “r” out of “demised premises” one time when drafting a lease. Assuming that spell check would recognize the word, I clicked the top suggestion without reading it. Fortunately I re-read the lease after printing it and before sending it, as the anatomical member that spell check selected cannot legally be demised in most US jurisdictions.

It is hard to imagine the anatomical member to which you allude being demised legally or otherwise by means of a lease*, but I can tell you that circumcisions have gone awry resulting in demised ones and lawsuits.

(*Allegedly, John Dellinger was prodigously endowed and that body part of his was preserved as a specimen in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington. If true, might it be said that upon his demise, Dillinger demised said body part to the government?)

Yankev: Someone apparently concluded that three generations of males is enough.

Threadwinner!!

I’ll forgive the bill for cleaning coffee out of my keyboard — just buy Orin a beer.

kumquat: The person writing it dropped an r, misspelling “nurturing” as “nuturing”. Then it would be logical for the spellchecker to suggest “neutering” first.

MS Word gives the following suggestions for “nuturing”:

Neutering
Muttering
Nattering
Untiring

D.O.: Then, what a stupid spellchecker does not know the word nurturing.

My theory:
The person writing it dropped an r, misspelling “nurturing” as “nuturing”. Then it would be logical for the spellchecker to suggest “neutering” first.

Fedya: Then, what a stupid spellchecker does not know the word nurturing.

Spell checkers can give you interesting results. I remember leaving the “r” out of “demised premises” one time when drafting a lease. Assuming that spell check would recognize the word, I clicked the top suggestion without reading it. Fortunately I re-read the lease after printing it and before sending it, as the anatomical member that spell check selected cannot legally be demised in most US jurisdictions.

D.O.:
What the heck did they mean? “Nurturing fun” does not sit well with me. At least without a coma in between. Then, what a stupid spellchecker does not know the word nurturing.

Freudian slip? ;-) Either that or your idea of fun (or nurturing!) is extremely dangerous….

I can understand why you might want to sleep on it, but isn’t a coma a wee bit excessive?

Which brings me to my question. The LA parks are presumably a state actor, and therefore bound by the 14th Amdt. This is presumably sex discrimination, and last I remembered, faced intermediate scrutiny. But would something like this really survive even that level of scrutiny?

I’m hoping they meant “nurturing” and the computer helped nudge a misspelling in the wrong direction.

Bill Poser: I assume that when confronted with this blatant violation of gender equality, they will add spaying to the program.

I hope so! It is unconscionable that the Parks Department is providing safe and effective birth control to boys but not to girls.