Zambia editor jailed over porn trial

" Zambia Post's Fred M'membe was jailed for four months for contempt of court. The Post employee was cleared of obscenity charges last November for sending government ministers pictures of a woman giving birth in a hospital car park during a nurses' strike. President...

Communist search engine Engels blocks nudity and profanity

The communist party of St. Petersburg, Russia, is launching a search engine named Engels after a communist mastermind German philosopher Friedrich Engels. The search engine will block pornographic content, dating...

Gere escapes Indian courts

"Gere escapes Indian courts India`s top court has suspended an arrest warrant against Hollywood star Richard Gere, for breaking public obscenity laws by kissing Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty at a public Aids awareness event last year.Read More..."

Porn Mogul Jim Mitchell Dies at 63

Jim Mitchell, more recently famous for the shooting of his brother Artie in 1991, has died at his home in Northern California. The Mitchell Brothers ran the O'Farrell Theater in San Francisco, pushing the limits...

More About Obscenity

I had a story in the Globe earlier this week about a new linguistic study of obscenity. The story ran a bit long and some of it ended up on the cutting room floor, so I thought I would reconstitute it here. Call this the "director's cut." In keeping with previous postings on...

Coming soon, a linguist's guide to obscenities

"The National Science Foundation is paying more than $200,000 for a study whose results may be unprintable.The grant's title, "Expressive Content and the Semantics of Contexts," doesn't sound exciting, until you figure out what "expressive content" means.Christopher Potts , a...

Gere Apologizes for India Kissing Controversy, Shetty Fans Angry at Magistrate

A contrite Richard Gere has apologized for causing such a fuss by kissing superstar Shilpa Shetty, redirecting public attention towards the AIDS awareness and prevention program he was there to promote in the...

closeSign in to NowPublic

is reporting from