Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Long time no sea.

Except that ended last weekend with the joys of things going wrong while sailing thereby allowing me to cope and thus demonstrate I can sail, even if only when I'm not thinking about it. Memo to self: highly visible, and therefore embarrassing, anti-inversion devices tied to the tops of masts need not be worried about if they are held on with my father's knots. Cue the sequence of odd noises, the orange in the wake, the gybe amidst the moorings, the man-overboard, the retrace, the laugh at parentalisings and the realisation that I was Cornish-pasty sailing [sailing with an ulterior motive - sailing as a tool, not a result - and so enjoying it].

And not really very related while checking something I discovered a quirk. Go to that little Google search box top right in Firefox [Ctrl+K]. Now start typing:
H
O
M
O
And what comes up?

Homophones?
Homonyms?
Homogeneous?

Add an ess and the results run:
Homosapien [er, that's two words and the second has an ess on the end]
Homosassa Springs [it's in Florida]
Homoscedasticity [turns out it is actually a word, and it means results that show uniform variability along a trend, so basically those that someone faked badly]

Lower down it even comes up with homoseksual, just not the English equivalent.

Yes, I've got it on moderate safe search (coupled with the .co.uk version), but that claims to only filter out the worst of the porn images. And the dreaded h-word, while it does have 'sex' in the middle, shouldn't really be verboten. It's almost as if Google would prefer to suggest you are looking for homosimpson than admit you could be interested in the-love-that-moved-to-Iowa.

So perhaps it's just because of that sex-in-the-middle thing, so maybe heterosexual doesn't... oh wait, homosexuality never auto-completes, heterosexuality is an option from heteros onwards. Well, that's odd.

But then the hetero bit is more popular, what with the whole one in ten thing, so... oh.

So Google are obscuring a term that by traffic is 5-times as popular. Because it's illegal in... er, Somalia? And North Korea. And Myanmar. We picking up a trend here?

Is this doing no evil?

Well, maybe if we try something else. How about G A Y [and I don't mean the place where even the floor pulls]?

Give me a G: Gmail, Google Maps, Google Earth...
Give me an A: Games, Gamestop, Gap...

Games > Gay
Gamestop < Gay
Gap < Gay [presumably A&F = ...]

And weirdly Gamestop < Gap.

Similar thing with queer, where even queef (you don't want to know) appears.

And yes, demonstrating this does rely on you not already having homosex* in your above the bar suggestions (so having reinstalled/purged stuff recently).

So basically it turns out Google has a DADT policy. Kinda handy in world's biggest library. Who knew section 28 still existed?

And that better be it from me for now.

Anyhoo,

PS. Oddly it makes no attempt to hide the word insidious.

[To be filed under "Not Cool"]