New York Stops Calling Lakes the N-Word

Upstate New York is a wilderness we usually try to ignore. Apparently, it's not just us because no one noticed that environmental conservation laws refer to remote bodies of water up there by the n-word. "It was a shock to us. The term is very offensive," said a scientist from Department of Environmental Conservation in today's Wall Street Journal. "These are not regulations that get looked at often, but somebody discovered it." In all, at least four instances of the n-word were found on a map and in various indexes. Officially changing the names is a complicated bureaucratic process, but pretty much everyone involved can agree it makes them feel uncomfortable, so they'll at least reference them differently. One body of water is now known as "unnamed lake," which feels offensive in its own right. [WSJ]