Around Valentine's Day in the US and UK, these things called candy hearts (or conversation hearts or sweethearts) appear: small and sugary, bearing a simple, short Valentine's message. There are only room for a few characters, so they read something like "LOVE YOU" or "CALL ME" or "BE MINE". I collected all the genuine heart messages I could find, and then gave them to a learning algorithm called a neural network. Given a set of data, a neural network will learn the patterns that let it imitate the original data - although its imitation is sometimes imperfect. The candy heart messages it produced… well, you be the judge.

Editor's note: The following excerpt from a book about swear words contains many, many swear words. Some of them are pretty ugly, but it's all in the name of linguistics. Many words describing sexual organs, excretory functions, and so on fail to rise to the heights (or, if you prefer, sink to the depths) of profanity. These words are articulated without fear of offending, whether in the classroom or the courtroom or the examination room. They aren't profane, despite referring to taboo concepts.

I always seasoned my vocabulary with as many four-letter words as 50-cent ones, at least until my first child was born two years ago. That's when I found myself -- and I'm almost embarrassed to admit it -- watching my language. Something deep in my subconscious told me that profanity might harm him in some way, that even a fleeting expletive, like a curse word uttered while stumbling over a child gate, could do lasting damage. Because I was not only a new parent but also a cognitive scientist specializing in language, I decided to investigate the issue. And I'm happy to report that, nowadays, if I drop an f-bomb in front of my kid, I don't sweat it.