Four Letter Words robot plays word association, swears quite a bit

If you know us, you know how much we love our swear words -- the basis of which, of course, is the old fashioned "four letter word." Artist Rob Seward must feel the same way -- he's actually gone so far as to build a robot that can assemble letters out of fluorescent lights, displaying English language words up to four digits long. Drawing on a word association database developed at the University of South Florida, an algorithm is used to display a never-ending series of words for bemused viewers. Not all the words are "blue," mind you, but the thing does trend that way, as determined "by a variety of language and perception studies, especially Elliot McGinnies's 1949 study 'Emotionality and Perceptual Defense'" (you know the one).