Dear all, In photo circles EVIL is currently used as an acronym for "Electronic Viewfinder Interchangable Lens" cameras, a new form of cameras that do away with the optical viefinder. Probably this is as firmly toungue-in-cheek as the use of the term "evil" in certain areas of category theory. And while I don't know if many photographers are offended by this term, this obviously is the case with some of our colleagues in category theory. While I'm sure that everybody agrees that the concept as such is important and worth studying, the ongoing dispute over the terminology seems to be rather counterproductive. Of course, one problem with mathematidcal terminology is that so many terms are overloaded by now (natural, continuous...) Any term borrowed from the realm of everyday life will carry certain overtones (and will irritate non-mathematicians). On the other hand, acronyms can come across a clumsy and an impediment to speach (ufl-functors). Maybe it is not too late to find a clever new name for the concept that does convey the negative connotations intended by the original adopters of "evil" without being so offensive to others (we don't want to wait 30 or more years before changing terminology, cf. the 2005/06 discussion concerning "cartesian" and "cocartesian"). Peter Freyd was always very inventive coining new terminology, even though not much of it caught on. Let me start by proposing "equi-unstable" and "precarious" as possible replacements for "evil". -- Juergen -- Juergen Koslowski If I don't see you no more on this world ITI, TU Braunschweig I'll meet you on the next one koslowj@iti.cs.tu-bs.de and don't be late! http://www.iti.cs.tu-bs.de/~koslowj Jimi Hendrix (Voodoo Child, SR) [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]