I may suffer from a hypersensitive imagination, but when I see a headline like this the first thing in the morning, I don't know whether to question my sanity, or question authority:

I knew that North Korea held an underground test, and I know they have planes, but I didn't that the word "planing" could mean anything more than making a surface flat -- usually with a tool.

That made no sense. But I still had this lingering worry that I might be ignorant, and that there might a secondary meaning of the verb "plane" which involved putting something on a plane. (I mean, after all, you can ship things, and you can truck things around; maybe we've been able to plane things all along and I just never paid attention.)

But when I'm lucky, my imagination is tempered by common sense. Even if there is such a secondary meaning of "plane," it's not in common use, and straining to read obscure secondary meanings into things that are probably simple mistakes violates not only common sense, but also the well established maxim that it's never a good idea to attribute to design what can best be explained by stupidity or human error.

So, after my imagination calmed down and my common sense dictated to me that this had to be a typo, I still had to read the article, because typos don't usually appear in headlines.

When I clicked on the headline, the word "planing" also appeared on top on the headline of the actual story, but in the text the word "planning" was spelled correctly:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meanwhile, was reported to have told a visiting Chinese delegation that the communist nation wasn't planning more nuclear tests.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency said more than 100,000 people gathered in Pyongyang's central Kim Il Sung square to "hail the success of the historic nuclear test."

No biggie. Everyone makes misteaks.

Far be it from me to complane.

MORE: This planing business is worse than I thought, and it's spreading! Not only that, I don't think it's Yahoo's fault. I just performed a Google news search on the word "planing" and while Google's robot knows I'm wrong and suggests "planning" instead, there are 287 stories about "planing." The AP story has been regurgitated without any correction by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Forbes, the Prescott Herald, the Niagara Gazette, the Spokesman Review and others.

I think the problem lies with the Associated Press.

(I hope they're not planing anything for the election.)

MORE: To its credit, the Washington Post has corrected the headline's spelling! But as of 8:35 a.m., the Guardian, the Prescott Herald, Forbes, the Niagara Gazette, and the Spokesman Review have not.

Now I'm really curious. Should we assume that this is all automated? Or should we assume that only the WaPo employs editors who read the headlines? Why did only the Post get it right? The reason I'm stumped is that Google News obviously caught the error. And there is a thing called Spell Check....

So maybe it's unfair to blame robots.

MORE: It occurs to me that because AP reports are syndicated, there might be contractual obligations to use them as they are, or not use them at all. Thus, it might not be permissible to correct them (which would mean the WaPo may be breaking the rules.)

Does anyone know?

AND MORE: Kim Jong Il has explained that the nuclear test was itself a mistake, and has offered as an explanation the fact that he was molested as child:

(2006-10-21) -- North Korean President Kim Jong-Il today reportedly told Chinese diplomats that he regrets his government's recent detonation of a nuclear device, and he revealed that he had been molested as a child.

If we follow out this logic, it becomes clear that what happened to President Kim as a child is responsible for the entire chain of events which led to the misspelling in question.

(It's a classic example of the old "butt but for" causation I learned about in law school....)

MORE: Might planing have a future anyway? There are over 20,000 entries for "urban planing" 17,000 for "planing commission" and 700 for "planing department," so it might be a good idea to plane ahead!

On the other hand, perhaps I should "stop complaning."

MORE (10/22/06): Much as I hate to belabor the point, I forgot all about "family planing," which seems to be mostly a generalized process involving abortions, vasectomies, tubal ligations, etc.

Hmmm....

While the word "planning" is suggested as a Google alternative, since the goal seems to be along the lines of preventing human reproduction rather than enabling it, in this context it seems that "planing" might actually be a better word than "planning."