Sideswipe: June 10: Senseless grapes

Doesn't sound like brain food, does it?

Meltdown warning

"Great to hear the Fire Service on the radio reminding us to make sure our fire embers are no longer burning — by putting water on them — before disposing of them," writes a reader. "My lesson well-learned was putting my still-hot fire embers in my wheelie bin and putting it out for collection. Next day there was two half-melted wheels covered by a melted green clump of plastic!"

Rules made to be broken

The new crossing at Rodney Rd, Northcote. Road rules state you must stop at a Stop sign where you can see clearly in both directions. They also state you must not stop on a pedestrian crossing. Which rule do you break here?

Take a pick.

Pets behaving badly

"A few years ago a lot of my jewellery went missing bit by bit," writes Ailsa from Glen Innes. "There had been no break-in and I thought maybe a visitor was stealing it. I suspected each visitor and watched them all closely. Then one day we bought a new fridge and had the old one (which left a gap between it and the wall) removed. Then we discovered the missing items. Moggie had a refined taste."

When fear comes back to haunt

The snippet about the fear of "fan death" in Korea prompted a reader to ponder other strange fears you don't quite believe ... but can't quite disbelieve either. Certain cultural syndromes can be made "real" by our belief in them — a phenomenon called the nocebo effect, where negative expectations can start a chain of harmful events which ultimately fulfil those expectations. In Victorian England, riding on trains was feared to cause dangerous bouts of mania. Medical journals at the time said the vibrations of the railway carriage could have a disastrous effect on one's nerves. As Professor Amy-Milne Smith wrote, "not only might you be attacked by a madman on a railway journey — you might become one".