Sideswipe

Do you remember Stay Alive!?

After promising to rid our healthcare system of bludging refugees and their ilk, the Auckland District Health Board has begun sending out its mini-census documents. A reader from Mt Albert has received her "citizen verification form" demanding a copy of her passport, or birth certificate or other identification to show that she has valid New Zealand citizenship. "I was not only born in this country," she writes, "but have lived here all my life [70 years] and for the past 40 years at the same address." Is the board's thinking, "We are all foreigners until proven otherwise?"

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Gay, disabled comedian and social entrepreneur Philip Patston admits National's new Political Correctness Eradicator Wayne Mapp and party leader Don Brash are right when they say political correctness should be eradicated. A self-confessed vegetarian, Patston has offered to meet the MPs to discuss the most cost-effective means of his own eradication. He says he will immediately pay back the social entrepreneur grant he received in 2003 to promote disability arts, and has volunteered to give up the Billy T Award he won, which he says was awarded only because the judges wanted to be fair. He has also suggested the Shortland Street episodes in which he starred in 1999 be destroyed for politically correctly portraying his character, Josh Sinclair, as a successful disabled businessman.

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German police are investigating the family of Prince Ernst August of Hanover for illegal firearms possession. The investigation started after the family put a collection of muskets, pistols and armour up for auction. Investigators found that some of the guns were in working order. They seized the weapons and are trying to determine if the owners had permits for them. (Source: reason.com)

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Remember Stay Alive!? Chinese checkers with trapdoors and a panicky exclamation mark in the title to ramp up the potential excitement. Up to four players take turns to move plastic tabs under coloured marbles and attempt to line up openings that will cause their rivals' balls to drop into oblivion and out of the game. The serious Stay Alive! player soon worked out that, if the tabs were whipped about with great speed, inertia would prevent one's own balls from dropping, while still securing a gap into which an opponent's balls might drop. Cool.

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Australia has an obesity problem, writes Chris Muir, of Dubbo, who overheard in a food court: "No, you're not having a doughnut until you've finished your chips and gravy."(Source: Sydney Morning Herald).