Kiwi innovation spotted at an open home in Henderson.
iPad, therefore I am
A reader writes: "Next year's stationery list for my 10-year-old includes a iPad. What? It's not just a low-income issue, it's identifying the haves from the have-nots; it's the 'oops sorry mum I dropped the iPad on way to school, or I can't find it, or I left it on my desk, or we were playing rugby and I forgot it was in my bag'. To me it is like the emperor's new clothes scenario as everyone seems so locked into the idea that it is for the best and we are equipping them for the future but all it seems to be doing is creating social dysfunction. There is one beneficiary of this scheme and it ain't the kids, it's the retailers who are selling them by the truckload."
An obvious winner
To promote the new leisure centre opening in Spring 2015 in Selby, North Yorkshire, a local company sponsored a competition to name the centre, offering a year's free membership as a prize. On November 5, general manager Paul Hirst announced that Steve Wadsworth was the winner, proclaiming, "Well done to Steve on winning the competition." The winning entry: "Selby Leisure Centre." (Source: Weird Universe)
A tale of two kitties
"A grey cat turned up in my mother's garden and meowed pitifully at her, so being a sucker she fed it, and it became 'her' cat," writes Anne from Helensville. "One day a woman who lived a couple of streets away happened to walk past and spotted it. She said: 'What's my Dusty doing here?' 'No, that's my Misty,' said mother. They came to the conclusion that the cat was double dipping and chatted about it while 'Dusty' licked his paws and realised he'd been rumbled."
First date with history
Barack and Michelle Obama's first date in 1989 is being made into a film called Southside With You. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the movie will follow what happened after the future president, who was working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, asked out his boss, Michelle Robinson. Their first date was walking around Chicago's South Side, and seeing Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. As the Daily Dot notes, this isn't the first movie drawn from a true-life road to the White House. "The lead character in the weepy 1970 hit Love Story was partially based on a young Al Gore. Interestingly, the part of that character not inspired by Gore was modelled off of Gore's college roommate at Harvard, actor Tommy Lee Jones."
