Sideswipe: October 1: Slice a piece of this

Canadian chain Boston Pizza held a contest inviting customers to vote on an outrageous pizza innovation it could introduce. One of the ideas was this pizza cake.

Forget loyalty cards and control fuel price disparity

Martyn Jones writes: "I regularly travel around the North Island and am gobsmacked at the variation in petrol prices. Within the past two weeks I have seen various brands showing 91 octane from $2.01 to $2.21 a litre. Can they please explain the huge disparity? Wouldn't it be nice to see all brands stop offering ridiculous discounts when we buy food etc ... or expecting us to have loyalty cards to gain discounts, and bring the base price back to a non-inflated level."

Caring coils ...

It's not a cute cat or a dog, but even a cold-blooded snake can have a warm heart.

Muggle's mania

A Mexico City man is in Hogwarts heaven after his collection of Harry Potter paraphernalia was named the world's largest. Menahem Asher Silva Vargas has spent nearly 15 years hoarding memorabilia related to British author J.K. Rowling's young-adult wizard-fantasy series. Guinness World Records this week recognised his collection as the world No1, at 3097 pieces. The old mark was 807.

Unfriendly neighbourhood

A reader writes: "North Shore Property Press Barfoot & Thompson ad for a two-bedroom Torbay "do-up" says the property is close to all 'enmitys'... Yes, a real house of horrors then."

Some names just don't work in politics

(Via Telegraph's Sign Language.)

Picture this: Behind the scenes photos from the filming of Jaws (1975)...

Update: Yesterday's link about the high school teacher in China who could draw a detailed map of the world freehand from memory had this response from Paulie. "When I was at high school in Hamilton in the 80's a fourth form (year 10) teacher did the map of the world trick too." he says. "And now I'm going to ruin the secret for everyone...When no students were around he would put a map of the world on the Over Head Projector, shine it on the black board, move it around to get the scale he wanted and then he carefully traced the image with a sharp, hard pencil. You can't see the pencil unless you are standing right there at the board. Then all you have to do is amaze the class with your drawing prowess going over the pencil lines. This doesn't work anymore; what NZ school has black boards and OHPs?"

Video: Isn't it time you had celebrity lighting?

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz