Sideswipe: May 18: Burrito tape is here!

A bunch of clever engineering students prototyped an edible adhesive tape, called Tastee Tape, to keep burritos and other wrapped foods sealed up during consumption. (In the image above, they used tape coloured with dye.) The team from Johns Hopkins University tested a "multitude" of ingredients and combinations before settling on a final recipe, which is edible, safe and has the tensile strength you can trust to hold together a fat burrito. Because they are applying for a patent, team members declined to disclose their secret formula.

Opportunity knocks

Last month, more than 450 households in a Japanese town in the Yamaguchi prefecture eagerly awaited Covid relief payments of about 99,000 yen ($1216) each, designed to help families struggling due to the pandemic. A formatting mistake on the government's online transfer order caused all 46.3 million yen ($565,267) for the townspeople to be dumped into a 24-year-old's account, simply because his name started with "A" and was at the top of the list. The mistake was caught that same day, and town officials let the man and the bank know about the error but officials didn't touch base again with the man until 13 days later. Over those two weeks, he'd been quietly taking out daily sums of money from his account to avoid detection. He has now disappeared.

Funny, not funny

How to know when your sense of humour is outdated.

Banned in America (not guns)

Brie cheese: The US government passed a law in 2004 stating that any cheese aged under 60 days imported to or sold in the US must be made with pasteurised milk. This means many kinds of cheese are banned.

Calling vegetarian substitutes "meat": In several states in the US it is illegal to label vegetarian products as "burgers" or "sausages". In several states in the US it is legal to carry a gun without a permit and, presumably, you can then call it a burger or whatever you want.

Business puns

Phil Marks writes: "Arborists seem to attract funny names - years ago I found a business card with a cartoon picture of a man in a trench coat and pulled-down trilby hat. Special Branch ..."