Sideswipe

Sign outside a church in Glendowie

A British author whose novel about a terrorist attack in London came out the same day as last week's bombings wants the public to tell him if he should continue to promote the book. Chris Cleave's first novel, Incendiary, is being published in more than 15 countries, with accompanying print ads. Posters for the novel were plastered throughout the London Underground. (Source: Globe and Mail)

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Paul Clark writes: The advert from MIT (Manukau) for its Chinese courses says that "more than 3 billion people use it [Mandarin] as their mother tongue". I realise China is on the rise and I would encourage everyone to learn Chinese, but 3 billion is anticipating things a bit. That's more than half of humanity. They may have meant 1.3 billion. (Professor Clark teaches Chinese at the University of Auckland's School of Asian Studies.)

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The Greens' cutting-edge media unit is springing into action in the lead-up to the election, offering a series of biting political cartoons called "Tadpole toon" on their usually informative blog (blog.greens.org.nz). There have been suggestions that humour and satire are not this party's strong suit. Sideswipe asked Herald cartoonist Guy Body to critique. His assessment: "The worst one's 'Don the Dozer' (see link below). Exaggeration is what cartoonists do, but it's histrionic to portray someone as being out to destroy the universe just because he's a bit less green than yourself ... Cartoons lacking impartiality just don't work; readers tend to recoil from a cartoonist praising a party, or sparing it abuse. It's the same with journalism - being a propagandist loses you credibility." The cartoons will come out weekly, but once the campaign proper starts, they will be daily. Can't wait.

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Desperate dieter Brian Monfort, 27, was arrested in Springfield, Ohio, and charged with child enticement based on an arrest report noting that twice, in January and March, he had approached children and paid them up to $40 to insult him for being fat, supposedly as a tactic to inspire himself to lose weight. (Source: News of the Weird)

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Real names of the hip-hop stars: 50 Cent, Curtis Jackson; Ja Rule, Jeff Atkins; MC Hammer, Stanley Burrell; DJ Jazzy Jeff, Jeffrey Townes; Grandmaster Flash, Joseph Saddler; Busta Rhymes, Trevor Smith. (Source: The Rough Guide to Hip-Hop by Peter Shapiro, Rough Guides Ltd, 2005)