Sideswipe: Butt Hole Road

The constant jokes were too much to take for the long-suffering residents of Butt Hole Rd, who banded together to change the name of their street, reports the Daily Mail. Groups of youths used to visit the street and bare their backsides for photographs, and many delivery firms refused to believe it existed. Residents spent £300 to change their address to the more palatable Archers Way. Butt Hole Rd is believed to have been named after a communal water butt originally in the area.

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Biologist Dario Maestripieri tells Wired Magazine the reason we instinctively look at the floor when in a lift is that it's an instinctive reaction to imagined danger and aggression in a compressed space. This is preferable to how Ugandan male chimpanzees deal with compressed space: "When male chimpanzees in Uganda encounter a male from another group, they slash his throat and rip his testicles off - just in case he survives and has any future ambitions for reproduction." (Source: BBC Web Monitor)

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Rapper Kanye West says he doesn't read books or respect them but nevertheless he has written one. The Grammy Award winner, known for being outspoken - on everything from racism in America to the banality of Twitter - is the co-author of Thank You And You're Welcome, a 52-page book of Kanye-isms. Some are blank, others have just a few words. One two-page section reads, "Life is 5 per cent what happens and 95 per cent how you react!" Another page reads, "I hate the word hate!" (Source: MSNBC.com)

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Raewyn had an embarrassing moment at airport security in Los Angeles. "I was still wearing my contraceptive diaphragm. For the young generation who do not know, these have a metal spring and are worn internally. Anyway, the bells went off and the wand went all over me and buzzed as it reached my tummy area! The operator was a female so I whispered to her that I was wearing a pessary and that cleared the way for me to board."

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A reader writes: "Regarding the vegetarian Peking duck, this kind of dish is common for Buddhist vegetarians. It is made from tofu and other bean products and processed to taste like Peking duck. You can also find vegetarian fish, vegetarian chicken and other vegetarian meat. The point of these is to eat as close to the real thing as possible without killing."

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A grandfather was banned from buying fish and chips for friends in his sheltered housing block in Norwich after wardens ruled that the food might pose a health and safety risk if it got cold. George Pretty, 72, was ordered to stop his weekly lunch run even though the drive from the fish shop took only five minutes. Source: Telegraph.co.uk

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