KEY POINTS:
Clint Green of Turangi writes: "Last night whilst instant messaging with my youngest son who works for the IT department in the Taupo District Council, I told him that I had just badly burned my hand and that mum had a new cellphone! 'Oh, cool,' came the reply, 'what kind of phone is it?"'
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A 4-year-old changed into his Power Ranger costume and attacked an armed robber in his home in Durham, North Carolina. Stevie Long sneaked out of the room while the robber was pointing a gun at his 5-year-old sister and mother. Minutes later, he leaped back in dressed as a Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger. "Get away from my family," he shouted, swinging his plastic sword and shouting, "Yah, yah." Relatives said the robber abandoned plans to take Stevie's mother to a cashpoint to withdraw money when he saw the boy. Stevie's aunt said a counsellor had suggested he needed to improve his distinction between fantasy and reality - "He fully believed he morphed."
(Source: Ananova.com)
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Moonlighting: Jill Roberts of New Windsor points out that the Herald's What's On guide listed a band called the John Key Trio, playing Jazz/Blues/Roots in Mt Eden. "I guess the trio consists of John Key on piano, Bill English on saxophone and Gerry Brownlee on bass or drums."
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What did Washington radio host Jerry Klein expect when he staged a hoax on air suggesting all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shaped tattoo or a distinctive armband? Of course all the xenophobes called in and agreed. The first caller said that Klein must be "off his rocker". The second congratulated him and added: "Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us." Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescents on driver's licences, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. "What good is identifying them?" he asked. "You have to set up encampments like during World War II with the Japanese and Germans." Klein said: "I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said."
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Unholy water: Some churches in Canada are condemning commercial bottled water (except where no other sanitary water is available), either as environmentally destructive or as the commercialisation of God's gift of life. At the same time, in Mumbai, India, as many as 1 million Hindus once again this year ritually dunked handmade figures of the elephant-headed god Ganesh, thus worsening the hopelessly polluted waters around the city. (Source: News of the Weird)
