KEY POINTS:
A non-pink triangle: Does Auckland City Council not want the rainbow community on the roads? These stencils on Auckland footpaths are amusing Auckland's gay community, says GayNZ.com. (Thanks Mike.)
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Words associated with Christianity, the monarchy and British history have been dropped from a leading dictionary for children to reflect modern multicultural Britain.
According to the Telegraph, Oxford University Press has removed words including "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words such as "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity".
Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
But head teachers said the changes to the 10,000-word dictionary could result in children losing touch with Britain's heritage.
Christmas words cut include "carol", "cracker", "holly", "ivy" and "mistletoe". A word that probably originated in New Zealand - bungy as in jumping - was also added.
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David was doing a spot of Christmas shopping at ferrit.co.nz.: "I was looking for an amusing book in Latin for a gift (as you do) and found the perfect book called Walter Canis Inflatus which of course translates as Walter the Farting Dog. Not wanting to buy it immediately I placed it (or at least tried to) in my wish list. Only problem was that the word "Farting" is blacklisted. It's amazing the book was listed. Had to resort to Latin."
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The stingy free gift from ZM of two stickers reminds another reader of a promo Resene had last year. "We bought about $2000 worth of paint from Resene during a sale. It was offering a gift with purchases over a certain amount. My husband and I bought our paint and headed to the car to load up. We were about to drive off when the salesman came running out of the store waving madly. 'You forgot your gift,' he said breathlessly. We stopped, and he excitedly handed over two small boxes each with two after-dinner mints enclosed."
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View from the ivory tower: Oxford and Cambridge universities have some strange-looking admission questions designed to test how prospective students think, not just how much they know.
CNN reports that Oxford wants to know: "Would you rather be a novel or a poem?" and asks English majors, "If it could take form, what shape would the novel To The Lighthouse become?" Students hoping to get into Cambridge should be able to answer this: "What would you do if you were a magpie?" and be able to answer, "How would you poison someone without the police finding out?'
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