Sideswipe

The 'S' word is the in greeting among teenage girls but for men it is still a slur

Reclaim it and let it fly: According to the New York Times, the word "slut" is now a fashionable girl greeting. Many teenagers use it affectionately and in jest among their friends. Like "queer" and "pimp" before it, the word "slut" seems to have less negative connotations with younger generations. However, while women are embracing the slut within, men still regard the word as a slur. One guy says: "I think of a woman who has been around the block more times than my dad's Chevy. I might date a slut, but I certainly wouldn't marry one."

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Diners in a Mission Bay cafe on Friday night saw two serious-looking uniformed police officers enter and assumed some crime must have been committed nearby and their help might be needed. Murder? Robbery? Well, no. The officers were there to grill the owner about why his liquor licence was displayed on a side wall instead of nearer the entrance. The woman constable and male sergeant kept straight faces throughout, pointedly ignoring increasing jibes from patrons wondering aloud about the lack of crime in the area. When a woman asked why the task could not be done by a civilian employee during daylight hours, they ignored her and walked out.

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In Texas the insanity-defence law can only be applied when the delusional person is acting under "orders" from God: those acting under "orders" from Satan are to be considered sane, according to prominent forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz in a USA Today story. Dietz believed that Andrea Yates knew that drowning her five kids upon command of someone "without moral authority" (such as Satan) was wrong and thus that she did not qualify for insanity-law protection. Dietz later concluded the opposite in another Texas child-killing case because God had supposedly assured that mother that her kids would be better off dead. (Source: News of the Weird).

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Adrian and Marcia want to deliver a message to the highway patrol police officer who, on Saturday at 12.15pm, decided to carry out a u-turn on a blind corner on the Brynderwyn hills. "If we had been one second earlier, you would have caused a major accident. We noticed you carried out the u-turn to investigate an abandoned car on the grass, facing Whangarei. Would it not have been safer for you to carry on to the bottom of the hill, where both lanes were visible and then carry out the u-turn? You should count yourself lucky; there were no safe places for us to pull over, we were unable to write down your number plate."

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NZ Post is eager to make it clear that it does not have a policy that bans staff from writing addresses on envelopes or parcels for customers with broken arms. "We apologise to Lynne for not helping her out. It appears a staff member misinterpreted a rule that does indeed prevent staff from helping customers fill out official forms, for example, bank documents, vehicle registration forms etc. In those cases there is significant potential for trouble if details are later disputed so customers have to do all the writing themselves."