Sideswipe

Trevor needs a holiday ... on the notice board at the dairy in Whangapoua

A reader writes: "To the Wilson parking attendant who on September 14 at Auckland Hospital berated me for handing him the wrong parking chit and then abused me for not paying at the automatic machine, much to the embarrassment of his colleagues behind the counter. Excuse my vagueness, but my mother had just died. I think this individual should take a compassion pill and get out of customer service."

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Perhaps the people of Ponsonby are a little more tolerant of those with "unique personalities", says Pip Fleming. "The woman who visits the Thai takeaways sounds like the same lady who walks into Servilles hairdressing salon each day. One of the stylists will leave what they are doing and give her hair a quick spray with the hairspray. She leaves with a broad grin on her face and no doubt feeling beautiful. Such compassion. It made my day to see that and restored my faith in human kind."

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But Maxine Cross has her tap turned off: "It's not the business of cafes and takeaways to give to every Tom, Dick and Harry who asks. They are businesses, not a public tap, and time is money. Stop trying to drum up sympathy for a non-existent problem. You've gone to the well once too often with this one."

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A Reuters story yesterday fell victim to a computer spellchecker mishap, resulting in an amusing typo. In a story about honey bees, the words "queen bee" were replaced with "Queen Elizabeth". So the story reads: "With its highly evolved social structure of tens of thousands of worker bees commanded by Queen Elizabeth, the honey bee genome could also improve the search for genes linked to social behaviour ... Queen Elizabeth has 10 times the lifespan of workers and lays up to 2000 eggs a day. Despite having tiny brains, honey bees display honed cognitive abilities ... " (Some years ago, a story on the Herald.co.nz website had the same mishap, resulting in references to Saddam Hussain being changed to Saddam's Hussies.

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University maths nerds have won a £5.3 million ($15.2 million) Lotto jackpot. A syndicate of tutors, maths wizards and other staff from Bradford University and College came up with their plan four years ago, reports the Sun. Barry Waterhouse, 41, said: "We hit on the idea which would mean all 49 numbers would be used. We just had to stick with the numbers and we had to win." They put all 49 in a hat and drew eight lines, leaving the 49th number in for the next draw, until they had 17 lines. A computer program was then used to check if any of their lines had won. (Source: Ananova.com)