Sideswipe: July 18: Vege heaven

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Artist Brock Davis made this wonderful broccoli treehouse for his son when he couldn't build him a real one. See more: http://goo.gl/3SHpv

Embarrassment at the Beeb

Journalist Michael Wolff, author of Rupert Murdoch biography The Man Who Owns The News, was lined up for a live interview with the BBC when the presenter introduced him as Ben Walker, a baseball editor and asked him a question. When Wolff was silent the presenter assumed it was a sound problem. Wolff replied: "It's even a worse situation than that, because I am not Ben Walker and I know nothing about baseball." A similar embarrassment happened in 2006 when Guy Goma, who was at the BBC for a job interview, found himself on live TV being asked questions as if he was an IT expert. (Via Yahoo.com)

Advertising versus reality

Keith Shackleton writes: "I had to laugh at the new Steinlager ad, where the guy keeps a white can of Steinlager from 1987 and swears not to drink it until the All Blacks win again. Towards the end the bloke is setting out to the finals with his mates after he successfully tracks down the old can of beer in his attic. Unfortunately, if he really took the can to a game, security would make him dump it in a bin before he got to the stadium!"

Physician heal thy self...

Gray Pearson has just spent an arduous five days in a leaky homes tribunal hearing. "Two of the three toilets were out of action because of what the receptionist described as a leak. What chance have we got of them ever resolving the leaky home problem throughout New Zealand if they can't fix a couple of leaking toilets in central Auckland?"

What's in a Harry Potter word?

The Harry Potter books and films are "a treasury of wordplay and invention", according to Wordnik.com, but many of the characters' names are based on everyday words. "A dumbledore is a bumblebee. Snape is a ship-building term that means 'to bevel the end of [a timber or plank] so it will fit accurately upon an inclined surface.' Hagrid, the past participle of hagride, means 'to harass or torment by dread or nightmares.' Skeeter is a term for an annoying pest, and not just Rita Skeeter, blood-sucking journalist."