Reporter’s diary

Press, 19 November 1982, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Harvest tiine

IT IS harvest time in Humboldt County in northern California anil the dope is as high as an elephant’s eye. Humbolt County grows the most potent marijuana in the world and it sells for $250 an ounce. Farmers have been swift to adapt making it California’s No 1 cash crop,', a $l5OO million a year industry. . But >they have to work hard to keep hold of their crop come harvest time. Submachine guns, rifles, handgrenades, and other such fire-power have joined the implements a well-equipped farmer now needs, and some have taken to sleeping beside their weeds to foil the “rippers.” A university professor in the ; county says: “It used to be that you could walk in the woods. Now, if you do • that during harvest time, you’re asking to have your, head blown off.” President Reagan has ordered an all-out war on drugs in the United States, but a prosecutor, in the county has quit, saying it is a. waste of time. He says: "People who would have been unemployed are making, a living. Forty million Americans are not going to' change their smoking habits on command from the Governmentthey’re too ornery and independent.” Man bites dog, true. It happened, finally. A man

bit a dbg and it made news. It also startled the dog’s owners and the dog. Dennis Morris, aged 26, of Omaha, has been charged with public intoxication and criminal mischief after he wrestled the dog. to the ground and sank his teeth into its neck until the owners dragged him off. The dog, a labradorhusky niongrel, probably did not fight back, the owners said, because she knew her assailant. According to the account the authorities have given, Mr Morris got into a fight with the dog’s owner at his home and was thrown out. He tried to get back in and, when he could not, he y went around the back and was found “chewing on the , dog’s neck.”

Getting it straight IN 1981 The Guinness Book of Records finally conceded after some years that a Christchurch woman and an Australian were among the first six women to arrive at the South Pole. The book had said that all six were Americans. It also got the date of - their arrival -’jat the Pole wrong. A reader of “The Press” noticed the errors and told “Reporter’s Diary.” The book’s New Zealand agents saw the “Djary” paragraph and, after checking the facts for themselves, had the item changed. Now. taking advan-

tage of this proof of the “Diary’s” capacity to get. results, we point out that the Guiness Book has made another small blunder. The book says that the first man to stand at both the North and South Poles is an American, David Porter, who was at the South Pole in December, 1970, and the North Pole in November 1979. In fact, Antarctic experts say, the modest distinction belongs to an American scientist, Dr Albert Crary. He flew to the North Pole and made scientific studies there on May 3, 1952, and went to the South Pole by land on February 12, 1961. A small specialist American publication printed these facts in 1979 but the latest edition of the Guinness Book repeats the old claim. Picking the bones A PUNCTURE forced a Rangiora man to leave his trailer sitting beside the Northern ' . Motorway one night this week. Having no spare tyre for the trailer, he removed the flat one and left the trailer propped up on the jack. He was a little worried about leaving the crippled trailer parked beside the motorway overnight, having heard of broken-down cars being vandalised; but what evil could be wreaked on a small, old, empty car. trailer with only one wheel? He

found out when he went to retrieve the trailer next morning. Someone had dropped the wheel-less axle on the ground and used the jack to lift and remove the trailer’s one remaining wheel. The man is now convinced that even without wheels the whole trailer would have disappeared if he had left it there another night.

Dark discovery TALKING pf tyres, the Firestone company has made a leap into the fishing industry. American tuna fishermen have apparently found that black nets reap a bigger harvest from the sea than brighter coloured nets, such as the light green mesh most used by New Zealand fishermen. The reason is that the dark, uniform colour does not cause the fish to panic and try to escape under or over the nets. Firestone is now making black nets from a new synthetic yarn, eliminating the extra processing and cost involved in blackening natural yarn, by dyeing or tarring. Tuna boats fishing the Pacific from San Diego carry nets up to 1600 metres long and 120 metres deep, and , weighing about 30,000 kg—which is a lot Or net to dye. or tar.