Reporter’s diary

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Listing to left TELEPHONE directory listings of the two main politial parties slightly lean in Labour’s favour. Labour is easily found under “L” (naturally) — and there’s the end to it. However, anyone trying to phone National could strike the same problem that a voter rang to tell us about. First, she had looked in the directory under National Political Party: “Refer NZ National Party.” Looking up “NZ” she found “refer Under New Zealand.” At which point she gave up and rang Labour instead. Lightening the load NARROW squeaks for hotair balloonists are nothing new. On January 7, 1785, John Jeffries and JeanPierre Blanchard were the first to cross the English Channel by air. They had problems early on with a fast gas leak in the flimsy hydrogen-filled envelope. Odd ancillary equipment such as silk

oars and rudder were swiftly thrown overboard to gain height, followed by every detachable fitting, the life-jackets, a bottle of brandy and finally the pilots’ trousers. The emergency jettisoning succeeded in keeping the balloon aloft long enough to make a landfall near Calais. Academic ...

SMUTTY T-shirts will always be with us, but for those with more intellectual tastes, how about these, spotted by a reader in New York recently: "Eschew obfuscation!” (look it up); and, even more obscure to the uninitiated: “Heisenberg may have been here.”

... garble BY way of explanation, Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976) was a German physicist, philosopher and public figure who helped establish the modem science of quantum mechanics, out of which came the famous

indeterminacy principle to which the T-shirt slogan refers. Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1932. In 1958, in conjunction with W. Pauli, of Zurich, he announced a theory that helps resolve the contradictions hindering understanding of the atomic particles found since World War 11, and leads towards the discovery of a single natural law accounting for the existence of all known particles as well as those that might yet be discovered.

Buss a driver A neatly modified antismoking sticker inside one of Christchurch’s Big Red buses reads: “Kiss a bus driver — enjoy the difference.”

First impressions THE six-dollar “Dictionary of Australian Quotations” continues to delight. Several times Prime Minister and Colonial secretary, Sir Henry

Parkes is immortalised in the dictionary for his views on Australia one year after he arrived there as a bounty immigrant in 1839. He wrote: “I have been disappointed in all my expectations of Australia, except as to its wickedness: for it is far more wicked than I have conceived it possible for anV place to be, or than it is possible for me to describe to you in England.”

Pig-in-the-middle THE Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, will find himself in the red, so to speak, when he launches the National Party’s election campaign in Christchurch this month. The day before Mr Bolger speaks in the Christchurch Town Hall, a company of Russian dancers will hold a gala performance. The day after, the Prime Minister launches Labour’s campaign. It is hoped that ticket holders do not confuse the three performances. —Jenny Feltham