RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 34, 4 November 1929, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

SIDELIGHTS ON CURRENT EVENTS LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Cosmos.)' A golfer is never satisfied until he is in a hole. • « « The really unpopular motor merger is the one that happens on the main highway. * * * “Irishman’s Fate,” reads a headline in a contemporary. Subject to corns just like anybody eise’s, no doubt The old-fashioned hitching post is coming into its own again, but in a more up-to-date manner. It is now the mooring mast for dirigibles. ♦•• ' ■ There is a new danger in aviation these days. An Svlator coming down on a field after making a new record is liable to collide with others just starting out to break it » • ♦ Rumour has it that some conscientious museum authorities are looking for bathing machines to add to their collections, lest the last of those curious affairs fall to pieces in some backyard in the less fashionable quarter of a seaside place, and their memory survive only in prints and photographs. This prevision suggests that it might be well to draw up every year a list for museum-keepers of disappearing features in our life, in order that nothing be missed. Would it be possible now to procure a specimen of that curious umbrella arrangement under cover of which the discreet ladies of a century back dipped or were dipped within a yard of their own bathingmachines? * • • It Is reported that the housing problem has been solved by the introduction of a steel house that can be built in eight minutes and assembled in an hour or two. But this is not all. There have been recent building advances in most unexpected directions. The "yurt” of the desert nomads of Asia is now being replaced by ready-to-use knock-down-put-up factory-built “yurts.” The old-fashioned “yurt” itself, whose history is the early history of the world, was a crude, circular affair some five or six feet high. It was more or less a gigantic wastepaper basket with a framework of withes and. an outer-covering of homemade felt, held together generally bygoat’s hair, string and good luck. The imported “yurts” are natty little affairs in white canvas complete with a front door. All parts are replaceable, and the inhabitant presumably has only to quote a number to find a new front door delivered at his home by return. The world is certainly making progress. We now have, besides these “yurts” and eight-minute houses, American Indians touring in Rolls Royce cars, using machine-made canoes, and driving mechanical tractors. The Japanese now wear Derby hats and the motorcar has replaced gipsy vans. This onlyleaves the Eskimo. He will be supplied, it is reported, with a low-priced standardised factory-produced “igloo” made, from the best quality artificial ice. » • * *

The vogue of “summer time” suggests an amusing difficulty which Lewis Carroll propounded and dealt with in his amusing way: Which would you rather have, a clock that is right only once a year, or a clock that is right twice a day? The latter, one would reply without hesitation. Very good. There are two clocks: one doesn’t go at all, and the other loses a minute a day. Which would you prefer? , The losing one without a doubt Now observe. The clock which loses a minute a day has to lose twelve hqurs, or seven hundred and twenty minutes, before it is right again, consequently it is only right once in two years, whereas the other is right as often as the hour it points to comes round)’ which happens twice a day. So you’ve contradicted yourself once. But, it may be said, it’s not the slightest use its being .right twice a day if I can’t tell when the time comes. Well, suppose the clock points to eight o’clock, it is obviously right at eight o’clock, consequently when. eight o’clock comes your clock • Is right “Yes, I see that,” you reply. Very well, then you’ve contradicted yourself twice.

Since it is now generally admitted that life without ultra-violet rays is no sort of life at all, considerable interest ought to be taken in the report that a German doctor has invented a special fabric which allows these pre- • cious scintillations to pour through, unimpeded, on to the human skin. Thus there will be no need to go sun-bathing in a state of nature; in the ultraviolet sense it will be possible to be what the poet Swinburne glowingly describes as “noble and nude and antique” without ever removing the trousers or waistcoat. Indeed, if it can only be shown that the new fabric filters out a few impurities in the original rays as delivered from the solar system, it may become positively virtuous to “wear more clothes," while the fully informed sun-bather will venture forth done up from ankles to neck like the modest mld-Victorian fearfully emerging from the shelter of her van. Hygiene and the textile trades will again be reunited, and all the dress reformers will have to think out new reasons for recommending open necks and half-length trousers.

When Linflbergh set off to fly the Atlantic, he probably didn’t think of much but whether it could be done, and hard* ly thought at all about what would happen when he reached the other side. A decent amount of honour and glory he may have anticipated. But did he ever imagine himself becoming a a colonel, marrying an ambassador’s daughter, and finally setting up as a statesman himself? That is the latest of the extraordinary adventures in which the Atlantic spin has landed him. He has been called in to assist the Conciliation Commission which is trying to get Bolivia and Paraguay to agree on a frontier over the Chaco territory. A survey of the district is required ; it is a dense and swampy jungle, impassable to pedestrian sur- , veyors, and properly visible only from the air. But the air, in the New World, means the domain of Lindbergh. Even as once in the world of science or mechanical invention nothing was approved as completely satisfactory, unless Edison had had a hand in it, so to-day nothing aerial will do unless Lindbergh has taken part. And so it comes about that the aeronaut finds himself helping to settle a frontier dispute in South America. There is no end to the possible consequences of flying the Atlantic.

Upon being sentenced to one month’s imprisonment for false pretences, a cook is reported to have asked the Magistrate to reduce the sentence on the ground that she never stays in one place longer than a .