RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 64, 9 December 1930, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) An authority remarks that women anglers have increased in numbers) this year. The danger of this intrusion is that women are such convincing liars the best fishing stories will be utterly spoilt » » • A doctor who took poison hag written a diary of what it feels like to die. He is not the first man to try to give to the living a glimpse of the one great event in their lives that never happens twice. Most of these so-called diaries, are worthless, although several have been written. There are a few instances of men who came so near death that to all intents and purposes they were dead, yet they contrived to cling to life. Some of them have given their sensations. • • • A Captain Nobbs, who was hit in the head during an attack in the last war, says: “I remember distinctly clutching my head and sinking to the ground, and all the time I was thinking, ‘so this is the end —the finish of it all; shot through the head; mine is a fatal wound,’ The blackness which was then before me underwent a change. A voice from somewhere behind me said, ‘This is death—will you come?’ Then gradually the blackness became mors intense. A curtain seeded to be slowly falling. There was space; there was darkness, blacker than blindness. Everything was past There was peacefulness, a nothingness, but a happiness indescribable. But the voice I heard seemed to be waiting for an answer. I seemed to exert myself by a frantic effort, like one in a dream who is trying to awaken. I said: ‘No, not now; I won’t die.’ Then the curtain slowly lifted, my body moved, and I was moving in it.”

A poison fog hangs over certain parts of Europe. Although it is just possible that something new is at the bottom of the trouble it must be realised that in every bad fog the death-rate rises at quite an alarming rate. This by no means marks the first occasion in which fogs have caused the deaths of people in untoward numbers. Before the war London doctors always looked upon November as a deadly month of the year for people with respiratory trouble. Those well-known “pea soup” fogs of that city were Indeed troublesome enough to the healthiest person. In New Zealand fogs of that nature, thick! yellow blankets blotting out everything over a yard away, are rarely encountered. Only those who have been through a London fog at its worst can appreciate the feeling of suffocation, the curious stifling smell of sulphur and acid fumes, that a really thick fog brings in its train.

Continued fogs in London from November, 1879, to February, 1880, caused much mortality. There was a death scare very similar to the present one. People were asking one another just the same questions. All the experts were making just the same vague but very wise remarks. In the meantime people died in large numbers. A year later, not only London, but parts of Europe as well, were visited by fogs as deadly as, if not deadlier than, the previous ones. Men and cattle were reported to be suffering from their effects.' In the present case it is not impossible that something more sinister may be at the bottom of the deaths. Any soldier will tell you that gas shellcraters take on a new deadliness in damp foggy weather, which seems to encourage the fumes to rise out of the ground and hang about. In the present case the suggestion of unknown poisou gas dumps is not too fantastic to be dismissed summarily.

In spite of the present progress in scientific knowledge we still have to admit defeat by fogs. There is no cure. All manner of ideas have been tried out. Sir Oliver Lodge claimed to have dissolved fogs many years ago by the use of certain electrical devices. His efforts if successful were effective only in the immediate vicinity of the machine used. During a bad bout of fog in London it was suggested that it should be dissipated by explosions. Mortars that had been unsuccessfully, used in Italy to prevent hailstorms were tried out tentatively. But owing to the lack of sufficient funds the project fell through. Judging by the inability of heavy gunfire during the last war to remove fogs possibly the mortar would have been a waste of good money. Just before the war the city of Lyons voted money for experiments in spraying the rivers Rhone and Saone with oil. No tangible results were noticed. In California a method used most successfully in the treatment of industrial dusts and fumes failed to have any effect on a fog. Quite recently the United States Air Force have been making tests with electrffied sprays without much success. Effoits have been attempted to draw fogbanks away from certain areas, sucn as aerodromes. Although in some eases the idea has been found to be feasible the huge cost of any scheme makes it impracticable.

A Dunedin citizen who returned from a European tour a few weeks ago nnmnlsins that the New Zealand railcharged 'him £43/16/5 a ton for his excess baggage from Auckland to Dunedin. The idea of working out the costs of freight by the ton is not novel In some cases it affords an interesting foundation from which to judge value. A man weighing 1501 b is transmitted on a sixpenny tram ride at the rate of only 7/6 a ton. In this case, of course, the distance is only a few miles. If he could travel from Auckland to Dunedin by tram, freight charges amount to round about £3O a ton. The same gentleman malcIn" a trip to Christchurch is charged for the transmission of his body and effects, for the 180 miles of ocean travel, at the rate of £22/10/- a ton.

One hears quite a lot of talk about the wonderful manner in which the Post Office pays. In most countries the Post Office is one of the few Government institutions that does pay handsomely. Few people can. have taken the trouble to work out the cost per ton of sending letters. Not manv letters weigh over an ounce. The cost'is on 6 penny. This sum seems trivial until the cost per ton is worked out. AVithout going into details the answer comes out at roughly £l5O a ton' Even the cost of perambulating our own worthless bodies through the week amounts at the ton rate to a by no means insignificant sum. Few people live much cheaper than 25/- a week Most of the food eaten is expended in walking, except in the case of those who own cars. Possible fifty miles Is an average weekly mileage. It will cost nearlv £lO a ton to transport one’s own bodv under its own power this distance in a week. Reducing this to the Auckland to Dunedin standard the cost works out at £l6O a ton.