RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 145, 16 March 1931, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) "Ladies’ fashions—deep waters into which I do not care to venture—must have been the hope and the despair of jewellers from time immemorial."— H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. » * A man arrested with bomba in Ms possession said that he was merely working for the good of mankind. No wonder uplift in all its branches makes us so suspicious. “There are certain things," says a chiropodist, “that should never be placed on corns." Somebody else’s feet, for Instance.—“Humorist."-. * » » Sometimes omens work out well and sometimes not, as was proved at Trantham on Saturday. Prior to the first race two ladies were induced to look skyward by the drone of an aeroplane. When they returned to the serious business of picking the card, they found that Air Laddie was running in the race, so that they backed him—to their great content. At the end of the day the same pair, still alert for omens, were attracted by a strange noise on a racecourse, and located its source in four or five magpies chattering and squawking on a fence. Some research on the auspices led to the discovery that. Coroner was carrying magpie colours, black and white, ahd the fact that his number was 13 seemed to clinch the matter. Coroner was duly backed, but apparently on this occasion the omens were false, and the magpies, mocking birds, because Coroner finished at the tail of the field.

During a discussion about roads that took place in Wellington the other day, it was stated that contrary to general opinion even the best bitumen roads do not last for ever. Incessant work must be done on them to keep them, in good order, and to prevent their foundations from being spoilt. For some reasons devices whereby we shall be given this and that scientific marvel often seem to fall flat. Some ten years ago the problem of everlasting roads cropped up in connection with a material called hafnium. This stuff was supposed to open, the magic door to everlasting everything, including roads. We were told in those days that hafnium was relatively indestructible. It had a melting point of goodness knows how many degrees Fahrenheit, or was it Centigrade? This magic element was to be mixed with a tar composition. When this was done not even the heaviest traffic would wear out the road so treated.

Moreover, when hafnium was mixed with paints, the paint would last for ever. It was predicted that house decorators would be forced out of business. A house would require only one coat of paint during its lifetime. Presumably, when the house was burned down, to bear out our deplorable fire statistics, the indestructible unmeltable hafnium paint would stand for ever as a shell memento of a noble house that was. Steamships, it was optimistically stated, would only require one coat of hafnium-treated paint in their whole life time. In the case of the motor-car, it would fall to bits long before its paintwork. Indeed. Judging by some old cars one meets from time to time a hafnium-painted car would entirely owe its postponed dissolution to the indestructible paint that covered it

Perhaps one might argue that hafnium was too rare to be of any use. This, however, does not seem to have been the case. Apparently unlimited supplies of hafnium— containing sand, black in colour, are in existence in New Zealand. Supplies of this sand are unlimited in quantity. Millions of tons were said to be available in New Zealand. What, then, has happened to our hafnium optimists that to-day we are not benefltting by the magic indestructible properties of the stuff ? By rights we should be living in a hafnium world —hafnium hats, clothes, shoes, roads, paints ,and perhaps even toothpaste. Have our chemists just got tired of hafnium or were the vested interests of the paint and decorative fields too much for this indestructible marvel?

By the simple procedure of placing wool in benzol it is now possible for anybody to detect hair in samples of wool. For years efforts have been made to discover some simple process whereby sheep breeders might easily discover this defect In order that steps might be taken for its eradication. Before this absurdly simple discovery it had been necessary for specialists to examine the wool through a microscope. It is a curious fact that it often happens thv.t some simple home-made method succeeds where other methods, no matter how costly, can do no better. There are all manner of instances of this to be seen in the every-day world.

Although sails are so old that their origin is unknown, no more efficient or better system of wind propulsion has ever been found for a boat. Admittedly revolving towers placed on a boat and driven by an engine have produced surprising results, but that cannot bo called purely and simply wind propulsion. In the same way, nothing has been more efficient than the age-old oar for the propulsion of small boats. The mechanical losses in an oar are far less than the losses in lever-driven propellers. The latter, however, are used in modern lifeboats on account of their simplicity and convenience.

Another absurdly simple device never vet superseded by anything better is the plumb-bob. Practically every building in the world owes its uprightness to this simple device—just a weight on the end of a piece of string. In the same way the spirit , level has never been ousted from its accepted position as the world’s leveller. In this case it must be admitted that levelling may be done by complicated Instruments like theodolites. But fundamentally even these instruments depend for their accuracy upon a spirit level; a device that has been with us too long for its origin to be known. Possibly one should call all these devices mere makeshifts. The fact remains, however, that man is either too lazy to find some better way of doing the job. or he just can’t. With a touch of inspirational genius the earlv inhabitants of our world, groping blindly, hit upon the best and the most efficient device for the purpose without knowing it.

If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness, If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face, If beams from happy human eyes Have moved ine not, if morning skies, Books and my food, and summer rain Knocked on my sullen heart in vain, Lord thy most pointed pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake. «-R. Lu Ateyenson.