RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 226, 20 June 1931, Page 6

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL (By Kickshaws.) A sporting writer says that a tot <4 care la usually taken when deciding what to call a racehorse. In the caso of unsuccessful backers Inspiration to often spontaneous. ♦ ♦ • A doctor has discovered that ths average man wastes a lot of breath. Every wife who wants a new drew can corroborate the truth of this discovery. i■ • * An inventor has just invented a noninflammable petrol It is acclaimed as a great invention. One can but wonder if it will prove to be of any permanent utility, Mechanical transport at the present moment is crying for something better than petrol Efforts have been made already to utilise fuel oil in cars, aeroplanes, and airships. Indeed, the aeroplane is marking time at the moment until some new motive power is invented. There is far more money in a new form of motive power than in a non-inflammable petrol. A fuel with four or five times the “kick” of petrol, even if it necessitated different engines, would revolutionise transport—provided it sold at ruling petrol prices. Small aeroplanes could comfortably make journeys of four or even six thousand miles. Larger machines could cross the Atlantic from Europe and return without refuelling. ■ / • ■/: ■.* ‘ Mr. Henry Ford holds some strong opinions on the subject of fuel for transport “The fact is,” he says, “today, there is no such thing in existence as an airplane engine. It’s perfectly natural for people to think that airplanes must be run with gas-engines. They think so because automobiles are run by gas engines. Some day someone will come along who will discover that gas-engines are not the thing at aIL Engines of the future will use a fuel that is many times more powerful than our present fuel Even today we can get fuel from fruit from roadside weeds, from apples, sawdust —almost anything. There is enough alcohol in an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the field for a hundred years. It remains for someone to discover how this fuel can be produced commercially —better fuel at a cheaper price. It is reported that the inventors of noninflammable petrol are two men of independent means. Perhaps they will. And both the time and the money to carry experiments a step further.

At the fiftieth annual meeting of the Devonport Steam Ferry Company a speaker stressed the marvellous and ■bewildering changes that have come -owing to scientific progress. In 1881, the year that the ferry was first started, he reminds us that there were no tramways, motor-cars, telephones, electric light, wireless, flying machine, submarines, oil-driven vessels, cinemas, or X-rays. Have we really benefited as a result of all this progress? Would life have been', so very bad without most of them? X-rays and wireless have proved their worth. Indeed, the former has ‘ saved thousands of lives that would not have been in jeopardy but for progress. The other undoubtedly has given a new safety to the oceans. But' the rest of the Items —what of .them? In nearly every case they are splendid monuments to our ever-in-creasing laziness.

If there were no trams we should all unhitch our horses from the hitch-ing-posts that once lined our streets. An exhilarating gallop home to Miramar would surely be better for us than a lurching sardine journey in a screeching, groaning tram. There would be no tired business men, no pale-faced typists, no need to waste time on exercises. The motor-car is perhaps worse than the tram. Science has given, us the greatest mechanical temptation toward laziness ever invented. In a couple of centuries man will have lost the art of walking. He will have grown into a round apple dumpling lump of atrophied flesh. The only, muscles that will have survived will be his accelerator muscles, his steering muscles,, and his digestive muscles. Moreover, the introduction of the motor has given us something worse than war. Eighteen months of motoring in the United States accounts for more lives than those lost by that country in the war. There is something noble about John Gilpin exceeding the speed limit bn a horse —only a police officer, could write a poem to John Smith exceeding the speed limit down Eambton Quay, in a car?

The advent of the telephone admittedly puts us in close touch with our friends—-and our enemies, But it has given us a burden of new worries. We can be deluged by last-moment invitations to this that and the other by people-we scarcely kno.w. If television is indeed to be wedded to our phones any advantages that we derive from them will be cancelled completely. Who wants to see John Smith in pyjamas making, excuses why pressure of business makes him unable to attend a meeting at the club in an hour’s time—certainly it would be indiscreet to. allow the secretary to televise him. Flying machines are merely a toy permitting us to get somewhere else in the least possible time. Every year people want to get somewhere else in the least possible time.' They seem .to forget that they must be “somewhere." “Here” is just as good as “there.” Why all this restlessness?—not evenhigh speed permits us to escape from ourselves.

In defence of June in England a reader writes: —In spite of all these weather foibles an English June still holds the record as the sunniest month. Some 200 hours of sunlight are experienced on the average. *■ Just how they manage to creep in is not disclosed. If we are to measure weather in hours it is - worth noting that England on the average produces in a year among other details 400 hours of fog (increasing to 1200 in Wales and Scotland); 1400 hours of sunlight; 3000 hours of sunless daylight; and 500 hours of rain. Since a day is counted rainy on which only one hundredth of an inch of rain or snow falls many of the days officially termed wet are really moderately fine.

So hard we strive to glorify machines That glut our days with too much noise

and light, ' „ ’And for our strength" have too great

appetite. What do they offer us, these garish queens? One living word? One syllable that

means More life for those who hunger in the

night? What blood can steel automatons excite? They are not life riot corry go-betweens, r-p. g. ®tosiea