RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 167, 11 April 1932, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events LOCAL AND GENERAL

(By

Kickshaws.)

It seems ironical that after boring u# by dull speeches for all these years Parliament should now have the nerve to tax our interest. * • * Meteorologists have discovered that bad weather is connected with certain well-defined cycles. When the weather is very bad it must be connected with a full-sized pantechnicon.

A society has been formed in Vienna for the protection of divorced husbands. But surely these are just the kind of husbands who require no protection.

Discreetly hidden away on a back page of “The Dominion” recently was an insignificant note to the effect that a German had invented a sky cinema. This new invention projects moving pictures against the clouds. When this is taken in conjunction with recent inventions made in England whereby special searchlights can be made to display patterns on the sky, it becomes obvious that invention is on the verge of adding a new horror to life. Some people grow almost lyrical about the reflected glow of a town’s lights in the sky. It is doubtful, however, if they will feel like that when out of the golden murk a battery of 3,000,000 candle-power searchlights flash across the heavens the picture of some proprietary cough ■ cure or the extreme benefit to be derived from somebody’s pale ale, corn cure, or chewing gum. It must not be imagined that the invention is still in its infancy. Primarily intended for war, its practicability has been proved in tests made at Hendon, Portsmouth, Southampton, Watford, and in Germany. Converted into tho lines and grids calculated to catch hostile aircraft, the invention has its uses. On the other hand, if in peace time this new invention means that the sky above, say, the city of Wellington, will be covered with animated samples of the type of advertisements one sees along the Hutt Road, our poor clouds will create sensations closely akin to a bilious attack. Who owns the clouds would appear to be a problem that lawyers will be called upon to solve in the not very distant future.

A Royal Commission may be ap. pointed in England to make a comprehensive survey of the laws relating to sweepstakes and lotteries. About once every ten years this subject comes up for examination. It may come as a surprise to learn that so far as lotteries are concerned Britain has an experience of the subject a long way ahead of most other countries. Every commission that has sat on lotteries knows full well that the colony of Virginia started as a result of one, not to mention the British Museum and many other famous London museums. Moreover, the nation acquired numerous works of art by making use of this ever-ready gold mine. The lottery idea, is said to have originated in Florence in the year 1530, but it was not long before Governments in Britain were making money from this source. Even some religious Authorities condoned them.

The second lottery drawn in England in 1612, in a shed outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, was won by a tailor who drew a fortune of £lOOO. The profits from this lottery went to repair the harbours. By the 18th century Britain was gaining sufficient experience in lotteries to serve as food for.an unlimited number of subsequent Royal Commissions. The whole country went lottery mad. Financed by the Government, tickets for £30,000 prize lotteries were given away to subscribers to Government loans. With every 3d. shave barbers gave away a chance to win £lO. A i>late of soup at a restaurant carried with it a chance to win sixty guineas; a plate of oysters could win five guineas; and even a farthing’s worth of blood sausages carried with it an opportunity to win a 5/- lottery. The country was covered with lottery agents. Indeed, one agent paid a woman by the name of Goodluck £5O a year' for the use of her name. When the fever was at its height doctors drew a good Income from attending the drawings at Guildhall to let the blood of ticket-holders overcome by their emotions. Lotteries were abolished in 1826. Incidentally the Government lost in revenue a total of £300,000 a year.

For some strange reason it has been cabled round the world that mangoes are brimming wit]? vitamins "A” and “O.” If this is done because someone wishes to sell us mangoes on the strength of our vitamin complex- all this trouble is perfectly understandable. If it is done by philanthropists in a sincere effort to improve our health it is a waste of time. Mangoes are unobtainable by 75 per cent, of the world’s population. Perhaps the time has come when this dietary complex might well be summarised. There are so many conflicting suggestions. A certain coterie of scientists, for example, say that raw food, brimming with vitamins from A to Z is essential to long life. We might live to 140 instead of 70 if we ate all our food uncooked. Sellers of cooking appliances on the other hand are of the opinion that rawfood is practically a poison. AU manner of ghastly germs lurk in raw food. If we did not cook our joints we should all be dead in a short time from parasites that would gnaw our livers to shreds, invade the bowel, and burrow into our internals.

The more that scientists discover about our food the more impossible does it become to live. Scientific investigation has proved that a meat diet is essential to human beings. Savage tribes which do not eat meat are on the average a stone lighter and a foot shorter than those Other experts headed by amiable publicists, such as Bernard Shaw, urge us never to eat meat because it has been proved that savage tribes who subsi on a vegetarian diet live 20 per cent, longer than those that live on meat. Wholemeal bread, says the brown bread enthusiasts, is essential to life. Brown bread, say the white bread maniac, is a toxic poison. Sugar and sweets, says one generation, are deadly to children. SugarYmd sweets, says the next generation. are essential in order to enable the body to deal with fats. Just bow our ancestors managed to exist without any insight whatsoever into this mass of conflicting knowledge will be for ever a mystery. Perhaps, like Britain. they just muddled through. .- * ♦ The virtuous and beloved dead Need neither cassia buds nor myrrh t But living men require bread However they may err. —Elinor .Wylia,