RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 264, 3 August 1933, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current .Events •3 LOCAL AND GENERAL

(B S

Kickshaws.)

The ironical part about Gandhi’s “no taxes” campaign is that it has succeeded only too thoroughly in taxing the Government’s patience.

According to a wheat expert, prosperity cannot be established on a dancing dollar. Some people maintain that what is true of the dollar is also true of the community. • • •

The Minister of Health declares that the first year of a person’s life is the most critical—“Agin the Government” from birth, in fact.

There has been a lively interest taken in the inquiry on the part of a reader for some simple way of removing nicotine from a pipe. It is impossible to quote ail the letters in full. One reader says that the best method is to clean out the dirty pipe with a jet of steam. This is the method employed at many timber mills where a jet of steam is obtainable. Until pipe sellers install steam jets as well as miniature bowsers, another alternative suggested is to bury the pipe in the garden. Provided the dog doesn’t appropriate it, it will be ready for use in a week or so.

More suggestions will be given tomorrow. —Kickshaws. ■» • •

So rare is it for lightning to take toll of human life, as in the case of the recent striking of a church on the Continent, in the whole of Europe there are scarcely 100 persons killed a year. This is all the more surprising when it is realised that official estimates place the number of thunderstorms in the world in the course of a year at the enormous total of sixteen million. This works out at 44,000 * day. At a conservative estimate, nearly 2000 storms are raging in the world simultaneously. In spite of the fact that we live under a veritable electrical inferno, in an area the size of Britain, only 18 people on the average are killed by lightning every year. Moreover, only 100 persons are injured and 100 trees struck. Incidentally, under a score of churches are damaged. Destruction due to lightning, however, is very variable. The worst storm on record occurred in 1884 and raged for nearly a fortnight; 35 persons were killed, 91 were injured, 82 trees were destroyed, nearly 200 cattle were killed, not ‘to mention three pigs and two dogs. \

It was inferesting to read in the news that two American professors have set out to look for the lost Atlantis. But it was far more interesting to read that they appear to be looking for this submerged continent in a small lake in Venezuela. One can but wish them the best of luck, which, coupled with a resolute imagination, may accomplish the impossible. The fact remains that Atlantis of popular myth is sited not many miles to the west of Gibraltar, and not in a lake in Venezuela. Five hundred years before the Christian era Plato in one of his dialogues alluded in some detail to a western land called Atlantis which lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Moreover, Egyptian priests told Solon, a Greek law-giver, that a country larger than Asia Minor and North Africa put together had once lain in the ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. So certain were they of this they even stated that 9000 years ago armies had been sent from Atlantis which had conquered the Mediterranean nations. Finally, Atlantis had been engulfed in the ocean depths. ♦ • •

One might well agk what searchers for the lost Atlantis expect to find. Judging by some reports, these searchers hope to find an island mislaid in mid-Atlantic. This is most unlikely. The best that could be found of this lost continent nowadays ..would be a huge area of the Atlantic considerably shallower than the rest of the ocean. This has already been found. Right across the centre of the Atlantic there stretches from N.E. to S.W. a huge ridge of shallower water, of which the Azores and a few other Islands are all that remain above water. This a,rea is roughly the size of Spain, France and Germany put together. It Is roughly one 1000 miles from Gibraltar and tails off to the southrwest into a narrow strip of shallow water, ending on a level with the north of South America. If there ever were am Atlantis, that surely must have been Its site. Five hundred fathoms deep It lies to-day—too deep for man to probe its mysteries, except in one small spot

The very latest women’s fashions, it is stated, are pinched waists, .bottle shoulders, and hats that look like nothing on earth. One has only to turn over an old “Punch” to discover exactly what the fashionable woman will look like disguised in her latest garbs. It is not much of a step backward for the coming fashion to usher in a return to wasp waists, tight lacing, balloon sleeves and skirts that sweep the ground. What Dame Fashion decrees women wear and appear to give the matter little aesthetic attention. Thirty years ago, when women were proudly wearing sleeves as large as balloons, it was said that sleeves were “the most tell-tale portion of a woman’s dress. A certain amount of fullness in the sleeves is undoubtedly becoming.” One has onlv to look at a fashion plate of balloon sleeve frocks of those days to wonder how women could be so acquiescent to the dictates of fashion.

It is said that a glib-tongued prime minister can make the citizens of his country believe almost anything. It is the same with woman’s dress. One has only to turn over the pages of an old newspaper to read again and again the same old, old story. At the time when waists were introduced one learned that a “truly graceful outline with a small waist and defined hips are the rewards of tight lacing. Corsets, too, armour the body against colds.” For a smart boating costume women were fooled into believing that fashion had decreed “ . . white gowns. It does one’s eyes good to see some of the exquisite boating dreams. Pique and duck make very chic creations.’ Wide revers, faced with velvet, give the finishing touches.” One has only to look at pictures of those days to realise how finishing were those touches. The only ray of light is that there were even then some women who saw through the farce. “From time to time,” said one female critic, “there appear as fashions truly awful exc amples of what is possible from an inartistic point of view. One gazes in horror with teeth on edge.” Yet, lik® sheep, women meekly don these horrors. —Why!