RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 120, 14 February 1935, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

Signor Mussolini demands among other things from the Abyssinians a bareheaded salute of the Italian flag. It looks as if it is going to be a close shaye for Abyssinia. We might get to prosperity much quicker if people wouldn’t insist on weighing the plans after planning the ways. “Why is Japan insisting on naval parity?” asks a correspondent. It would take a good deal of space to explain the whole business, but, boiled down, Japan’s case is that she wants to have as big a navy as any of the Christian Powers. A penny trail has been started from each centre to a point halfway between Wellington and Christchurch, each penny to equal two yards. The winning point is 87 miles from each centre, and on the basis of computation agreed upon £319 will be required to cover that distance. The first Free Kindergarten Association (Christchurch or Wellington) to collect £319 will be the winner of the race, and is to receive one guinea from the other. The competition is a reminder of those freak estimates such as, for example, if a large Atlantic liner hung all its washing on the line at the same moment it would stretch from here to Sydney and a bit more. It is not suggested for a moment that any liner will do such a thing, but it shows what we are spared because they do not. In the same way, if the whole population of the world started to walk round the world at the Equator they would never pass any given point owing to the activities of Mr. Stork. . When one starts to stretch things out or count things, all manner of ridiculous results confront one for the tronble. It can be shown for example that the pistons inside a motor-car go much further than the motor-car, that the edge of a railway engine's wheel goes backwards at times when the engine is going forward. Another curious mathematical fact is that if every girl who uses lipstick were to hold hands from Wellington to Christchurch they would stretch to Dunedin ; if every husband in England stood in a row between Manchester and London they would reach Paris I«fore they could be stopped. These sort of things have obsessed mathematicians for generations. Thev will continue to obsess them. After all, if a mathematician had nothing to work out mathematics would lose their kick. Perpetual contemplation of the square root of minus one makes a statistician a dull lad. Men who juggle with figures must have their play. In that period they have computed that if every fly in New Zealand had laid its usual ration of eggs and they all hatched and laid their’s and so on, in six months we would have flies covering New Zealand to a d ’• of 20 feet. Why they don’t is as great a mystery as what we would do if they did. * » * • Fishers.,who have caught leatherjackets have found them good eating. They are also good eaters. In the case -of a diver who was attacked by predatory hordes of leather-jackets off Sydney heads he was lucky to escape with iittle damage. We are apt to imagine that the only dangerous things of the waters of the world are the big things such as sharks, killer whales, and the like.’ This may be the case in many parts, but there are places where the small things are far more dangerous. In some of the rivers of Paraguay there are small fishes called Piranas which are usually not over a foot long. Yet anybody foolish enough to enter water where these fishes abound would be considered lucky to escape alive. These fish police the rivers in huge hordes totalling hundreds of thousands. They swoop upon any living matter that falls into the water. It is not exaggerating their power to say that it has been known for a sheep to be reduced to a cleanpicked skeleton in five minutes. The wolves of dry land are fair-sized creatures, but some of the wolves of the sea are so small a person with no knowledge of their habits is likely to get into trouble.

Possibly one of the most-feaied fishes in some parts of the world is the barracuda. This fish is not more than eighteen inches long in many cases. With a top speed of some SO miles an hour, exceedingly sharp teeth, a liking for living flesh and a habit of striking at anything moving it can inflict terrible damage. Three or four of these fish before now have attacked and killed animals as large as horses. The extreme in ferocious fish are perhaps the terrible killer whales, which, of course, are not fish at all. These brutes think nothing of swallowing a seal whole. In fact, they chase seals under water and can beat them at the game of swimming under water. Such delicacies as human beings, penguins and dogs do not come amiss to these animals. Killer whales, moreover, have a nasty habit of popping their heads above a mass of floating ice to see what is on top. They then sound and by dealing the ice terrific bumps from below contrive either to break the ice up or jerk anything on it into the water. Their habit'of working in packs with a leader whose intelligence is at times almost uncanny makes the killer whale the most dangerous inmate of the sea.

A question lias been asked as to the meaning of the expression "The King can do no wrong.” It has been stated ’ that an effort is to be made to make the Government more responsible in law than it is at present. This matter, however, goes deep down into English Law and is more anomalous than might be imagined. The bottom of the problem is the accepted fact that "the King can do no wrong.” Criminal prosecution of the King admittedly would lead to chaos. But the statement “the King can do no wrong” means that if any servant of the Ling gives an unlawful order and says “I did this by the King's order” a court of law simply says: "We don’t believe it. The King is incapable of giving a wrongful order.” The fact that the King of England had actually ordered the Earl of Danby to do the act for which he was impeached failed to save him on account of this reasoning. The Earl, indeed, had written authority from the King. Subsequently this same plea was brushed aside in tlie famous John Wilkes case, which actually got info our school history books. Tlie result of this was an even more anomalons ruling concerning the suing of the Crown.