RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 175, 21 April 1937, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) A boxer’s life, it is claimed, is short and hard. Anyway, a boxer’s life has got a punch in it. ♦ ♦ A tax on cosmetics is said to be probable in Britain. We have noted even more expensive methods of facesaving during the last year or so. * * * A novel type of armoured car for dispersing crowds carries quick-firing guns that shoot celluloid pellets. The public, we understand, are earnestly requested to bring their own ping-pong bats. « # « “The following tricky little problem may help to keep the youngsters quiet,” says “L.G.8.” “Take the numbers 1, 2,3, 4,5, 6,7, 8, 9 and add them together in any manner you choose so as to make a sum which totals 100. Every figure must be shown in the working, but no figure can be used twice.” By all means let us commend Little Miss Muffet for eating her curds and whey. But it would be unfair to omit from the general applause other less intelligent creatures who have been laughed at far too long by beings supposed to be more intelligent. The humble donkey has persistently shown a liking for the despised carrot. Today experts tell us that it is us who are the -donkeys. The donkey may have had no knowledge of the structure of the carrot. Possibly it was crass obstinacy that urged the brute to extract supplies of vitamin A and other beneficial Ingredients from the carotene of the carrot that it ate. Indeed, if the stupid old donkey could only study statistics it would be nonplussed to discover that our feeding methods killed off 74 per cent, of our babies in the year 1730 and 30 per cent, in 1833. By studying the donkey and gaining experience from rats we have now reduced this to about 8 per cent. But, then, there is no mention as to whether Little Miss Muffet ever had any babies or was partial to carrots. * * * It is unlikely that a tax on cosmetics will daunt the women of Britain, who already spend a million pounds or more on the face powders with which they disguise their faces and the red compounds with which they make up what lacks in Nature. Nevertheless, my lady’s boudoir has been the subject >f attack by former Chancellors of the Exchequer. Pitt, ever in search of money for the war against France, sought to redress the boundaries of the Old and the New Worlds with money taken from the faces of the women of Britain. He levied taxes on “all sweet scents, odours, perfumes or cosmetics—on dentifrices, powders, tinctures or other preparations for the teeth and gums.” From one’s milk teeth to one’s toothless old age money came from the face for the continuation of those wars. Moreover, a schedule to this Act gives us a complete list of the aids to beauty used by sweet Miss 1786, including essence of bergamotte, Olympian dew. milk of jasmine, Circassian wash balls, and so on.

A word of warning should be given regarding the taxing of face, powders, because, when the idea was tried out in 1795 in the matter of hair powder, it provided its own funeral. Finding it more and more difficult to raise money to finance the war with France Pitt hit upon the plan of making those wjio wished to be in the fashion pay for the privilege of wearing a powdered head. After the Budget of 1795 every person who used hair powder was required to take out a certificate annually at a cost of one guinea. Indigent clergymen and fathers with more than two unmarried daughters on their hands were exempted. Instead, for the sum of two guineas, a comprehensive certificate could be obtained to cover the heads of an unlimited number of daughters. This tax produced a round quarter of a million pounds a year at first. Those who indulged in their whim of powdered heads gradually awoke to the fact that they were being “had.” Fewer and fewer powdered heads were seen. By the rime the duty was removed in 1855 it was being paid in respect of a few hundred flunkeys.

This proposed dart car capable of travelling at 400 miles an hour takes us into a realm of speed half motor-car and half projectile. One may well wonder if it will soon be necessary for the authorities to define where motoring ends and ballistics begin. . Indeed, the primitive arrow shot from the bow travels at a very modest 200 miles an hour. A projectile shaped like a dart and fitted with wheels may produce lifting forces that may send it into the air on a series of gigantic leaps. One only needs a propeller to be fitted for the contraption to cease being a motor-car. Obviously it will not be an aeroplane, having no wings. Already it has been shown that genuine cars travelling at 300 miles an hour can make leaps into the air of 20 or 30 feet. Our flying darts may improve on this. Just where all this will get us is a matter of little importance. IVhat is important is to decide when a"motor-car ceases to be a motor-ear for the purposes of records.

“I have enjoyed your very interesting article about the newly-discovered comet, and the information regarding space aud speed.” says “E.W.H. ’ “Can you offer a solution to the following. We are led to believe that the light we see from many distant suns has taken hundreds of years to reach us. If one of these sources of light ceased to function, i.e. went out. would we know of it before the lapse of time it is stated is required for it to reach us under normal conditions, or, because the source of this light ray has ceased, would the time be very much reduced? One is informed that beyond the earth’s atmosphere all is darkness or very diffused light. If that is so. then the light we see is only that seen through the earth's atmosphere and should pass in a moment.” [ln some cases the light from the more distant stars takes over a million years to reach the earth. Actually we are seeing the stars in question as they were a million years ago. If the star has altered or disappeared hi the interval we will only be able to know it when the light at the time of the accident arrives in due course. If. for example, the star were wiped out at this instant no knowledge of the event would reach this earth until the year 1,001.937. Actually the sun sets for tills reason some six minutes before it appears to do so. IVe do not see light, but it has a certain chemical effect on the eye which causes nerve sensations to be passed to the brain where they are analysed. Space is not necessarily dark unless it is so remote from '■•onto source of light, such as a sun, that onlj very feeble rays of light traverse that space. The sun is shining 10.000 miles above the world more fiercely than on the earth itself. If something sensitive to light were to be placed in space it would bo able to detect the light rays, provided no other object got in the way.]