RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 99, 21 January 1938, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

History, it is said, is going to be made quietly. But not if the modern dictators have their say.

The chief danger of the Anglo-Irish conferences is that the folk in Ireland will discover they haven’t got a grieva nee. ,

The French Cabinet, it is stated, contains 33 posts. Unfortunately the lasting merits of totara are unknown in France.

Those who have been used to thanking God for their good meal will be alarmed to note that the children in Italy now thank Mussolini. Wluiffier or not this dictator has decided to usurp the position that tradition has given the Deity in the matter of gratefulness for food, it is to be hoped that the idea does not spread. Whatever the merits of the Maiden’s Prayer, we bestitate to suggest that the problematical Director of Sport should become the recipient of thanks for the beautiful boys that he has provided. The beautiful boys, In their turn, may supplicate the High Chieftainess of Beauty Specialists until there will' be no end to the grateful prayers that will be prayed to alb manner of persons. The motorist, when he sets forth, will utter a short, sharp prayer to Mr. Semple for the roads, to Mr. Savage for the increase in the price in petrol, ; to his motor garage for supplying a fitness warrant, and to the God of Silence if his wife be driving in the back seat.

Whether or not Mussolini has no sense of humour, it is a curious fact that dictators tend more and more to imagine themselves to be gods. Indeed, Nero was fully of the opinion that he was a god, and a very good god at that. Not that we would suggest that a god would have behaved as did Nero when Rome burned. Caesar was sufficiently of the opinion that he was nearer the gods than mortal man, io be very annoyed when be was murdered in, a most un-godlike manner by very inhuman human beings. There have been many kings who have imagined themselves to be gods, but none of them has ordered “grace” to be said to them instead of to the accepted divinity of the community. In fact, the divinity of kings was for many years a most controversial matter. N> authority except that x of the king could be found for this indication of the vanity that comes with power in beings that are not of the stuff from which even angels are made. The Divine Right of Kings died with the demise of sovereignty in Germany. Hitler has claimed many things, but nothing so irreverent as that.

Every day there comes news of records in temperature from some place in New Zealand. So far, 110 degrees in a swafiip in the Waikato tops the list. Nevertheless, this temperature would be considered a cool day in some places in other parts of the world. Marble Bar, in Australia, a name that in itself suggests thirst, can boast 120 degrees night and day for nearly a month on end. One of the hottest places in the world is to be found in Death Valley, California, where 150 in the shade has been recorded, if we are to believe explorers. Even this is not the hottest ever. The record is still retained by a place called Ladak, high up among the Himalayan glaciers. This place has had an official day temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. As that nearly approaches the temperatures at which water starts to sing before boiling, making tea must be a simple matter. The Danakil desert in Ethiopia comes close behind with 158 degrees in the shade.

The medal of the Society of Chemical Industry has been awar’ded to the successful American inventor, who, it is declared, founded the plastics industry. We do not wish to take-away honour where honour is due, but if the truth was known the medal ought really to be awarded to an unknown cat in Birmingham. One day this eat, when it was chasing a mouse, upset a glass of formaldehyde. The mouse had omitted to eat some cheese attractively laid out for that purpose on the business end of a trap. The formaldehyde was spilled over the cheese. In the morning the chemist who had set the trap came to find the mouse. He found, instead, a curious hard substance that had formed as a result of the formaldehyde meeting the cheese. It is probable that this was the first plastic ■made. The maker was the cat, assisted certainly by the mouse that provided the catalytic agency, but man had no say in the matter. Let us give honour where honour is due. In view of the fact that neither the nanje of the cat nor the name of the moilse is known, a combined monument, no doubt, would suffice.

These days of calculated thought, and thanks to the calm dissection of the atomic structures, nothing may be invented haphazard. Nevertheless, it is still a fact that luck does play a part. It was luck that a very hard wearing type of copper was found suitable for the making of master records in the gramophone industry. A workman by accident flipped a piece ot cheese into a cauldron of molten copper. No notice was taken of this until it was found that the product of this-particular cauldron proved veryhard wearing. The casein in the cheese, it was proved, had produced this added property. Maybe those ancients who were supposed to have produced bronze and copper with the hardness of steels may have done no more than drop a lump of cheese into the pot. The names of these inventors,, indeed, are in danger of being lost for all time. They will take their place among the ranks of many other inventors the world has forgotten; the men who invented the pin, the razor, soap, the collar stud, the comb, the hairbrush, and the bootlace.

“As a visitor to Wellington, I have read with interest ‘Random Notes.’ I notice that an answer to a query sent in by ‘Eloqutor’ was supplied by ‘W.M.B.,’ ” says “Old Timer.” “Would you kindly ask if your readers would supply the words of an old poem, which was in the old 'Royal Reader’ (Standard V or VI), mentioned by ‘W.M.B.,’ about 50 years ago? It was on the Polar expedition, headed by Franklin. It began, if I remember right:—

“ ‘The polar clouds uplift, a moment and no more, Out on the snowy drift, we see them on the shore. A band of gallant hearts, well ordered, calm and brave, Braced for their closing march, their long march to the grave.’ ”