RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By Kickshaws!.

by

The president of the United States of America, we note, Its having a row about money. Well, he’s an experienced family man and should know tbe ropes. o • * t Huge orders, it is reported, have been placed locally for military boots. A few years ago it was running shoes that were all the vogue. * ♦ A visitor says he has come to settle in New Zealand because there is no political trouble. Some folk contend he has got cast up on a lee shore. * » * A pugilist by the name of Galento is stated to have made £2S,(XX) by not winning a recent heavyweight contest in America. One can only express surprise at the smallness of the sum. It will take a very long time for him to get rich, in boxing standards of wealth. Jack Dempsey made £475,000 from, the ring. For one fight alone he made £170,000. Dempsey, moreover, not only made a fortune out of boxing, he did A . the far more difficult thing of saving a fortune and .opened a profitable restaurant in New York. Galento should note that Tunney went one better. Not only did he make nearly as much as Dempsey, but he contrived to marry an heiress as well. A boxer’s career is brief. It varies from! two years to ten. on the average. The real skill is shown in keeping the money that flows in. Nothing succeeds like success and nothing is easier to squander. Jack Petersen, for example, when he retired 'had contrived to save only half his total earnings of £50,000. Even so he could quite correctly point to others who had saved nothing and had made more. * # «

One may well wonder what happens to the boxers when they have earned a comfortable sum either by winning a few contests or by losing them. Joe Beckett, for example, invested his savings and lives comfortably apart from the bread line. Georges Carpentier can shake a pretty appetiser in his cocktail bar in Paris. Don McCorkindale is now a builder’s labourer. Just what Joe Louis will be remains to be seen. His mother always wanted him to be a fiddler. Joe, however, < became a cotton picker before working in a car factory. He left that to make £270,000 in four years. He is determined to retire when he has made half a million. Jack Dempsey declares that Louis will be champion till 1950. Anyway, Louis does not know from where the man will come to relieve him of his title. Probably the next champion is delivering while his fond parents form plans to make’him a butcher’s assistant It is a curious fact that the boxing champions all seem to come that way. Max Baer was a butcher’s assistant, Dempsey was a navvy, Braddock was a dock labourer, and Levinsky peddled fish. It seems a curious start calculated to upset experts on genetics, diet, and family ancestral trees.

Toward the end. of this week everybody was telling Kickshaws that they; had heard that it was earthquake weather. Indeed, everybody except Kickshaws seemed certain there was going to be an earthquake. One may well ask what constitutes earthquake weather. The days in question were calm and still. Indeed, every calm, still day seems to be earthquake weather. Yet earthquakes seem to have come in all weathers. From a strictly practical point of view, one would imagine that stresses in the earth would give at times when the pressure above was greatest. This condition occurs when the tides are exceptionally high and the air pressure is high, and when the moon is so placed in relation to the sun as to cause tbe greatest attractive force on the side opposite to that where the earthquake may occur. Maybe the effect of the moon and the planets does enter into the matter, but so far the matter is so controversial one may well say that almost any weather is earthquake weather.

In/spite of conflicting ideas-as to what, constitutes earthquake weather, there does seem to be some connexion between earthquakes and certain , living creatures. The most sensitive earthquake predicter is said to be a certain species of fish. This fish senses approaching tremors many hours before they are felt by humans, and remains perfectly still. Japanese scientists have made a close study of these.fish. They declare that minute quivering of the. earth has a paralysing effect upon the nerves Of the fish. When all vibration ceases, they regain their powers and' swim around like all good fishes. This species of fish might well be imported from Japan, where they are well known. Maybe it would be wise to display them in bowls, if they are not too big, so that the public could know when earthquake weather was at hand. Indeed, the fish would be no insignificant advertising medium if they decorated the stalls of fishmongers.

It is a well-known fact that many animals, including birds and dogs, are able to sense the coming of earthquakes. Indeed human beings can also do so. Nurse A. Sellwood, of Haslemere, Sussex, England, is so sensitive that she can predict shakes some time before they arrive. There have been other people who have bad the same power. 11l the town of Jammu, in Kashmir, an old Sadu predicted a big earthquake to the very minute. Proof that this was not a fake was obtained by Sir Edwin 11. Pascoe, director of the Geological Survey of India from 1921 to 1932, When tliis expert investigated the matter his incredulity was silenced by the production of a newspaper by the Sadu dated some days before the earthquake in which the prognostication appeared. Sir Edwin was sufficiently impressed to add that if this particular old man were to predict an earthquake in London he would take an early train to a quiet spot in the country. Meanwhile there is no scientific method of predicting earthquakes, tine still wonders how so many people felt there was earthquake weather toward the end of this week.

“To settle an argument could you tell me how long there has been a striking clock on the Town Hall, Wellington”? says "Mrs. X.” "My argument is:. Never; my husband says he can’t remember when it was not there, and he is well on in his forties.”

I The Town Clerk, Wellington, kindly advises thatTlie Town Hall clock, erected in 1923, had no striking or chiming mechanism. The clock was removed in 1934 from the Town Hall and recently placed in the tower of the new fire station.]

O£ all the cocks that greeted dawn, today, How many will be heard a year from now?

How many preen their feathers on the heap, How many strut the yard? How many crow? ■ *

—Monk Gibbon.