CURRENT TOPICS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 254, 23 September 1933, Page 6

CURRENT TOPICS

(By “Wayfarer”). Modern Wife: Is my hat on straight? „ - Husband: Yes, of course it is. Wife: Well, it shouldn t be * * * * Very Stout Man (to woman motorist who has bumped into him): Couldn’t you have gone round me? Motorist (sweetly): 1 wasn t sure if I had enough petrol. # It is reported from the Far East that Chinese adopted strange methods to reduce a sudden and almost unprecedented plague of rats Each province has its own methods of combat and destruction. In Anhwei 10 ~ vince, where millions of rodents havd stripped the rice fields and gardens and are devouring dogs, ducks and cats, the distracted inhabitants are forming little groups of amateur actors and staging m public places the jolliest masques and plays. lney are trying to put the invading rats into such a pleasant mood Uiat they may decide to move on. The Lion and the Mouse” should fill the bill. ***** Recent hot weather in Paris was turned to profit by thieves whose cupidity led to their subsequent undoing. Three of them noticed that, overcome by heat, a number of citizens fell fast asleep on public benches, or even in doorwavs on the Boulevards. The scheme (Jf the young mea was to seat themselves near one oi these exhausted sleepers and pick his pockets. A victim, who had gone to sleep on the Boulevard Sebastopol, was robbed of liis pocket-book, containing £l2, his gold watch and chain, and even his shoes! The thieves, apparently, not satisfied with this haul, came back an hour later to see if anything more could be found on their victim, who was still fast asleep. However, three detectives, whose suspicions had been aroused, were awaiting them, and on their arrival promptly arrested them. The recent news that M. Bleriot, the famous Frenchman who was the first aviator to fly the English Channel—a wonderful feat in those days 24 years ago—has been obliged to close his works because of lack ,of orders, has focussed attention once again on his pioneering exploit, which had almost become forgotten in these days of a husband and wife crossing continents and oceans by ’plane, an air Armada flying half-way round the globe and back again, and an American so swiftly circumairating the universe that he literally had almost returned to his starting point before he left! Just outside Dover there is a slab of granite, shaped to the shadow of an aeroplane, marking the spot where Bleriot landed on July 25, 1909. Eor 24 years no one has cared for it, as soon after the memorial was presented to the Dover Council the land was taken over by the military authorities. The Corporation felt it could not look after the memorial as the ground belonged to it no longer. Now, however, the memorial is to be renovated, the chairman and managing director of a large industrial firm having decided to make it his special care. A strange proceeding, under which tlie provisions of a little known law were invoked, was recorded in England recently, when, by an order in the London Gazette, the High Court deprived a woman of instituting legal proceedings in any Court unless tile Court or Judge is satisfied that the proceedings are not an abuse of the proceedings of the Court. It was stated in the order that it was made upon the motion of the Attorney-Gen-eral, and upon the reading of an affidavit. The decision to deprive a person of his or her right to bring actions at law is remarkable and rarely resorted to. For centuries it was recognised that there should he open access to all Law Courts, but nearly forty years ago the legislature had to step in to curtail the legal activities of William Chaffers, a solicitor, who from a humble apartment, and even the workhouse, brought actions in the County Court for fancied breaches of the law. Among his victims was King Edward who, as Prince of Wales, was a trustee of the British Museum. This and other actions were for alleged neglect by officials in the administration of the Museum. Tile legislature intervened, and the Vexatious Proceedings Act was passed. Chaffers gained immortality so far as the statute book was concerned, for the Act became known as Chaffers’ Act. In 1925 Chaffers, many years dead, lost his fame when tlie “Chaffers’ Act” was absorbed in the Supreme Court of Judicature Consolidation Act. Since the passing of the first Act, in 1896, it has been invoked against only a few persons. ***** The Imperial Standard Yard and its five legally appointed copies will soon, it appeals, become mere museum pieces —objects of idle curiosity (says a London writer). The decennial comparison of the bars has just been completed at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, where, by strange irony, the first accurate determination of the yard in terms of the wave-length of light has recently been made. It has been found, after eight years of patient and continuous research, that one yard equals 1,420,210.82 wavelengths of a particular frequency of red light produced by heating cadmium. and that the new measurement has at least 20 times the accuracy of the present comparison. Indeed, it is accurate to one part in one hundred million, which is as near the absolute as science can go, for the time being. The question is. not one of merely academic interest, for industry already requires commercially manufactured precision gauges up to practically the extreme limits of exactitude obtainable through the existing sub-standards. To meet further progress, the standards themselves must be improved, which gives substance- to the hope that the work of the National Physical Laboratory on light measurement will soon receive legal effect. A member of the laboratary staff will propose to the International Committee on Weights and Measures, which meets in Paris during the autumn, that light shall be adopted as the standard of the metre. The necessary specifications can. then be drawn up, and tlie change could be formally adopted at the committee’s next meeting in 1939. By these means the conditions of the measurement of the yard and metre can he made identical for the first time, so facilitating comparison. It will also he possible to define the yard, so as to give an exact ratio to the metre. The weak point of the present Imperial Yard is that it is a “scratch” standard in both senses. The yard is defined as the distance between two scratches on two golden eyes, set into the bronze bar at its two ends. As these fine lines are a thousandth of an inch thick, accurate measurement depends on fixing them by eye between hair lines in a microscope. Moreover, there is the factor of shrinkage to be taken into account. A “freak” copy of the Standard Yard made ostensibly in metal. which does not change its length with temperature has disgraced its makers by gaining a whole thousandth of an inch in 30 years I