People and Their Doings.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 538, 22 August 1932, Page 6

People and Their Doings.

Willow Buds Tell the Tale of a Late Spring : Some Girls' Names can Never Date their Owners : Bernard Shaw in his Maddest Mood.

SHAW has written a new play, “ Too True to be Good.” It was produced at the Malvern Festival last month and, according to the “ Star’s ” London correspondent, one critic summed it up by saying: “It is too bad to be true.” The drama concerns two impossible young criminals, who persuade a conventional girl to embark on an adventurous life and indulge in a good time parallelling those of the war years. The “ Observer’s ” critic says that the play is a collection of sermons and whimsical interludes reviewing the dilemma of a world which has lost its old, and found no fresh, dreams since the war stripped it of its Victorian wrappings and left souls in rags. Shaw arraigns modern negativity and rebukes the age for accepting his derisive philosophy and neglecting a constructive programme. The “ Sunday Times” says that the play is fantastic. It is presented in Shaw’s maddest mood, but often is a sane and wise mirror of the postwar world. It opens as a “ crook ” play, but ends as a sermon.

AT DIFFERENT TIMES certain people have interested themselves in the possibilities of communication with possible inhabitants of Mars. If anything of this sort is ever to lie accomplished, it will probably have to be done by means of ultra short radio waves, according to 1. E. Mouromtseff, research engineer of the Westinghouse Electric Company. Some twenty-five years ago certain known facts of radio communication convinced Dr A. E. Kennelly, professor of electrical engineering at Harvard, and Professor Oliver Heaviside, English scientist, that there must be a sort of cushion or atmospheric layer 100 or more miles from the earth’s surface. This has since been known as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. To-day Westinghouse research engineers are talking on a fortv-two centimetre beam from station WBXI, on top of the research building, to the roof of the engineering laboratory, more than a mile away, where a parabolic metal mirror gathers the waves and passes them through a special detector valve to an ordinary little radio receiving set, where they are amplified and made audible.

IT VERY YEAR Mr R. Nairn watches the willows on the riverbank closely for an infallible indication of whether the season is to be late or early. If the willows are out in leaf by August 19 the season is normal. This year the willows are not out yet, although at the foot of the Port Hills yesterday a tramper noticed one leaf full out. Mr Nairn says that the season is undoubtedly late because everything is so cold, but he does not regard the late budding of the willows as a sign necessarily of a late cr a cold summer.

5$ S IXTV YEARS AGO (from the “ Star" ° o& August 22, 1872) The Armagh Street Bridge.—The flooring of this bridge is now all laid, and the whole structure is completed with the exception of a little finishing work to the hand-rails. Men are also at work forming the approaches. Church at Burke’s Pass.—A little church, capable of accommodating sixty persons, has recently been ejected at Burke's Pass by the shepherds and others in that locality This church may be said to be truly catholic in its character, having been erected for the use of the Presbyterians, Church of England, and Roman Catholics. It was opened for divine worship last Sunday, service in the morning being performed according to the ceremonies of the Church of England. by the Rev W. 11. Cooper, and in the evening by the Rev G, Barclay, Presbyterian Minister. Temuka. Naval Cadetship.—The following notice appears in the New Zealand Gazette: —His Excellency the Governor directs it to be ! notified for general information, that, in i consequence of no application having been ; made in response to the notification insert- | ed in the New Zealand Gazette on Novern- ; her 29. 1870. the last Naval Cadetship in- ; tended for New Zealand lapsed. The next ! nomination for this colony will be in 1874. j and must be notified to the Secretary of | State for the colonies during the first quarter of that year.

LADY MAY CAMBRIDGE, now Lady May Abel-Smith, the Queen's niece, is giving her little girl the names of Ann May Sibylla, a very pretty combination indeed, although the reversal of the first two names would be commonplace. There are some girls’ names that have a fashion, and “ date ” the children most emphatically. Some thirty years ago Daphne and Gladys had a remarkable run, but it is doubtful whether any name actually dates a child, unless it may be names like Baden-Poweil or Mafeking Smith. Some very pretty names appeared in the list of nine little girls of the North Beach basketball team, winners of the primary schools’ competition. They were Mina, Zoo. Neta, Doris, Olive, Nancy, Joyce. Noeiine and Marion, a very pretty group to select from, and, incidentally, a tribute to the good taste of their parents.

“ JT IS CONCEIVABLE that the power we have succeeded in getting into our forty-two centimetre beam is sufficient to pierce the Heaviside laver and travel the 35,COC,(XK) miles to Mars,”' stated Mouromtsetf. “It is possible that such small power may carry to such great distances, because of the fact that practically all of the interj veiling space is really a high vacuum and i does not, therefore, absorb the waves, once j they get through the earth's atmosphere.” ! Mouromtseff and his associates believe the i ultra short wave will be adapted to many I practical uses in the next few years and i that it will prove of commercial value by supplementing radio and other present I forms of communication.