News in Brief

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20360, 18 July 1934, Page 6

News in Brief

A 12,000-mile “ Friendly Road.” We are trying to make the route from England a ‘ Friendly Road,’ even if it is oyer 12,000 miles long,” said Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, speaking at a farewell broadcast from IZB (Auckland), the station of the '* Friendly Road,” to the two pilots, Squadron-Leader J. D. Hewett arid FlyingOfficer C.. E. Kay, who are to fly New Zealand’s entry in the Melbourne centenary air race. “We are rivals, but I am sure that we shall be able to beat each other in the same friendly way in which we set out.” Tie added that if he had had the choice of New Zealand’s representatives in the race he could not have chosen two better pilots than his friends, Messrs Hewett and Kay. Spin of the Coin. The statement that, in Test matches, the spin of the coin has given Britain and Australia an equality of wins (sixty-six each) causes a contemporary to quote the astronomer Sir James Jeans (“ The Mysterious Universe”) to the effect that, if we spin a halfpenny, nothing within our knowledge may be able to decide whether it will come down head or tail; but “if we throw up a million tons of halfpence we know there will be 500,000 tons of heads and 500,000 tons of tails.” Sir James says the experiment ma be repeated times without number, and the result will always be the same. No mathematical proposition was ever more certain. Yet it cannot be proved mathematically.