WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 63, 8 December 1926, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM

(By

T.D.H.)

While New Zealand is waiting more or less patiently for the weather to behave in accordance with the almanac, America is this morning reported to be in the grip of the worst early December cold snap for forty years. This erratic behaviour of the weather once more directs attention to the predictions of the solar radiation theorists that 19'26 was to be a year without a summer. In the Northern Hemisphere the summer of 1926 is over and done, and there do not seem to have been' any exceptionally pronounced lamentations about its failure to appeal'. Whether the Southern Hemisphere is to have a summer in 1926-7 has to be discovered. however. The latest theory about the weather is that the amount of heat given off by the sun is not constant, but varies from day to day and year to year. Earth’s weather is not immediately affected as before the seasons go wrong time has to elapse for the oceans to cool down in consequence of the falling-off in the sun’s heat. The leading authority on solar radiation is Dr. Charles, G. Abbot, assistant director of the Smithsonian Institution and director of its astrophysical observatory. Only a few months back Dr. Abbot announce! that he had definite and irrefutable proof that t' sun worked in spasms. Dr. Abbot has been at work for thirty years on this job, and research has been conducted under his direction at special observatories in different parts of the world. This all goes to show’ how sound on the subject was old “Uncle Joe” Cannon, the famous Speaker of the United States House <Jf Representatives, who died the other-day. The question of an appropriation for solar radiation research was before Congress, and “Uncle Joe,” in discussing it with a friend over a chew of tobacco, sagely observed:—• “I don't care so much about the stars that are so far away that if/ they were all abolished to-night our great-grandchildren would, never know the difference; but everything hangs on the sun, Sherley, and I think it ought to be investigated. I think this appropriation is all right.” The stars are . a luxury, very interesting and all that sort of thing, but the sun is reality, and if it doesn’t do its bit it is serious, and there is nothing to do on Sundays but to go to church.

The new investigations mean that Old Sol is a variable star subject to the go-slow policy at erratic intervals. Dr. Abbot estimates a change of less than one-half of one per cent, in the sun’s radiation is enough to make a big upset in the weather down here below. When sunspots are numerous it means that the sun is working overtime, and more warmth than usual is being shot out to be stored in earth’s oceans and give us good seasons. The uncertain point at the moment seems to be just how long a change in the solar radiation takes to make its effects felt generally. Until this is figured the amateur "weather forecaster would probably . be wisest to stick to his bit of seaweed. • • * The weather has much more farreaching effects than many people imagine. Dr. E. G. Dexter, of New York, has analysed the school truancy records, the hospital admissions, the police court records, etc., of that city in conjunction with the weather. W hen the temperature gets up to between 80 and 85 degrees, 69 per cent, more men and exactly 100 per cent, more women than usual begin hitting each other hard enough to be arrested for assault. At 10 degrees Fahrenheit people are so busy keeping warm that assault and battery sinks down to half the normal figure. But alas,* when the weather is cold the people of New York, despite the prohibition law, get 40 per, cent, drunker at 10 degrees Fahrenheit than they do at normal temperatures. When it is very hot drunkenness drops down to next to nothing. People commit suicide on any old sort of a day so far as the thermometer is concerned, but they look very carefully to the barometer. With a high barometer, 30 30 no well ordered person takes his or her own life, but when the barometer gets down to 29.60 it is quite good form ■to blow out one s brains. Usually a fine day is chosen for a suicide in New York City, Excessive winds drive New Yorkers in large numbers to suicide.

Calms’result in‘great excesses of absences from school, policemen fail to report for duty, and people take sick and die. At the same time there is a great falling oft in bad conduct marks in school, and a falling oft also in arrests for misbehaviour. The people are good, Dr. Dexter says, not because they all feel better in calms, but because their vitality is lowered, for in calm weather in crowded New York City there isn’t enough oxygen to spare for anybody to have a kick in him.

The other day King Albert of Belgium, when motoring in Geneva, accidentally ran over a dog, and the angry owner, despite the royal apologies, threatened to take out a’summons. It has been pointed out that this infuriated Swiss citizen’s prospects of success would not have been worth much, for it is a firmly established rule of international law that a sovereign in the territory of another State is exempt from the jurisdiction of the tribunals of that State. The interests of his own State might at. any moment be endangered if he were liable to answer abroad for infringements of the laws of other lands. Hence it is agreed that—at any rate in so far as, and as long as, he is there in his capacity of sovereign—he cannot be proceeded against in either civil or criminal matters, and is free from all liability for rates, taxes, and observance of police regulations. The position is not quite the same when a monarch travels incognito. But the distinction is really an illusory one, for whenever he declares his identity his privileges revive. This was illustrated about thirty years ago in a breach-of-promise action against the Sultan of Johore. He had lived in Britain as a private person and had been introduced to the plaintiff in a false name. But when proceedings were began his identity was made plain, and the Court held that on that ground the plaintiff must fail. From Sporting and Dramatic Yarns (Fisher Unwin) : “The new play was so exceedingly bad that the audience rose in a body at the end of the first act and crowded out of the theatre. ‘Gentlemen—gentlemen,’ shouted a wag in the stalls, ‘I appeal to you. Women, and children first, please!’ ” . , THE ISLE OF PORTLAND... The star-filled seas are smooth to-night From France to England strown; Black towers above the Portland light The felon-quarried stone. On vonder island, not to rise, Never to stir forth free, Far from his folk a dead lad lies That once was friends with me. Lie you easy, dream you light, And sleep you fast for aye; And luckier may you find the m'glt Than ever you found the day.—A. E.. Housmm.