RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 94, 15 January 1935, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) If it be really true that shorts have come to stay, it seems only natural to assume that shorts are in for a long time. ♦ * ♦ The Executive Council of Master Bakers in Sydney has given way to the Government. This, we understand, ends a floury outburst. « » » An aeroplane is stated to have dropped sand on the clouds in the Wairarapa to induce rain. The principle, we understand, is the opposite to painting the clouds with sunshine to induce optimism. ♦ ♦ * It may be correct that many of the so-called disciples of Yoga, discovered in an out-of-the-way corner of Tibet, are over 200 years old. One can only take these statements in the spirit with which they are given. Usually this spirit is to make the individual concerned older than reality. Without birth certificates it is difficult to substantiate great age. Memory is no good because generations come and go and take no count of centuries. For that reason, claims to great age in Britain must be looked upon askance if they occurred before September, 1538. Anybody born before that date had no birth certificate. If they had been given birth certificates doubtless some of the super centenarians would have dropped a few decades. Henry Jenkins,./for example, claimed to be 169 years old. He died in 1670. AU we can say for sure is that he was over 132 years old. As all the people who were alive when be was born had died before he died, there was no proof as to his age at the time that birth certificates were instituted by Cromwell.. If it is possible to doubt'the great ages attained by people in England such as Henry Jenkins, reputed 169 years, and Old Parr, reputed 152 years! there is even more reason to doubt some of the tales of great age that have come from other parts. When Zaro Agha died a year ago, he was credited with a life of 169 years. The ensuing autopsy showed that Zaro Agha died from uremic poisoning. His kidneys in fact were burned out. Medical experts were prepared to concede that Zaro Agha was old, but they refused to put his age a day more than 109 years. Great old age has, as a matter of fact, not been able to withstand the merciless scrutiny of able investigators such as G. C. Lewis, W. J. Thomas and T. E. Young. They have shown that after the age of 70 years there is an increasing tendency to exaggerate age. Eventually individuals who live to be over 100 years forget when they really were born and add on decades where of yore they had only added years. So great age is attained after the manner of a snowball. One sure tiling about the lifetime of man is that he does not live as long as he ought. The problem, though, is to decide how long a life span should be. There are scores of formulae, but their merit is doubtful. If we take 25 years as the end of adolescence. and if we accept the fact that animals live eight times as long as they take to mature, the age of man should be 200 years. Several thoughtful experts have arrived at the same figure by different approaches, including Luigi Cornaro and Metehnikoff. In spite of these efforts there is no sure guide to the correct life span of man, except the now discredited six score years and ten. Biological experts declare that animal tissue is immortal and there is no reason why. under proper conditions, a man should not live for ever. Death, however, is progress, and man, if he became immortal, would stagnate. There could be no improvement in the species. Only bacilli have attained to such an ideal as that. » * » The solitary death of a wealthy recluse at Palmerston North has a curious counterpart in New York. The recluse was found dead at the foot of her stairs in her shuttered house, guarded by her Alsatian dog. Memories of the past were all round her. She was the last of her line and apparently had no relations to look after her. She was wealthy and eccentric. The comparison with the last Miss Wendel, of New York, is sufficiently curious to he worth noting. Miss Ella Wendel, worth £40,000,000, was found dead in her shuttered house. When the police»broke in she was found dead on one beci, while on another sat her poodle. She died in a house for which almost any estate agent would have paid cash to a total of several millions. The place was in decay. The house was worth nothing, the site everything. When Miss Ella Wendel’s sisters died, she continued to live in the great lonely house. Nothing was altered in the house on the corner of 39th Street, .Fifth Avenue. For 25 years the front door had never been opened. The coachman, the horses, the dogs, one by one, died off, until, eventually, there was only Ella left—and her poodle. Time flows over efforts to keep the past in the present and remorselessly wipes out everything. Miss Wendel and the recluse of Palmerston North vainly tried to dam time. Time, however, can bide its time whether it be a flip of a moment such as a lifetime, or a geological period. Surely and inevitably the waves of time lap against all dams and in the end time wins. One can but wonder if in the end there will be nothing left but time Vast oceans of time without a job. liecause everything will have been destroyed, by time itself. The only thing one cannot destroy is time. One cannot even waste time, any more than a fish can waste water. It is not “of” us to waste. We are bathed in time but we cannot control it, we cannot use it. It. uses us. Experts to this .lay do nqt know what time is. They do not know if times flows or if we flow through time. Nobody can even imagine time. It is like living in a huge ocean. One could not imagine the ocean. It is there, but it is not there. Only if it were not there, if there were no time, would we miss it? ♦ * * If you’ve got a thought that’s happy— Boil it down. Make it short and crisp and snappy— Boil it down. . When your brain its coin lias mintert, Down the page your pen has sprinted, If you want your effort printed Boil it down. Take out every surplus letter— Boil it down. Fewer syllables the better — Boil It down. Make your meaning plain. Express it So we’ll know—not merely guess it; Then my friend, ere you address It—- - Boil it down. —By an Unknown Editor*