RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 154, 25 March 1939, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current Events (By Kickshaws). Our sympathies are extended to pupils who find their geography homework out-of-date the next morning. ¥ * * It is claimed that New Zealand should stand on her own feet. It js better, anyway, than standing on the other fellow’s toes. An Australian visitor contends that New Zealanders are conceited. We understand this may be attributed to an inferiority complex, due to the lack of a Sydney Harbour. * School children are being given free milk; there is a proposal to give them free lunch, soon they will be wanting free beds, and members of at least one power 'board are asking what next. There are a lot of things that children could demand if only they got that Hitler feeling. No school child can complain that it does not receive free lessons or free pusishment. So far, however, a scheme for free tuition in homework lies solely with the parents of the children. Obviously, some sort of a free travelling homework system should, be started, whereby parents should not be called upon to display their ignorance. Free homework workers are badly required. There are, of course, various other free things that might be suggested if some of them were not so controversal.

We note that the authorities are prepared to replace faded car plates free of charge. The catch in the announcement is that other classes of plates are not affected. A reader who has sent along two saucers and a soup-, plate wants to know why cups are not included as well. In the spirit of universal largesse that pervades New Zealand, this stinginess on the part of the authorities is almost incomprehensible. Indeed, it seems totally unfair that the generosity ends solely with those who own motor-cars. These folk could well afford to replace their own plates. Meanwhile, there are others who would be only to glad to exchange their faded dental plates for some better and brighter. Are these people to be left to gnash their faded plates in vain. What, indeed, about that happy band which spends its time laying plates? Now and then they must wish that a particularly faded plate could be replaced. We understand that some of the more enthusiastic platelayers replace faded plates out °f their own pocket. One may well ask why are motorists the favoured few where plates are concerned. There are, after all, church plate, armour plate, silver plate, chromium plate, nameplates and contemplates.

Owing to the international aspect of weather reports the prophets who run this unruly element have decided to introduce the millibar. According to an article on the subject, it is absurd to think of atmospheric pressure in terms of the length of a bit of mercury. Far better to think of it in millibars, which are equivalent to 1000 dynes a square centimetre. Personally, we do not care how many times the weather experts dyne to the square centimetre. They will never give us, with their millibars or any other sort of bar singly or in units, the meteorological comfort of a good old mercury barometer. We dare the weather experts to tap their millibars and gain from the act the confidence derived from a tap on the face of the household aneroid. No matter that the household barometer is graduated in inches and registers all wrong, there is something peculiarly satisfying in the act. * ♦ «

Can one imagine father, going to the barometer to see what it is doing, and telling the expectant household that the picnic is olf because of an insufficiency of millibars. Indeed, if he were to tell the household that, the thing was registering 1000 millibars, the elder members would probably drown their sorrows in a more practical type of bar. The thing, indeed, reminds one more of centipedes and other crawling things, than it does of the weather. Nothing could be more terrifying than for little sister to get a millibar down her back. We do not know if the things have lasting merit in them, but we can assume weather prophets that 30ins. of mercury is stuff one can take at face value with a reasonable certainty that the weather will do just the opposite. Surely there will be an overflow of mercurial sentiment in every household when the man comes round to calibrate the aneroid in millibars. The depression, maybe, will break the outfit, and the weather will go to pieces in sympathy with those who regret the passing of something comprehensible,, so that the new order may give us a scientific enigma.

If we are no longer permitted to think of the weather in inches, surely it seems ridiculous that so unscientific a system as the markings of clocks and time-pieees should be tolerated in a world knit so close by Hitler ami progress generally. Obviously, the correct unit for telling the time is the parsec, divided into masecs. A parsec is the lieriod of time taken by father when he is ‘ coming in a second.” The masec is the time taken for any woman under similar contract. The masec is 100 times the pasec, thereby rendering itself applicable to the centimetre gramme second system. Instead of hands the time-pieces would read the time on a revolving dial attached to a logarithmic side scale to convert everything into something quite scientific. We understand that, in order to introduce the system to New Zealanders, the chimes conveyed by radio will be given in masec every other strike being units and tens in the ultimate time which must be divided by the squareroot of minus one, commonly called “j,” in order to arrive at the correct estimate. This, of course, is corrected for temperament and individual density.

“May I trespass on your wide field of information to inquire whether a man may marry his adopted sister, assuming, of course, that there is no blood relationship between them?” asks “H.L.F.”

[The Registrar of Births. Deaths and Marriages has kindly stated: “A man may not marry b.is adopted sister.” So far as is known, the point' has not been settled iu the New Zealand law courts. I

"I shall be glad if, per medium of your very interesting column, you could settle an argument,” says “J.L.W.” "On what river is Kaiapoi situated, the Cam or the Waimakariri?” [Cam.]

If a cricket ball, hurled into space, Defies the law of gravitation, How long will it take to reach the moon ? Supposing the moon’s its destination. Here is a problem that will tax The ingenuity of man. If "Kickshaws” cannot answer it Perhaps Sir Julien Cahn? —Elismac.