FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 185, 26 October 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN” THE STREET-DIGGING HOAX All Auckland is laughing at the exploit of the youth who posed as a City Council official and put parties of men to work digging up the streets — although there is, of course, a proper sympathy for the unfortunate men who were hoaxed. The tearing up of our main thoroughfares is so incessant, however, that even the Mayor might stumble across a dozen without knowing that some of them were unofficial. If this latest hoax awakens the public out of the apathy into which it has fallen and brings a full realisation of the ridiculousness*of a situation which can so easly be exploited, it will have done some service. * • • FILM FIRES Twenty people burned to death or suffocated and 30 others seriously injured at a Finnish cinema theatre. Yet some people complained bitterly because the authorities refused to grant a permit for the use of the concert chamber of the Town Hall for a picture entertainment because It was not equipped with a fire-proof chamber for the film-machine! But then, some people would have to be burned to death before they could realise there was any such thing as danger from fi re —especially if provision against fire were going to touch their pockets. * =* * RAILWAYS AND WOOL CLIP Considering that the railways assist the man on the land in many ways, including the cheap carriage of .manures, agricultural machinery, live stock and grain, whereas motor competition will not entertain the carriage of these commodities at anything like such rates, the appeal of the Railways Board to wool-growers should not fall on deaf ears. It is asked that the growers should give the transport of their wool to the railways, instead of to private truck owners, and they are reminded that the road competitor, while ignoring those goods which the railways carry cheaply, '‘makes a bold bid for the cream of the freight traffic.” The taxpayer should be glad to learn that the railways are now making a bold bid for the carriage of all commodities —even of ladies. One of its latest departures is to provide, free, paper bags in which the fair sex may place their latest millinery fashions while travelling by express or mail trains. A little thing, yes—but these little things count for convenience, and they show that the railways management is very much alive. * * % ROBOTS AHEAD ? Once again we have “to hand it” to America, which has produced a machine that thinks in so far as it can work out mathematical problems too complex for professors and senior wranglers. Not satisfied with ordinary problems of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division—any common adding machine can solve those! —the "integraph” deals in curves and graphs and will make computations in a brief pei'iod that would take engineers months or years to work out by ordinary methods. Ambrose Bierce, that strange American genius, once wrote a story in which the leading figure, an automaton designed on the lines of Frankenstein’s more famous creation, was able to play chess with its master. That seemed, at the time, to strike the highest note in improbability, but was it improbable after all? We have certainly moved a stage farther toward the creation of those incredible creatures —the Robots—who owed their being to the fertile brains of the Rapek Brothers. -

POSSIBILITIES OF PARASITES The warning uttered in this column regarding the perils attendant on importing parasites to deal with established imported pests is backed up by an eminent entomologist, Mr. Ernest Crabbe, who refers to the proposal to send an army of caterpillars to New Zealand to eat up the English bramble.

“Botanists will smile at such a naive effort, especially against the bramble, which throws out its innumerable roots and runners elsewhere,” says Mr. Crabbe. "Gorse weevils, we are told, are also to make short work of the furze nuisance. It is expected that the weevils, having no more food, will obligingly lie down and die after having earned the 0.8. E. Great is the faith of these scientists! Weevils are the most omniverous of all insects, and when a few broods have smelt New Zealand air, they will soon find something other than gorse to feed on.” Quite so. They will find any quantity of nice New Zealand fruit and vegetables, wheat, oats and maize to begin with. And the good old caterpillar will get busy on the grapevines and cheat the connoisseurs who have developed a taste for New Zealand wine. When they have multiplied exceedingly after having eaten out the vineyards they will'be able to spread over the rich grazing lands and devour all the grass that is now being eat ( en by cows for the production of butter. By that time the scientists may have thought of a few more beneficial parasites to send us.