Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1949-8-24, Page 7e Relative Sizes Of Sun, Earth, Moon What is the diameter of the moon in comparison with the earth and sun? When we see the sun, and the moon in the sky, they appear to he about the sante size, 13 ut, as Sir Harold Spencer -Jones, the Astron- omer Royal, expains, we cannot form any idea of their real sizes merely from their appearance in the sky. He said; "There is actually a very great difference in size between the sun and the moon. The noon is consid- erably smaller than the earth, the sun is very much larger, The 'dia- meter of the sun is 109 times that of the earth, whereas the diameter of the moon is little more than one quarter of that of the earth; the diameter of the sun is about 400 times greater than that of the moon. We should expect, therefore, that the distance of the sun from the earth would be about 400 times greater than the distance • of the :moon, This is very nearly correct, "1t is quite a chance coincidence that the ratio of the true sizes of the sun and the moon is so nearly equal to the ratio of their mean dis- tances, It Wright so easily have been different; if the noon had been nearer to the earth than it is, it would have appeared to be smaller than the sun," "When the sun, the moon and the •earth are.exactly in a straight line, with the noon between the sun and the earth, it is possible, but only Just Possible, 'for the moon com- pletely to obscure the sun. We then have the unique spectacle of a total eclipse of the sun, when ,the outer appendage of the sun, known as the coronal can be seen extending out from the sun for a distance of about two million miles, shining with a pearly glow. It is one of the most fascinating sights to be seen, though unfortunately one of the rarest, for when such an eclipse occurs it is visible from only a narrow belt of the earth's surface, But when the Bun, noon, and earth are in a line, a total eclipse does not always take place. If the moon at the time is near its greatest distance from the earth, its apparent size is a little smaller than that of the sun. The sun, at mid -eclipse, then appears as • a narrow ring of light surrounding the moon." Milliogs Destroy Half on Sheep Yearly The dingo is a fierce, wild dog whose origin is obscure. Some zoo- logists link him with the primitive wild dog of India, and they think he came down to Australia as the companion of primitive man. One theory is that both aboriginal man and dingo carte across what is now the chain of islands between Malaya and Taree Straits. These islands are believed to have been a continuous land -link with Asia until -compar- atively recent times—recent, that is, geologically speaking, At any rate, dingo got in. He is a handsome, intelligent, and cunning creature, about the size of a wolf, and, like the wolf, he howls at night and does not bark. He has enormously powerful jaws, and he destroys sheep as much for the sake of killing as for food. It is estimated that a single dingo can destroy $5,000 worth of sheep in a night. As long ago as 1923, Queensland debited the dingo with a loss of 250,000 sheep in the twelve months. An estimate of last year's losses is 500,000. The rate of loss has gone up with declining man -power, es- pecially during and since the war. Another reason is the extreme scarcity of wire in Australia; pro- duction is much less than before the war. That is why many pasturalists say that Queensland's proposal for a protective wire fence could not be carried out for a very long time. In any case, such a fence would take about six years to build and cost nearly $2,500,000, And, of course, it would need a permanent patrol of sten to keep it in efficient con dition. There has been much argument in recent years about whether the dingo would cross with the domestic dog; many beople say most dingos " are mongrels, and, even, that Aus- tralia's best-known cattle dog has a strain of dingo in hint, It is also pointr ' out that the uniformity of dingo skulls which have, so far, been scientifically examined is evi- dence that the dingo does not nix. One writer has described the dingo as the purest -bred dog in the world. Merry Menagerie--AyWalt Disney "Sorry! I'm saving this seat t my wife)", A Nine Can \Laugh By Richard Hill Wtllclnson A week after f established resi- dence in Seabrook, Ray Quimper, my next door neighbor. took time off to drive me around the town and show ane the ,points of interest. Toward evening he stopped his car before a driveway that led up to a huge brick house on top of Drybridge Hill, It was the only brick building in town and could he seen for miles around. I had won- dered about it since the day of my arrival, "The home of Prince Alexander Moisevich eborin," he explained. I looked at hint curiously, sensing that this was a proud moment for Ray, He had saved the brick house until last, like a child relishing the last morsel, - "Of course," Ray explained fur. ther ''lie has a city home too, But . the fact is heends_. the- greater - part of his timeaopt,here. He craves solitude." "Are you sure? I mean, wouldn't it be' fitting to let the man know you're glad to have him as a citi- zen?" "We've tended to that," Ray said importantly. "Three days after his arrival a committee trade up of leading citizens waited on the prince and extended him a formal welcome." He regarded me sagely. "We're smart enough not to an- tagonize the man by pestering him to death." On the day of which I write I . was removing storm windows from my house,, for spring was near and the day was bright and warm. The prince came strolling along my street and stopped, oddly enough, at the end of my drive to watch. I percieved hits from the corner of my eye, though gave no indication that I had seen. After a atopen or two, much to my satisfaction, he turned In at the drive and carne slowly toward me. At this precise moment the. stepladder on which I was standing tilted precariously and the window I was removing threat- ened to tumble to the ground, I uttered a cry of alarm, turned; percieved the prince as if for the first time, and shouted to him for aid. Involuntarily, he leaped for- ward and steadied the ladder until I had descended, "Phew!" I grinned, "That was a close call," "It was indeed," he replied. "Would you mind holding the lad- der for nue on this window over here?" He seemed a little sur- prised, but agreed to lend his as- sistance. He proved as good a helper as I could have asked for, Three windows I removed while he steadied the ladder and helped me lower then to the ground. We chatted amiably about the weather. Presently the task was done and I turned to hint, grinning. "Thanks a lot, 1 don't know how I would have managed without you," "Really?" He seemed to appreci- ate my compliment, "Frankly, I've enjoyed it, not only the work, but our little visit,"- He hesitated, "You are new in town, aren't you?" "Comparatively," I said. "It's a mighty nice town, Folks are all like yourself. Ready and willing to lend a hand when help is needed," I smiled happily. "'The fact that I know your name, Prince Alexan- der, proves a little theory of my own," He stared in astonishment, "You know who I ant? You knew when you asked me to help remove the windows?" I nodded. "Your philosophy and mine have a good deal in common, Prince. And that is, that you're no different from the rest of us. I'd even venture to say that you are quite unhappy living up there in your castle so far removed from everybody. To prove that I am right, I'm going to ask you a ques- tion. Tomorrow. I'm going fishing. How would you like to conte along?" "I'd like to -very much," he said. "But we must keep it a secret from the rest of the people. It would be a pity to destroy their illusion," I agreed, winking at hint know- ingly, and the prince and I then and there shared a hearty laugh. Men To Judge Horne Baking For the first time in the C.N,E,'s history, the judges for the home - baking competitions will be ment And because the top prize in the apple pie contest is $100, Mrs. Kate Aitken, C.N.E. Women's Director, has scoured tate country for the group of men best able to pick the best cake and pie out of at least hundreds. She has invited the mem- bers of the Ontario Bakery Pro- . duction Men's Club. They will come from Hamilton, London, Bowunan- ville, Brantford and Toronto. All 16 male judges will have to sample hundreds of apple pies, fruit bread, white bread, date ,and nut loaves, angel cakes, shortbread and all the other varieties of home - baking that attract the attention of thousands at the C.N.E. each year. So far most entries are for the $100 apple pie, Butter tarts are next in popularity 'among contestants, with bran muffins, third, and white bread, fourth, How Edgar Bergen Got His Start Edgar Bergen -made his radio debut in 1936 when he managed to engineer an audition for the guest spot on the Rudy Vallee program. The sponsor declared audibly that anybody who thought a ventrilo- quist could hold a radio audience's attention was screwy as a bird dog. Bergen was so nervous that he al- most dropped his precious Charlie McCarthy and muffed several lines in the scrip. The sponsor chortled derisively. An assistant waved a copy of the scrip at Bergen and said, "Here's your place." Bergen nodded and the assistant moved away. "Hey," yelled Charlie, "let me have a gander. at that scrip." The young man wheeled about and unthinkingly thrust the scrip before the wooden dummy's eyes. The sponsor stared at the spectacle, mut- tered "I'l1 be damned," and ordered, "Make out a contract for the guy." The Turtle The turtle lives .Twist plated decks Which practically conceal its sex. I thinly it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile. —Ogden Nash They Taste Things Why do house flies get into the molasses? Because, say a couple of bug experts, they taste with their feet. Dr. Hubert W, Frings, associate professor of zoology, and his wife, Mabel Frings, found in intensive research that the end segments of the legs of files were taste organs. They also learned that the shorter, hairs of the pads on the` end of the proboscis are taste or- . gams, The longer hairs are used as sense of touch organs. Rouse flies were only one of 23 species of insects examined by Dr. Fringe and his wife iu their study of taste habits, Possible taste organs of the in- sects were touched with file glass needles, bearing either water, sugar solution's, or a salt solution, after control tests were made, Cocltroaches, while unable to taste with their feet, were found to have taste organs itt three other places—on feeler -like appendages protruding from the mouth parts, on a fold on the floor of the mouth; and a part of the Hp. The roaches paid no attention to" sugar water when these organs were removed, But they were able to find dog biscuit or other food particles, "Ap;,arei ty," Dr, Frings tom- mented, "they have a keen settee of emelt." With Their Feet 'Paste Test on cod: roach: Not like a fly's foot. There's A Boom In Barn Painting—Painting the barn is no longer the chore it used to be. A spray -painting service has developed this aerial teiescipic boom which eliminates ladders and scaffolding. Now it's a one-man job. Has X -Ray Eyes I9 -year-old South African stu- dent has recently caused a sensa- tion With his "X-ray eyes" which enabled him to "see" water, gold and oil in the form of light rays. What is the secret of this strange faculty? Probably very much the same power as that possessed by the water -diviners of old end the "dowsers" as they are now called. Dowsing is now believed by many otherwise orthodox scientists to be a purely physical response to radia- tion, the reaction being caused not by water but by oil, minerals, archaeological relics, and even being used to determine the sex of eggs, The theory is that everything has its own wavelength and that the skilled dowser is a person sufficiently susceptible to those radiations to be able to act as a kind of "receiving set". Certainly the famed Japanese chick-sexers now have strong rivals in these people who, by suspending something personal like a wedding ring out a piece of cotton over the , eggs, can with a high degree of accuracy determine their fertility and sex of the unhatched chicks. There are also dowsers who claim to be able to determine both the sex and personality of a person froth a photograph and to state whether the individual is alive or dead. Others undertake to locate water, mineral deposits and ancient relics by hanging their pendulum over a map of the district! There is even a French shoemaker who tests the quality of a hide in this way before buying it. The best leathers apparently produce rays which are directed due north, so if you are doubtful about your new pair of shoes, try a dowsing pendu- lum over theml *There is nothing so fantastic about the boy with the X-ray eyes, His "divining" faculties are, no doubt, more highly dent:loped than the dowsers who still work either with a rod or with a bead suspended on a tine thread, to which is trans- mittted the vibrations set up in the mfiscles of the arm, Recent Floods In Australia The area worst affected by the flood waters was in the north of the state where the Hunter Rivet' broke its btfnks and four towns had to be evacuated. In the vicinity of Mait- land, Singleton, and Cessnock five inches of rain fell. in one day, and the river rose forty-five feet.Com- munications. broke down, and some areas were completely isolated. Several families sat on the roofs of their hones waiting to be rescued by police boats, and at Maitland forty people lived in motor 'buses parked on the railway bridge near the station. With the lack of milk, meat, and fresh vegetables, there was a run on tinned foods, and many of the stores which normally stock these goods, stacked to the ceiling, dis- played "Sold Out" notices. In sever- al hot.seholds people were reduced to cooking on kerosene stoves and eating by candle -light. Disasters of this kind usually bring to light several human stories. There was the story of the express train saved from'rn almost inevi- table mash by the initiative of a father and his son who, by one of those strange turns of fate, hap- pened to pass an einbanktnent that had just subsided: The father telephoned the local stationmaster, but it was already too late to stop the express by means of signals. The only hope was to stop it themselves, Father and son rant half -a -mile along the track gesticulating wildly to tine oncom- ing traits; the train was going fast atid, before the driver could halt it, it was on the brink of the wash- away where about fifty yards of litre were suspended thirty feet above the ground, A few seconds more, and the express would have pinned 200 feet into Alm valley. ENGLAND, 1847 I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity, site has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion, Seeing this, I say, All hail! mother of na- tions, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous who are born in the soil. So let it bel So let it bel —Ralph Waldo Emerson. Real Heat When you think its hot, consider Azizia. That's a town in northwestern L,ybia, about 25 miles south of Tripoli, where the highest temper- ature ever recorded under standard soared to 136.4 degrees, notes the 1922. On that day the thermometer conditions wad taken on Sept. 13, National Geographic Society. If you prefer to confine your research on heat extremes to North America, visit Death Valley In southern California. An official reading of 134 degrees has been taken there at the United States Weather Bureau station on the Valley's edge. Even higher tem- peratures, ranging up to 150 de- grees, may occur in the low-lying interior. - THE FA1N FRONT Jokilpuffat. I wouldn't know how to pro- ttounce it and if It wasn't written plata and clear on the sheet in front of me, how to spell it. Anyway, the word is "chemurgy" and, according to the sane sheet it means "that branch of applied chemistry devoted to industrial utilization of organic materials, especially farm products." * * * Noah Webster, and alt the rest of you dictionary makers, move over. I think I've had hi * * * Anyway, it seems like these chemurgic chemists have been mak- ing history, although that's no boost because so did Hitler. They took a look around and saw . that prairie farmers were setting fire to millions of tons of straw every year, and it worried them, * * * So what did two of them do but get busy and develop a new method of processing wheat straw into high- grade paper and pulp -board. This, their press agents inform me, will place insulating hoard made from straw in a position to compete with similar material made from wood. ▪ * * Thus, the next time you feel like putting out that camp fire, lest you burn down a few thousand acres of wood -pulp forest, just don't bother. The chemurgists have . it all under con trol, * * * Carl Miner—it says here he's a "chemist" not a "chemurgist" but probably he's working hard for his second stripe—sought to find out how waste corncobs and oat hulls could contribute to better living. (And what a sequence that will make in a movie, with Carl going up and interviewing oat hull after oat hull, corncob after corncob, saying, "What can you contribute, etc," only to have George Raft or Betty Grable pop out and frustrate him.) * * * Anyway, Mr. Miner did years of experimental work on these mate- rials—not Mr. Raft or Miss Grable —and discovered that they would give out with a chemical called "fur- fural." It 1"as become an important ingredient in the manufacture of petroleum, nylon, synthetic resins and antiseptics, it says here. * * * Which is O.K. with us, too—al- though we can't help thinking what a swell College Cheer you could make starting with furfural. "Fur- fural, fural, chem—ur—gee" and so on. Still, you can't have everything. * * * Out in Idaho a potato -growing community is richer by five million dollars each year simply because of a new industry which manufactures white starch from culled potatoes. Our informant doesn't mention the chemurgists in regard to this, but —judging from the general tenor of the communication—we would take It that they should be credited with at least an assist. Personally, we like our potatoes French fried, culls or not; and whenever we think of white atarch there comes a re- membrance of a Chink laundryman who used to take a mouthful of it, spray it over a shirt he was working on, and then iron the bosom to a high, glossy shine. * * * But we are getting far astray from our point, if any, And in the next paragraph we are thrilled to see a mention of this wonderful Dominion of ours—the greatest country in the world, populated by the most forward-looking and intel- ligent people ever known, although George Drew and George McCul- lough would probably have some mental reservations to that last clause. * * * "In Canada," it states here, "the national chemurgic committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is knee deep in chea.,urgic research with the National Research Coun- cil," It probably serves them right, and we only hope it conies off more easily than the oil a young lady of our acquaintance, aged ten, got on her fair skin when she went knee- deep into the limpid waters of Lake Ontario, in the vicinity of Sunny- side, the oil being it would seem, a by-producet of modern chemical progress. * * At all events our thanks to the chemurgists and their press repre- sentatives, for . their assistance In filling up a column. Right now, for no good reason, we feel like wind- ing up with our favorite—printable --story. * * 1: It's the one, of course, about the city visitor who was sitting on the farmhouse verandah. To his aston- ishment he saw a horse out in the field romping around, butting into trees, stumps, fence posts and every other sort of obstacle available. "My goodness, is that poor horse blind?" asked the visitor, * * * "Not a bit of it," answered the farmer. "He just don't give a dance." TOO FUSSY - A man with a lot of baggage stood cussing on the Albuquerque platform, "S'mattter?" asked the station agent. "I had to get that Super -Chief," was the explanation. "Averaged seventy an hour for ninety miles and busted two springs —and then I miss it by a single minute." "My goodness," comment- ed the agent. "Anybody seeing the way you're carrying on would think you'd missed It by an hour!" AVES Ethel Dawson, 15, of Orono, Ont., It was 4 A.M. when Ethel Dawson awoke, choking and blinded by smoke. Seeing flames, she rushed to the next room and snatched her two young brothers and sister from their bed. Flames woro everywhere as alio guided the children down the stairs and outside. Carrying young Thick, she tried to calm the other two --- although her own heart THE DOW AWARD is a citation presented for acts of outstanding heroism and includes a $100 Canada Savings Bond. The Dow Award Committee, a group of editors of leading Canadian daily newspapers, selects winters from rxcomrnendations made by a nationally known news organisation. EIATH AS GIRL l~. LA E prevents tragedy as home burns pounded with fear for the children's safety. Re-entering the house, she aroused her parents. Less than 5 minutes after all were safe,' the house was a mass of flames. "We have Ethel to thank for being alive," said Mr. Dawson later. We are proud to present THE DOW AWARD to Ethel Dawson of Orono, Ont. DOW IIRRINIERY • 4'. OgrIC lh7pp+A1110 MONTR1FAL