Key to Kibbitzer 58: The Over-worked 'It' (Part Three)

  1. Mr Howard's compromise drops the proposal for him to appoint the chairmen of the police authorities. That decision will now be in the hands of the authorities themselves.
  2. Suicide is no longer an offence, and it should therefore follow that consent to injury should negative any offence. That argument is not watertight, however, because existing law does not allow euthanasia.
  3. The tRNA molecules are themselves copies of DNA genes in the nucleus. When they are first made, they do not have a glycine molecule attached. That attachment is performed in the cytoplasm by a special protein, which is able to recognize both the glycine molecule, and the end of the tRNA molecule, and stick them together.
  4. Clarke decided in 1956 to live in Sri Lanka permanently. That move was less smooth than it appeared from outside, because until 1975 the tax laws effectively required Clarke to be absent from the country for half of each year.
  5. "French scientists are very unaware of conservation issues in comparison with British or American researchers," says Thiollay. "People used to say 'It is a huge reserve, just leave it.'" That attitude has been overtaken by developments and official decisions are needed now to address the problems that will emerge in the next 20 years.
  6. Young ammonites died because they were tiny and lived near the surface; young nautiluses survived because they were larger and lived in the ocean depths. That difference is not simple survival of the fittest; it may be more a matter of luck.
  7. The Aborigines of Australia were deemed to be cannibals before the First Fleet arrived. That perception justified the process and brutality of colonisation: for "they are cannibals" read
  8. A puzzling shift in the cold Labrador Current, flowing south from the Arctic, has recently pushed temperatures down by a critical two degrees Fahrenheit. That drop has been enough to cause the cod population to migrate and slow their rate of growth: a seven-year-old cod today is the same size and weight as a four-year-old cod was in the Seventies.

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