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...center of political and intellectual ferment. Politicians representing one or another of Somalia's ten parties argue vociferously in gritty coffee shops -a rare sight in a New Africa that is moving steadily toward one-party government systems. There is spirited debate in Parliament, and although the commonest sound on the streets is still the beggar's cry for "Baksheesh!," there is plenty of free and strident speech to counterpoint...
Plumbing fixtures, like everything else, are increasingly decked in "decorator colors"-the most popular, predictable pink. Second most popular is light brown. Floors may be vinyl or ceramic tile, walls may be the latest Italian mosaic, but the commonest materials for wash basin, toilet and tub are old-fashioned vitreous china and enameled metals. The w.c. of tradition is one of the last holdouts against the Plastic...
...underprivileged without their own slurp guns, the prices of marine tropicals (very few have been bred in captivity) are high enough to give status to almost anybody. Commonest are Damsels at $2, Angels and Butterflies at $6 to $10 apiece. Sea horses cost about $3. But temptations abound. How exciting to make a pet of a toothy moray from Ceylon ($35), or a lion fish from the Red Sea ($35), who packs enough deadly poison in his spiny ugliness to kill a man. How exhilarating to be first kid on the block with a $400 trigger fish from Zanzibar...
Clue in the Neck. Dr. Szent-Gyorgyi (pronounced St. Georgie) entered the cancer field almost by chance. After he fled Hungary's Communist control in 1947, he was able to resume at Woods Hole his long work on muscle. Concentrating on one of the commonest of muscular diseases, myasthenia gravis, he had a clue. Sometimes a victim of "MG" does better after his thymus gland is removed. Searching for the explanation, Szent-Gyorgyi, who has a Cambridge Ph.D. in biochemistry besides his M.D., spent years doing delicate chemical dissections of the thymus glands of calves, supplied by Chicago...
Double the Retine? Nothing quite like promine and retine has been discovered before, although sex hormones and chemically related compounds are used in treating some forms of cancer. The commonest of the many kinds of cancer, Szent-Gyorgyi notes, are the types that usually develop in middle life. "We have some evidence from ani mals," he says, "that the body's output of both promine and retine may decline with advancing age. But what seems to be more important is that the ratio of the two substances changes. Later in life, the body makes proportionately less of the retarding...