Word: nubs
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Since Vladivostok, however, the diplomats at Geneva have been deadlocked, primarily by their inability to agree on the method by which the number of MIRVs will be calculated. The nub of the problem is Moscow's new SS-18 monster missile. More than six times as powerful as the U.S. Minuteman III, the SS-18 can carry a single warhead delivering a 50-megaton explosive punch (creating a fireball 36 miles in diameter and blasting a 300-ft.-deep hole in granite), or it can be fitted with up to eight MIRVs...
Stark Choice. The nub of the problem is that Britain generates 60% of its electricity from coal; half is used by industry and half goes into homes. During the past six weeks, when coal miners have refused to work overtime, coal stocks at generating stations have dwindled to 14 million tons, only enough to keep the country going until late January. "The choice is stark," says Ronald Richardson, deputy chairman of the Electricity Council. "Either the public cooperates or complete cities could lose their supply of electricity at a stroke. It could even happen before Christmas...
...Postma, who has a reputation as a woman of principle, went to the director of the old-age home, explained what had happened and asked him to sign the death certificate. Instead, he called the police. When they failed to act against the popular doctor, he called Gerard Nubé, the public prosecutor in the provincial capital of Leeuwarden. Reluctantly Nubé charged Dr. Postma with mercy killing, which carried a penalty of up to twelve years...
...trial, Prosecutor Nubé spelled out the implications. Think of the risks, he told the three-judge court that sits in The Netherlands instead of a jury: "Risks in legacy cases, families struggling with the problem of a nasty old patient, problems of overcrowded hospitals, the problem of overpopulation." He was unhappy about the case, he admitted, "because I am convinced that Dr. Postma is a woman of integrity. But her act cannot be justified, however understandable it seems from a human standpoint." The prosecutor asked that Dr. Postma be convicted but sentenced only to a month's suspended...
...first that seems to be the nub of the sermon. The old machines don't crank, the old ways are as irrelevant as dead leaves; it is time to sweep them away and leave the world clean for a new generation like the boy Kermit who "brought so little to what he saw, he saw what was there...