SAT R&W 16: Words in Context — Mixed Practice Under Time

Permafrost is defined by temperature rather than by ice: ground that has stayed below freezing for two years running qualifies, whether or not any water is present. The definition matters because thawing releases carbon that has been for millennia — plant material that froze before it could decay, and has neither rotted nor moved since.

The register lists each party to the agreement by name, occupation and parish, and requires two witnesses for every signature. Where a signatory could not write, the clerk drew a cross and noted beside it the name of the man who had guided the hand.

The architect's drawings for the reading room show it lit entirely from above. Windows at eye level were rejected deliberately: a reader who can see the street will look at it. The design therefore the two demands that usually compete in such a building — daylight and sustained attention — by admitting the first from a direction that offers nothing to watch.

From the ridge the old fort commands the whole of the valley road: a sentry on its wall could see a rider a full hour before he arrived. The garrison was never large enough to stop anyone, and the walls themselves are unremarkable. What mattered was always the position.

Cities that publish their budgets in machine-readable form do not thereby become more accountable. Someone has to open the files, and reading them usefully takes skills that are scarce and unevenly distributed. Publication is therefore a of accountability rather than a guarantee of it: necessary, and nowhere near sufficient.

A hectare of the new variety yields about a fifth more grain than the older one in a season with good rain, and about the same in a dry one. Farmers who cannot irrigate therefore gain least from the change — a fact the promotional literature tends to leave out.