Obscura

18. Wade-Davis

December 1863:
The 10 Percent Plan President Lincoln announces a plan for reconstructing those Confederate states already under Union control. He offered to pardon Confederates who take an oath to support the Union. When ten percent of a state's citizens eligible to vote in 1860 swear an oath of allegiance and a state has abolished slavery, he promises to readmit the state to the Union.

By the end of the war, Lincoln publicly calls for limited black suffrage in the South.
1864
July 1864:
The Wade-Davis Bill Many Congressional Republicans believe that the 10 Percent Plan is too lenient since it does nothing to end the economic and political power of the planter class or protect the civil rights of ex-slaves. They also feel that the president has overstepped his authority by issuing a plan for reconstruction without consulting Congress.

Congressional Republicans outline their plan for reconstructing the union. The Wade-Davis Bill requires each state to abolish slavery, repudiate their acts of secession, and refuse to honor wartime debts. It also stipulates that a majority, rather than 10 percent, of voters in 1860 take an oath of allegiance before a state could be reorganized. Finally, it specifies that anyone who wanted to vote in a constitutional convention in a former Confederate state must swear that he had never voluntarily supported the Confederacy.

Lincoln refuses to sign the Wade-Davis Bill because, he wrote, he is not ready "to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration."

posted by Cobb @ 10:42 AM

17. Blowfish

Blowfish is a symmetric block cipher that can be used as a drop-in replacement for DES or IDEA. It takes a variable-length key, from 32 bits to 448 bits, making it ideal for both domestic and exportable use. Blowfish was designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier as a fast, free alternative to existing encryption algorithms. Since then it has been analyzed considerably, and it is slowly gaining acceptance as a strong encryption algorithm. Blowfish is unpatented and license-free, and is available free for all uses.

posted by Cobb @ 10:39 AM

16. Sententiae Latinae

This is a collection of some more or less frequently used Latin maxims I have come across during my former Latin studies and otherwise. I can offer a brief comment on some of them and supply the origin of most of them, but (N/A) means I can provide neither - and that I would be very grateful for some help.

http://w1.871.telia.com/~u87112797/show-off.html

posted by Cobb @ 11:55 AM

15. Sandia Z



The Z pulsed power accelerator at Sandia National Laboratories, which began operating in September 1996, is the world’s most powerful and most efficient (15%) laboratory x-ray source. Z is really 36 separate pulsed power devices timed to fire simultaneously to within ten billionths of a second. It is not entirely a "new" accelerator, but a modified version of the 11-year-old PBFA II accelerator, which was used until the spring of 1996 for light ion fusion research. The four-month modification included a new power flow section and 36 new transmission lines, designed with sophisticated mechanical and electrical analysis codes.
The pulse that drives Z lasts less than ten billionths of a second--20,000 times faster than a lightning bolt--and yet carries 1,000 times the electrical current in a typical lightning bolt. But, in that brief instant, the accelerator produces an impressive amount of x-ray power, as much as 290 trillion watts (terawatts), and an x-ray energy of 1.9 million joules.


How are the x rays generated?
The Z accelerator uses huge electric currents (20 million amperes) to produce an ionized gas, or plasma, by vaporizing a spool-of-thread-sized array of 100 to 400 wires. The currents produce powerful magnetic fields that surround the plasma, pinching it on a vertical axis--hence the name "z pinch"--to densities and temperatures sufficient to generate an intense source of x rays.

posted by Cobb @ 10:02 AM

14. Gilder Lehrman Institute

Dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting, and promoting interest in the history of the United States, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History advances the study of history by offering:

Public lectures, conferences, and exhibits
Research fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and other archives of American history
Summer seminars and enrichment programs for public, parochial, and independent school teachers
Books, essays, journals, and educators' guides in American history
Electronic media projects for students, teachers, scholars, and the general public
History-centered high schools and Saturday academies for New York City students
Prizes for the most outstanding books on Lincoln, the Civil War Era, Slavery, and Abolition.

posted by Cobb @ 9:16 AM