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The control frauds did not create this optimal environment for fraud. They exploited the criminogenic environment and led the campaign to maintain and even improve it. The control frauds, of course, did not announce that they were entering the industry to loot it, and since the essence of control fraud is the vast inflating of income, they appeared to be the most profitable S&Ls in America. As a result, Pratt never identified and put out of business a control fraud and never identified the wave of control frauds entering the industry. He praised them as entrepreneurs. Pratt disdained traditional S&L CEOs and considered them the problem. The control frauds had dug in for two years before Gray began to fight back.
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
William K. Black
Of this much they were now certain: such a bomb was practical. The hypothesis had been sound from the outset, but there had been a hitch in its application. In theory, a chain reaction should have developed when neutrons were introduced into a U-235 pile. The neutrons would split the U-235 atoms, each of which would liberate from one to three neutrons—which, in turn, would split more atoms, and so on, until the critical mass was reached. Obviously they couldn’t permit that mass to form in a laboratory; that was why they used graphite, to slow neutrons down while they observed the process. In practice, they found, some neutrons went astray and some were “cannibalized” by the pile. A chain reaction was possible only if successive “generations” of neutrons became larger and larger. This was christened the K factor, otherwise known as “the great god K.” It was reached under the following conditions. If 100 neutrons which had caused fission in 100 U-235 atoms gave birth to a generation of new neutrons, 105 of which were left to cause fission, the ratio would be 105 to 100, and the K factor would have a value of 1.05. The third generation would be 105 multiplied by 1.05, and so on, until the mass was formed. As William L. Laurence put it, “When the K factor is greater than one, the pile will be chain-reacting, as the birth rate will be greater than the death rate.” Conversely, if 100 neutrons produced only 99, the K factor, 0.99, would be inadequate. By purifying the graphite in early experiments, the best they could get in those early months was a birth rate of .87 per 100. Their greatest problem lay in the impurity of the uranium. Dr. Arthur H. Compton called the Westinghouse director of research and—at a time when the world’s total hoard of pure uranium metal did not exceed a few grams—asked him, “How soon can Westinghouse supply three tons of pure uranium?” He heard a gagging sound at the other end of the line, but the firm’s response was an illustration of American industry’s versatility in World War II. Uranium fabrication was stepped up from eight ounces a day to over five hundred pounds, and by November 1942 Westinghouse had delivered the three tons. The delivery address could hardly have aroused less interest. On Ellis Avenue in Chicago, between Fifty-sixth and Fifty-seventh streets, the ivied Gothic walls of University of Chicago buildings parted to reveal a recess and, within, a door. Beyond that door was a large squash court which had been unused since the outbreak of war. The court lay directly beneath the west stands of Stagg Field, and scarcely anyone had come this way since the university had abandoned intercollegiate football. It was there, that November, that a pile of unprecedented size was being assembled with materials of unique purity. Two carbon companies, working with the National Bureau of Standards, had turned out a graphite highly resistant to neutrons. Other bureau scientists had joined Professor Frank H. Spedding of Iowa…
The Glory and the Dream
William Manchester
Based on his data, Bouchard estimates that between one in ten and one in twenty people start with elevated aerobic capacity—though not nearly as high as the naturally fit six—and between one in ten and one in fifty people are high aerobic responders. “The probability that a person will be highly endowed and highly trainable is the product of those two probabilities,” Bouchard says. “It’s not pretty. It’s between one in one hundred and one in one thousand.”
The Sports Gene
David Epstein
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