| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer: written by the Committee for Military Application of Uranium
Detonation (MAUD). This report stated that a nuclear weapon was
possible and concluded that its construction should begin immediately.
The MAUD report, and to a lesser degree the discovery of plutonium,
encouraged American leaders to think more seriously about developing a
nuclear weapon. On 6 December 1941, President Roosevelt appointed the
S-1 Committee to determine if the United States could construct a
nuclear weapon. Six months later, the S-1 Committee gave the
President its report, recommending a fast-paced program that would
cost up to $100 million and that might produce the weapon by July 1944
(12).
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: most learned men in the world taught humanity in the same college,"
viz. Turnebus, Muretus, and Buchanan.
Then followed a strange episode in his life. A university had been
founded at Coimbra, in Portugal, and Andrea Govea had been invited
to bring thither what French savants he could collect. Buchanan
went to Portugal with his brother Patrick, two more Scotsmen,
Dempster and Ramsay, and a goodly company of French scholars, whose
names and histories may be read in the erudite pages of Dr. Irving,
went likewise. All prospered in the new Temple of the Muses for a
year or so. Then its high-priest, Govea, died; and, by a peripeteia
too common in those days and countries, Buchanan and two of his
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