Recently, i was reading an article about military bases overseas and proposed cuts in funds that keep them secure. with the country experiencing so many financial difficulties and so much money being spent on the war in iraq, proposals are being made to cut funding that secures american overseas military bases not in the middle east. this concerns many people, who fear that diverting funds used to secure those bases might result in another pearl harbor. though these decisions are not final, military personnel and their families are asking the government to reconsider any cuts it is planning on making. what is the historical allusion?

Read the excerpt from the code book. without much hope of a theoretical breakthrough, cryptanalysts have been forced to look for a technological innovation. if there is no obvious way to reduce the number of steps required for factoring, then cryptanalysts need a technology that will perform these steps more quickly. silicon chips will continue to get faster as the years pass, doubling in speed roughly every eighteen months, but this is not enough to make a real impact on the speed of factoring—cryptanalysts require a technology that is billions of times faster than current computers. consequently, cryptanalysts are looking toward a radically new form of computer, the quantum computer. if scientists could build a quantum computer, it would be able to perform calculations with such enormous speed that it would make a modern supercomputer look like a broken abacus. the author’s purpose in this paragraph is to convince the readers to pursue a career in analysis. explain the need for faster technology in cryptanalysis. entertain with interesting stories about supercomputers. argue for more money to develop a quantum computer.