A Ton of Crap (88 page)

Modern Arabic
Modern Arabic is the standard Arabic language of today and it is based on Classical Arabic. The Arabic language is diglossic. Essentially, what this means is that Arabic speakers speak two languages: the dialect that they speak in, and then the codified and universal form of Arabic that is used on a larger scale for things like writing, literature, television, film, and media. Modern Arabic is also used when two people of different Arabic dialects speak to one another. The spoken dialects of Arabic are rarely written.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The Dust Bowl
During World War I, the farms of the Southern plains in the United States were extremely profitable. The demand for wheat and corn was high, and farmers produced food for the homeland and abroad. In the 1930s, however, a combination of events would lead to the Dust Bowl. The farming practices, with much of the land deeply planted, plowed, and farmed, began to take their toll. The 1930s saw a great drought that lasted years (the worst in the history of the United States), and with the heavily plowed land, the once-prosperous agriculture was now devastated. Inches of dried soil would get swept up by the wind, darkening the skies with dust that would engulf entire towns.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Symbolism
Lewis Carroll’s books feature quite a lot of symbolism, most significantly, the loss of childhood innocence that everyone must face. Alice’s body constantly changing shape, creating a great amount of discomfort for her, is actually symbolic of puberty and the changes of the body. Throughout the books, Alice is constantly given puzzles to solve that seem completely unsolvable. This is to show that life is always full of challenges and one’s expectations and the reality are not the same thing, that sometimes life is frustrating.

GAME THEORY

Decision Theory
Decision theory involves a single-person game and focuses on the forming of one’s beliefs and the making of decisions that are goal oriented. Normative decision theory concentrates on how one should make a decision, and descriptive decision theory concentrates on how a decision is actually made. Decision theory is particularly useful for economists, and a popular use of decision theory states that with risky alternatives, the preferences can be seen as the maximization of the anticipated value of the money income.

ARCHIMEDES

The Archimedes Screw
Archimedes was commissioned by King Hiero II to build a huge ship, so large that it would begin taking on water, and Archimedes’s solution was the creation of one of his most famous inventions: the Archimedes screw. The screw was initially used as an irrigation device and for pumping water out of ships. On the outside, the device appears as a cylinder. Inside the cylinder, a spiral blade the size of the cylinder turns. Water enters through the bottom of the cylinder, and as the spiral blade turns, the water gets raised to the top. The Archimedes screw is still being used to this day, often for pumping grains and coal.

ARABIC

Colloquial Arabic
Colloquial Arabic refers to the spoken form of the language, of which there are several different dialects. The two main divisions, however, lie between the Arabic language spoken in the Middle East and that spoken in North Africa. Dialects of Arabic are so different due in part to the various nations of the Muslim world and the influence of the languages that were spoken in these lands prior to Arabic. The five major dialects are Egyptian Arabic, Maghrebi Arabic, Mesopotamian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and Gulf Arabic.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The New Deal
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president, he focused on reforming the nation and set forth the New Deal (a phrase he coined during his speech accepting the nomination). The New Deal was split up into two phases, one from 1933 to 1934, and the other from 1935 to 1941. The first phase concentrated on regulating agriculture and business. During the first phase, programs like the National Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission were established. The second phase focused more on the working class and social legislation. It is during the second phase that Social Security was created.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

The Significance
Lewis Carroll’s work was groundbreaking for the time. Other Victorian children’s books focused on giving rules for children to live by. But Lewis Carroll’s stories of Alice’s adventures embraced silliness and fantasy. The
Alice in Wonderland
series showed for the first time that children’s books did not have to include morals or teach any sort of lessons. They showed that children books could just be fun and allow children to use their imagination and embrace nonsense and fantasy.

GAME THEORY

General Equilibrium Theory
General equilibrium theory is an economic theory first proposed in the 1870s, with its modern form created in the 1950s. In economies with multiple markets, general equilibrium theory is used to study supply and demand to show that there is equilibrium in the prices. General equilibrium theory is usually used on a macroeconomic scale for such things as analyzing stock prices, tax policy, and international trade. The private sector uses the general equilibrium theory as a model. To analyze individual markets, partial equilibrium theory is used.

ARCHIMEDES