A Ton of Crap

by Paul Kleinman

  LESSON 28D

  WORLD WAR II

  The Holocaust In 1933, there were over 9 million Jews living in Europe. As Adolf Hitler came to power, he promoted hatred toward the Jewish people, believing Germans were a superior race and that Jews presented a threat to the community. The Holocaust was Hitler’s state-sponsored mass genocide of the Jewish people, in which approximately 6 million Jews were murdered. Jews were placed into ghettos, and then into concentration camps, and then extermination camps where they were gassed to death. Toward the end of the war, the Jewish people were placed on trains and made to go on marches, known as “death marches.” As the Allied forces approached, the camps were liberated.

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Arthur C. Clarke Arthur C. Clarke was born in 1917. During World War II, Clarke was involved in working with British radar. In 1945, Clarke published an article in which he proposed placing three satellites in orbit that would be able to allow global communications (this would turn out to be surprisingly successful, and Clarke is known as the inventor of the communication satellite). Clarke published many stories throughout his lifetime, and his short story, The Sentinel, was actually the inspiration for the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  KNOT THEORY

  Knot Polynomials A knot polynomial is an example of a knot invariant—

  meaning a quantity that is the same value for any equivalent knots—that is a polynomial. The most well-known knot polynomial is the Alexander polynomial which was discovered in 1923. This was the only known polynomial knot until 1984, with the discovery of the Jones polynomial. The Alexander polynomial could not distinguish handedness, meaning the objects are the same unless in a mirror reflection. The Jones polynomial however, was able to distinguish handedness.

  THE EARTH’S SPHERES

  Biosphere The biosphere consists of all of the living things on the planet, from the large animals to the smallest microorganisms. The biosphere includes the hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, and cryosphere. Ecological communities form within the biosphere, and these are known as biomes. The three main types of biomes are grasslands, tropical rainforests, and deserts. The majority of life found on Earth is found up to 30 meters above ground, 3 meters below the ground, and in the first 200 meters of the oceans. Though humans are part of the biosphere, scientists put human beings in a group known as the anthrosphere.

  SIGN LANGUAGE

  Different Types of Sign Language There are many different forms of sign language. Although these languages emerged separately and unrelated to the spoken languages of countries and are different grammatically, they do feature manually coded languages; that is, they have incorporated the languages of their countries. Several sign languages are mutually intelligible as well. For example, Danish Sign Language, Icelandic Sign Language, and Norwegian Sign Language (which are descendants of Danish Sign Language) are, for the most part, understandable by those who speak Swedish Sign Language. An International Sign Language (IS) has been created as well, and is used at international events.

  LESSON 28E

  WORLD WAR II

  The Battle of Normandy (D-Day) By 1944, Germany knew the Allies would attempt to liberate Europe through an invasion of France. The Allied forces planned to land on the northwest coast of France, known as Normandy, under the codename “Operation Overlord.” On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed on five beaches of the Normandy coast. The Allied forces were met with heavy resistance from the defending Germans, but eventually, they were able to make it through. The accomplishment of the Allied forces, and the failure of the Germans, put an end to Hitler’s goal of a Nazi-controlled Europe.

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov lived from 1920 to 1992, and he is considered one of the greatest writers of science fiction. He wrote around 500 books, publishing in genres such as science, horror, comedy, and even poetry. The best-known works of Asimov are his short story Nightfall, the Robot series of novels (of which I, Robot is one), and the Foundation novels. Asimov’s work even inspired the creation of the Star Trek character Data.

  KNOT THEORY

  Adding Knots Knots become more complex through addition. The process of adding knots together is known as knot sum. Two knots can be added by cutting the knots and then joining the pairs of the ends together. The zero knot, which looks like an O, is a very special case. When more knots are added to it, though it is longer, its shape of the O remains.

  THE EARTH’S SPHERES

  Atmosphere All of the air that surrounds the planet is considered the atmosphere. The majority of the atmosphere is located near the Earth’s surface. The atmosphere begins at less than 1 meter below the surface of the planet and goes up to more than 10,000 kilometers. The air of the atmosphere consists of 21 percent oxygen, 79 percent nitrogen, and a small amount of carbon dioxide and a variety of other gasses. The atmosphere protects the living creatures found in the biosphere from the Sun’s rays, and absorbs and emits the heat from the Sun.

  SIGN LANGUAGE

  Written Form The written form of sign language also differs from the oral forms of languages. This is known as SignWriting. SignWriting was created in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, and is actually based on the graphic notation used for writing ballet steps. The system uses visual symbols to express the handshapes, facial expressions, and movements found in sign language. In other words, the alphabet shows how the hands look. SignWriting is currently the written form for twenty-seven Sign Languages.

  LESSON 28F

  WORLD WAR II

  End of the War Germany’s control and power began to weaken. As the Soviet Union fought German forces in the Battle of Berlin, Hitler, who had been hiding in a bunker during the battle, committed suicide. On May 1, the German forces surrendered in Italy, and on the next day, the forces fighting in Berlin surrendered to the Soviets. On May 7, the war in Europe was over. On August 6 and 9, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, and on August 14, Japan surrendered.

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury, an American author born in 1920, has written more than 500 works. His most famous work is also perhaps one of the most controversial science fiction books ever: Fahrenheit 451, a novel set in a dystopian world where hedonism is celebrated and the reading of books is prohibited. Bradbury is also the author of other famous books such as The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  KNOT THEORY

  Tabulating Knots In knots, a crossing number is a knot invariant that is the least amount of crossings in a knot diagram of a particular knot. Knots are cataloged by their crossing number. Tables include the prime knots and one submission for a knot and its mirror image. Prime knots are the knots that cannot be expressed any simpler after knot sum. Tabulation of knots can become increasingly difficult as the number of nontrivial knots of a particular crossing number increases. John Horton Conway did the first major work verifying the process of tabulating knots.

  THE EARTH’S SPHERES

  Celestial Sphere The celestial sphere is actually a fictitious sphere that surrounds the Earth, with the planet being at the center. One can only see half of the sky at any time, because that is what is above the horizon. Much like the way the sun rises and sets, so too do the stars in the sky. The celestial sphere keeps record of the celestial bodies that are in our sky. Important notions of the celestial sphere include the North Celestial Pole and the South Celestial Pole (which are extensions of the North and South Poles), the Celestial Equator (which is like the equator, but it expands into the sphere), the horizon (which changes based on what position you are on), the Zenith (the point that lies directly overhead) and the Meridian (which goes from the North Pole, through the Zenith, to the South Pole).

  SIGN LANGUAGE

  Sign Language with Primates Language is not only a form of communication, but a uniquely human experience. Studying whether primates have the ability to develop language could lead to some great discoveries about the earliest humans.
Washoe, a chimpanzee, was the first nonhuman to ever learn sign language and communicate with humans. Since the 1960s, chimpanzees and gorillas have been learning to use sign language for communication. Koko, a gorilla, was introduced to sign language in the 1970s. In 2004, Koko was featured in news reports when she signed to her caretakers that she had a toothache and needed to go to a dentist.

  LESSON 28 QUIZ

  Which of the following was responsible for America’s entry in the war?

  The Battle of Normandy

  The Invasion of Poland

  The Invasion of Russia

  The attack on Pearl Harbor

  Which of the following was won by the Allied forces?

  The Invasion of Poland

  The Invasion of Russia

  The Battle of Normandy

  The attack on Pearl Harbor

  Who is considered the “father of science fiction”?

  H. G. Wells

  Ray Bradbury

  Isaac Asimov

  Jules Verne

  Who wrote The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress?

  Isaac Asimov

  Robert Heinlein

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Ray Bradbury

  When more knots are added to a zero knot, the shape of the knot:

  Tangles

  Divides into two separate knots

  Decreases

  Remains the same

  Which of the following is not one of the Reidemeister moves?

  A strand could twist and untwist.

  A strand can be cut in half and then those two strands are placed on top of one another.

  One strand could be placed over the other strand.

  A strand could be moved over or under a crossing.

  The cryosphere is sometimes considered a part of the:

  Biosphere

  Hydrosphere

  Lithosphere

  Atmosphere

  The biosphere consists of:

  All of the air that surrounds the planet

  All of the water that is found on the planet

  All of the life that is found on the planet

  All of the crust that surrounds the planet

  Which of the following is true?

  In general, sign languages are completely separate from oral languages and have different paths of development.

  In general, sign languages are based entirely on oral languages and follow the same path of development.

  All sign language is based on ASL.

  All sign language is based on IS.

  SignWriting is based on:

  The graphic notation that was used to write ballet steps

  Visual symbols that express handshapes

  Symbols that represent letters from the Latin alphabet

  A and B

  ANSWER KEY: d,c, d, b, d, b, b, c, a, d

  Lesson 29

  HISTORY: The Holocaust

  Hitler’s Propaganda, Concentration Camps, Ghettos, Pogroms, The “Final Solution,” Liberation

  LANGUAGE ARTS: Fairytales

  Aesop’s Fables, Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm, Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve,

  Carlo Collodi

  MATH: Chaos Theory

  What Is Chaos Theory?, The Butterfly Effect, Fractals, Strange Attractors, Misconceptions of Chaos Theory, Applications of Chaos Theory

  SCIENCE:

  Geologic Periods

  Cambrian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Quaternary

  FOREIGN LANGUAGE: Hindi

  The Origins, Sanskritization, Hindi Vocabulary, Dialects, Hindi Today, Useful Hindi Phrases

  LESSON 29A

  THE HOLOCAUST

  Hitler’s Propaganda One way Adolf Hitler made the mass extermination of Jews possible was by eliciting strong feelings of ill will toward the Jewish community. He did so through propaganda by newspapers, film, art, music, books, radio, and the press. The weekly Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, meaning “The Attacker,” featured caricatures of Jewish people as apelike. Films showed the Germans as superior, with an emphasis on German pride, and depicted the Jewish people as inferior, even subhuman. When Hitler came to power, he ruled with a combination of propaganda and a police state to silence any critics.

  FAIRYTALES

  Aesop’s Fables Even though Aesop’s fables (of which there are currently over 600) are some of the most popular fairytales ever written (e.g., “The Tortoise and the Hare”), very little is known about the actual man, Aesop. It is known that Aesop was Greek and born in Thrace in the sixth century b.c. It is believed that he spent most of his life living as a slave on the island of Samos and that, though he was a slave, he was allowed many freedoms and used his fables to argue in court. It is unknown how many of the fables were actually told by Aesop and how many were just attributed to him as they were collected later on.

  CHAOS THEORY

  What Is Chaos Theory? Chaos theory is the mathematical study of extremely complex systems, and more than that, it is a study of the unpredictable and uncontrollable. For example, the stock market, the weather, ocean currents, even migration patterns of birds are all extremely sensitive to any sort of change, and therefore cannot be predicted like other principles in mathematics and science (like gravity or chemical reactions). Chaos theory emerged in the early twentieth century when Henri Poincaré determined that any measurement of something, for example, an orbiting planet, could never be infinitely precise, even if it can be accurately predicted.

  GEOLOGIC PERIODS

  Cambrian The Paleozoic era, the time period when life forms first began to explode in diversity, started with the Cambrian period. The Cambrian period occurred 570 to 510 million years ago. Many significant events occurred during the Cambrian period. The supercontinent Gondwana broke apart and global temperatures began rising. Oceans were considerably higher, and though life on land was sparse, it is during this time that the first invertebrates began to appear in the oceans. While Precambrian life had soft bodies, the life found in the Cambrian period featured hard shells.

  HINDI

  The Origins Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language that, along with Urdu, which is the official language of Pakistan, is a descendent of a colloquial speech used in North India (the Khari Boli dialect spoken in Delhi) in the ninth and tenth centuries called Hindustani. Much of the vocabulary and grammar of Hindi and Urdu are the same, with the exception that Urdu is written in Persian script and Hindi is written in the Devanagari system. Hindi was also greatly influenced by Sanskrit, one of the oldest Indo-Aryan languages, which was also written in Devanagari.

  LESSON 29B

  THE HOLOCAUST

  Concentration Camps From 1933 to 1939, the Jewish people were placed in concentration camps, where they were detained under horrible conditions. The first concentration camps began appearing as early as 1933 with Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. The very first concentration camp was at Dachau. Initially, these camps held political prisoners, but they would later go on to hold Jews, gays, gypsies, and those who were mentally ill, as well as anyone who opposed the regime. There were different types of concentration camps, and in 1939, forced labor camps began to appear. These required inmates to do physical labor under horrible conditions. Death was extremely common in these camps, but nothing would compare to the camps created to act out Hitler’s “Final Solution.”

  FAIRYTALES

  Charles Perrault Charles Perrault was born in Paris on July 12, 1628. At the age of sixty-seven, Perrault lost his job as secretary to the king’s finance minister. It was then that he decided to pursue writing. He is the author of some of the most well-known fairytales that still exist today, such as “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Sleeping Beauty.” These stories and four others were published in his book Stories or Tales from Times Past; or Tales of Mother Goose. Though these stories and plots had existed before Perrault wrote them, Perrault was the first to turn them into a work of literary art through a combination
of wit and style.

  CHAOS THEORY

  The Butterfly Effect Perhaps the most well-known principle to come out of chaos theory is the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect shows how even one slight change in space/time can change giant systems. For example, there is a link between a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world at a precise moment in time and space, and a hurricane that happens on the other side of the world. The flapping of the butterfly’s wings could alter the movement and strength of the wind, which in turn leads to something else. The butterfly effect proves that large systems are unpredictable.

  GEOLOGIC PERIODS

  Triassic The Triassic period occurred 248 to 206 million years ago, and it was the first period of the Mesozoic era, the time period when dinosaurs first started developing. There were two major extinction events in the Triassic Period, one toward the beginning (the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which is considered the most severe extinction event of life on Earth) and one toward the end (the Late-Triassic extinction event). This period is defined by the first appearance of dinosaurs (which were no more than 15 feet tall and walked on all four legs), the first mammals (which were small and lizard-like), and flying reptiles (known as pterosaurs).