Month: July 2020

COVID-19 has been very scary lately. People around the world are very scared of this outbreak. All thanks to doctors and nurses for their help. 

Coronaviruses were made by bats. Even though doctors and scientists are trying to find a cure for the Coronaviruses. They are also trying to find out more diseases from the bats. Surprisingly scientists found SIX more diseases in bats!!! What a lot of diseases in one animal.

A while ago SARS and MERS was also a huge breakout but not as bad as COVID-19. It was true that SARS and MERS were also made by bats. It is still super dangerous because testing for positive still is a very high chance. People need more lockdowns and less areas open.

Even though they found six more diseases, it doesn’t mean that they are no more. Finding diseases is no easy task. Preparing is very very important. They need to set up traps so that the bats get caught and after that is done they bring the bats back to their office and start getting the “saliva”. They do this because they know which bat has Coronavirus.

Diseases are no fun. We all need to fight till it is over. A quote from MLK ““If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”-MLK 

Marco Polo wasn’t lying. Marco wasn’t lying even though he wrote that he was healed by mountains in China that were said to have magic healing powers. Marco also wrote in his journal that he went into Tibet and the parents wanted their daughters to have sex with as many men as possible before they marry so they can prove how desirable wives they could be. Though it wasn’t exactly 100% accurate, it’s based on a real custom.

One of the reasons people in Europe thought he was lying when he wasn’t was because they just couldn’t stand that China was so much better than they were so they said that Marco was lying. Marco said that when he saw Khan’s palace, he said it was like he died and went into heaven and Europeans just couldn’t put their minds around the fact they were not like that. Once they heard China was better, they decided to change the story and said the Tipet parents doing that to

Now, recent studies from scientists have proven most of it accurate. So you can trust the scientists can’t you. These are the reasons why Marco Polo wasn’t lying.

When someone comes up with explorer, most people think of Neil Armstrong, Christopher Columbus or James Cook. I feel that Marco Polo is actually very underrated. He was the one who been to Asia and he told the truth about everything he saw.
When Marco went to Asia with his uncle and dad, he saw huge diamonds and great wealth. The buildings were a lot more modern then all of Europe. It had working sanitary systems. The toilets in Europe were basically buckets of pots. Also, he saw hundreds of horse and in the end, wrote a book. The travels of Marco Polo was his book. He described so many things, like the whistling sands or dog people. The people of Europe were mad, because they thought they were the best place. Many people disbelieve him because of that. After lots of research, today’s scientist say he was correct.
This is why I think Marco Polo is the best.

I am going to be writing a summary about the story. A good man is hard to find. The story begins with the Grandma wanting to go to Tennessee, but her son, Bailey, wants to go to Florida. She tries to convince Bailey every day to not go to Florida. She tells him there is a criminal that escaped jail named The Misfit, and tells Bailey to not go to Florida, and that The Misfit is in Florida. But, he ignores his Grandma and goes to Florida anyways. They drive there by car. They have two kids, June Star and John Weasley, coming with them to Florida, in their car. And then the kids are talking about how boring Georgia is and their Grandmother said that they shouldn’t do that and that when she was a kid nobody talked about their home state in a bad way. Then, they stopped at a restaurant, and she started to talk with the owner of the restaurant about how good the old days were and things like that. The waiter of the restaurant was the owner’s wife. After the restaurant, the Grandma wanted to go to Tennessee, so she lied about having a secret panel behind a building in Tennessee, and the kids got curious, and wanted to go. They were begging Bailey and his wife to go to the building in Tennessee, so Bailey reluctantly drove them there. The Grandma snuck her cat onto the car before her trip started. When they were almost there, at the building, the Grandma startled the cat, which caused the cat to startle Bailey, and they crashed the car. The kids were pretty excited about the car crash, though June Star was pretty disappointed that nobody died in the car crash. They started calling for help, and then a group of people in a car came. They were The Misfit and his gang, but the Grandma and the family don’t know that. They come here, talk with them, then the Grandma points out that he was The Misfit. Then, The Misfit knew that his cover was blown, so then, he kills each person of the family one by one, and the last person to die was The Grandma.                                                                                        

Marco Polo was a merchant who traveled to mainly China and Mongolia. He got a lot of respect from the ruler of Mongolia, Kublai Khan, and recorded his travels in prison with Rustichello da Pisa.

He was born in a wealthy Venetian family in the year 1254, his father, Nicolo, was a merchant and his mother Nicole was a regular person.

What I was really curious about was when the guy was talking about Marco’s death and how a priest was standing over him in is deathbed and telling him to confess that his book of travels was mostly fiction.

But, he didn’t and said that he had only told a fration of his stories and which I think means that he only told a bit of it and there would be even more exciting and risky stories waiting to te revealed.

Overall I really enjoyed this video because it gave a lot of facts and details about Marco Polo’s birth, death, and his life.

In “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O.Henry, an ironic story is told about two foolish kidnappers kidnapping a wealthy man’s son. However, ironically, the son, a ten-year-old child, annoys and abuses them to the point where they have to pay money to return the son instead of holding him for ransom. Typically, a story about kidnapping and abuse would be a serious, dark story, but O.Henry makes the story into an entertaining and comical story. The two factors of irony and literary devices have a huge effect on the story’s overall demeanor, allowing readers to smile and sympathize with characters. 

Irony is used several times throughout the story. The simplest and least complex use of irony is the name of the town where Johnny is kidnapped. The town’s name is “summit,” however, it is also described to be “as flat as a flannel cake.” These two descriptive terms are obviously polar opposites, creating a funny feel and environment to the story. Another example is throughout the story, where the kidnappers become victims to Johnny in a fashionable manner instead of the other way around. 

Furthermore, the use of literary devices, such as metaphors and allegories, have a great impact on the story. One metaphor is when Sam finds Johnny threatening to smash Bill’s head with a giant rock. Instead of simply saying a giant rock, the author uses a metaphor to compare the size of the rock to be “half as big as a coconut.” Here, coconuts seem out of the blue and random, giving the readers a chance to laugh at the absurdity of the metaphor. The author also uses an allegory to the Bible when Johnny throws Bill into the fire. Bill brings up a Biblical reference to King Herod, who is believed to have initiated a murder of all the infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of the baby Jesus. This can be compared in the story to Bill wanting to get rid of Johnny, similarly to the way King Herod wanted to get rid of Jesus. To compare a small-scale kidnapping to Jesus is no small feat, once again, allowing readers to sympathize and laugh along with the story. 

Through the use of irony and literary devices, the story does not feel as if it had been about an unlawful and unjustified kidnapping, but instead the story of two foolish criminals and a laughingstock of a boy. 

It has always been difficult to get statistics on people killed by different causes, and it’s only gotten harder during a global pandemic. Recently, the official number of people in the United States killed by Covid-19 has been called into question. There are many reasons why this is.

One reason for the uncertainty regarding the death count of the virus is that deaths can be wrongly recorded. A quote states,”the immediate cause of death might be listed as respiratory distress, with the second line reading ‘due to COVID-19.’ Contributing factors such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure would then be listed further down. This has led to some confusion by people arguing that the ‘real’ cause of death was heart disease or diabetes, Aiken said, but that’s not the case.” This means that the true cause of death can be unclear when the patient already has some other condition.

Another reason the true mortality rate is a bit foggy is that Covid-19 can kill indirectly as well. A quote on the subject reads,”A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology did find that nine major hospitals saw a 38% drop in emergency visits for a particular kind of heart attack in March. That suggests that people really are delaying or avoiding medical care, which could mean that some of them die of preventable causes.” This quote tells us that because of Covid-19, people are avoiding hospitals for fear of catching the virus, and as a result, some of them are dying, and their death is included in the unusually high death rate.

In conclusion, the actual death count of the Corona virus is difficult to find. This can be because of confusion about the cause of death, and because of people staying at home in medical emergencies because of the virus outside.

BREAKING NEWS! A fire station has been engulfed by monstrous flames and even the police station has been robbed. These are examples of irony. Nobody expects the prevention of fire to be burnt, or the catcher of thieves to be robbed. Irony is used in literature to charm certain occurrences with a bit of humor. The short story The Ransom Red Chief written by O. Henry is about two kidnappers trying to earn two thousand dollars off of a kidnapping, but end up paying the boy’s parents in order to return him. This is just one of the many ironic moments within the story. Irony is presented in the short story because the boy is not scared of the kidnapping and the boy’s village does not want him back.

To start, the boy being kidnapped is only a young ten-year-old child. Most children at this age are still slightly scared of movies of children being kidnapped. Imagine ten-year-old children being confronted by real kidnappers, they would be scared into shivers. When the boy is being kidnapped, he does not even realize that he is. Even after he was brought to a cave, he still did not realize the truth. The child ended treating his kidnappers as his best friends. Not only does the boy not realize he is being kidnapped, but he also is not scared at all and wants to play with his “enemies”. It is not an everyday occasion to see a child playing with their kidnappers. These ways of action are just the less ironic commitments of the boy. The child states how he does not like going to school and staying with his family. This information when added to the fact that he is “playing” with criminals can help one assume that the boy is acting as if he willingly wants to be kidnapped. It is truly ironic that the boy is not even a bit scared of being kidnapped, and even does not want to go back home.

When Sam, the narrator of the story who is also one of the kidnappers, goes back to the boy’s small village, he is confronted by a confusing sight. To clear some understanding, in many movies and small towns in real life, everyone knows one another, and they together are a family. Losing a member of the village breaks the powerful bonds of family between hundreds of people. This is catastrophic, as the small village attempts to avenge their lost soul. In the story, Sam says he expected angry people armed with scythes and pitchforks ready to fight. Instead of seeing the expected sight, the villagers end up not caring about the appearance of one who broke a hundred bonds. The boy has done some trouble then and now which might explain why, but simply neglecting a member of one’s community is unacceptable and ironic. Voluntary exclusion is something extremely ironic especially when the setting is a prospering village.

The art of irony is one of the key features of this short story and it adds on an admirable sense of humor for the reader to enjoy. The little boy is merely ten years old, and he is not at all frightened of his kidnappers and even wants to become friends with them. Additionally, even after the boy is kidnapped, his village does not seem to care for their loss. Bill Nye, the science guy, once said, “Humor is everywhere in that there’s irony in just about anything a human does.” Although these ironic moments in the short story seem special, one can find irony in almost everything just by taking a closer look.

“The Ransom of Red Chief” is a short story about two guys who are planning a scheme to kidnap a kid from a rich family, and hold a ransom of two thousand dollars on the kid. They find and kidnap a kid named Johnny.  They pick up the boy and take him to a cave hideout, but then things go wrong. Calling himself “Red Chief” in a fantasy game of cowboys and Indians, the boy drives both men crazy—but particularly Bill. The boy demands they entertain him, refusing to return to his home even when they release him from his captivity out of desperation to be rid of him. Even so, the outlaws still write a ransom letter to the boy’s father, lowering the requested ransom from two thousand dollars to fifteen hundred. Unfortunately, old man Dorset, who knows that his boy is a terror, rejects their demand and instead offers to take the boy off their hands if they pay him $250. Feeling disheveled, Bill and Sam hand over the cash and trick the unhappy boy into returning to his wealthy father. The elder Dorset restrains his son long enough for the chastened duo to flee town.

The theme is that crime won’t be able to pay. The lesson is probably that it is pretty hard to make money, and breaking the law will end you up in jail. It is known that you shouldn’t do crime, even if you really need money, but to work hard and earn it. The story was a pretty interesting one.