Category: Others

Marco Polo is one of the greatest explorers to go down in history. He was a man of many things, a merchant, an explorer, and a writer. He is best known for his travels and descriptions to the Eastern part of the world. All of his travels are recorded on the book, The Travels of Marco Polo. This book describes the power and culture of the Eastern part of the world. Marco gave many Europeans a look into the wealth and greatness of the Mongolian Empire, and many other Asian countries.

Marco Polo was born into a wealthy merchant family, in Italy. Growing up, Marco was a very smart child. He was able to speak, write and read many languages. His mother had died when he was young, so he just usually waits for his uncle and father to come back from their merchant trips. When he was 15 years old, Kublai Khan, one of the greatest rulers the Mongolian Empire has ever seen, invited the Polos and priests to come to them. Unfortunately they only brought two priests, which was okay. When Marco was 17, he and his family and the priests set out on the long trip to China. They went by foot, and stopped by many cities to get refreshed and things they might need. The trip was so hard, the priests could not continue the trip, and went back. Finally, after much hardship, they arrived at the Mongolian Empire.

The Mongolian Empire was amazing. There were large parks, and huge buildings containing species of animals that no one has ever heard of. They had pipes in the ground giving the buildings cooling systems. People were clean, nice, and smelled good. For someone like Marco who has never seen such a place, it was like he “died and went to heaven”. As for Kublai Khan, was an amazing leader. He accepted the different beliefs and religions of the explorers and neighboring Empires. He was not land hungry or money hungry all the time, and respected the other people.

After 24 years, Marco returned to Italy and was jailed. His riches were illegally stolen, and he was thrown in jail. That is when he met a very famous writer friend, Rusticello, who wrote his stories of the amazing Mongolian Empire. Marco made sure to give no bias. After the publishing of the book, it caused much unrest. It is understandable that people would be skeptical. His stories sounded too good to be true and almost magical. Even when Marco was on his death bed, he was questioned about his stories, but he stuck with the truth.

I think that Marco Polo was truly an amazing Italian explorer. If i was a person living in Italy at the time, I would not have believed his stories either. Marco was unlike the explorers that came after him. Other famous explorers like Christopher Columbus were greedy, and enslaved the indigenous people he met. Marco Polo was far from this, and never had any intention of “taking over” the Mongolian Empire. Even after receiving much hate and backlash about his controversial book, he was calm and collected, for he knew that in the years to come, people will eventually find out the truth.

This article was about a group of scientist who have discovered a six new coronaviruses from studying bats in Myanmar. Before I read this articles, I barely knew anything about coronaviruses, but this article freshened me up. This task is a really dangerous one since the scientists are uncovering new virus that could be really fatal to them. They put on bodysuits and go into caves where they try and find things that could help them discover a new virus.

For this specific cave, scientists went in, where around half a million bats are living. They collected droppings from the bats, and took them back to their labs. They then found six unidentified new coronavirus. It’s amazing, the fact that they found six new viruses from just that one cave. It scares me to think how many more viruses there are in the world.

Another thing that was mentioned many times in this article were bats. They were the main source of many coronaviruses and the source of many deadly viruses like Ebola. I was surprised since in our History class, we just did a chapter on pandemics and I chose the Ebola pandemic to learn, so I learned so much about it. However, somehow I managed to skip the fact that Ebola was incubated by bats. That was a really cool fact.

I think those scientists, and the field of science are constantly in a lot danger, especially when things get hands, like finding new viruses. I learned a lot from this article and it really helped me understand the situation we are in and the pandemic that’s happening right now.

The short story, “A good man is hard to find”, is about a family of six going for a road trip. The grandma tells them about a place she has been to a long time before. The children beg to go and their father gives in. The grandma realizes that they are going the wrong way for the place she had been to was in a different state. But decided to not tell them. When she was thinking about this, her cat had escaped and and jumped on Mr.Bailey(the dad) and the car crashes.

They all get out of the car and see another car come over. They think that those people were there to help them, but the three people recently escaped from jail and were there to kill them. The murderers ended up killing the whole family.

This short story may seem very weird with no theme or anything, but if you look deep inside into it there is. I would say the theme of this story is to think before you do things. There are many times when the characters did things without thinking.

Some examples of of this is when Mr. Bailey told his mother ( the grandma) to not bring the cat, but she still did and crashed the car. Also when the grandma decided to not tell them they were going the wrong way. If she did they could have avoided dying. And lastly Mr.Bailey should have asked if the grandma was sure about this since she has not been there for a long time. If he would have asked this instead of giving, in the grandma might have remembered. Although this story is short many people overlook these pretty obvious theme.

Shelter in place, quarantine, COVID-19,

The world is going crazy!

Masks and bats,

Shops and store closing up,

The stuff in shop are running low.

Researchers are finding diseases and cures,

But wether or not people all around the world are working really hard,

Samples and test are never enough,

Doctor are making it so people don’t cough,

Don’t think negative look on the bright side,

As MLKJ once said: “if you can’t fly than run if you can’t run than walk if you can’t walk than claw but you keep on moving forward.

If I look back in my own life this COVID-19 was just like when we were on a dark night stuck in a road trip going to Reno and our car tier pop my mom and dad took an advice that MLKJ said and they ket on moving we never gave up and solved the problem. Luckily we made it safe out and never gave up.

In my opinion, this book is actually really violent and weird because it includes a lot of killing and the author describes the grandma’s killing with detail that it makes me feel like I’m watching a mini horror movie.

This book also gives me a feeling where you think someone is creeping behind you and you also think that the person is going to murder you.

This book in my opinion belongs in the group of books that me and my parents don’t enjoy or like, because it involves a lot of killing.

I hope that I don’t read much books like this in the future and I hope that our books for next week don’t envolve killing any sort that is described with detail.

Warning: In this piece Shakespearean English is used, and in a very bad way. It is used to match the language of the old days, please do not make fun if used improperly.

The feeling of curiosity

Burns in thy heart

What is it out there? 

Here shall thee start

There are many places

Where thou can travel

Thou shall step afoot 

On stone and gravel

Where is your destination?

The choice is for thee

Is it the Gobi Desert?

Or perhaps India or Italy

Thou shall travel far

Thou shall gain friends

Thou shall discover new places

And reach the journey’s end

Now out thee go

Find some far out places

Go achieve thy dreams

Spot the unknown spaces

Marco Polo was one of the greatest adventurers in the world, and people even named a game after him. He was captured and brought to prison with no form of entertainment and he met a writer named Rustichello da Pisa. After Marco Polo shared all of his adventures, his friend, Rustichello da Pisa, thought it would be great to write a book about all of his exploits. Once they were released from prison, those two published the book and became an overnight bestseller. Marco Polo had become the first European to document many details and information about the Chinese Empire. When the book was published, many people had doubts that he actually traveled across the world with just one life and called him a liar and a fraud. What the people didn’t know was that every single story that he ever told was true and it would take the people many, many years before knowing the truth. Marco Polo’s father and uncle were traveling for most of his young life. They bought goods from countries that were not needed, but then sold them to countries where the product is more valuable. During Marco Polo’s adventures, he needed to go to China, but he could not sail because his family’s boat was being repaired, so he could not sail to China, but rather walk on his two legs. The journey would be a long one, but fortunately, they sent out on a path where they could stop in small cities for rest. They always had goods to sell to other countries, but it was exhausting for Marco Polo. Marco Polo was a trusted adviser and he was able to live among the royal court. Since Marco Polo could speak 5 different languages, he was very useful to the Mongolian empire. Marco Polo had many duties, even so, he still went out to enjoy all of the entertainment that the empire had to offer such as musicals, theaters, horse races, and many more. The Europeans had been frustrated by the thought of how China seemed to be better than Europe. Even when all of the adventures and exploits he had gone, his face and what he looked like is still a mystery to many people today. His adventures he has gone and all of his responsibilities are a fascinating story and inspiring story.

Why is it important to study Coronavirus in bats? How does the characteristics of Coronavirus prove dangerous enough to have more studies on it? It is important to study Coronavirus in bats because they could have carried more types of viruses before. They could discover new kinds of coronavirus in bats that we didn’t know about before. The characteristics of Coronavirus prove dangerous enough to get more studies on it because if we search for new viruses, it can prevent a lot of deaths.

Studying coronavirus in bats can benefit us a lot. In their studies, they tested 464 bats and collected 759 samples. 48 of the samples contained coronaviruses. They found six viruses that used to be unknown to researchers. Most of these were in droppings, which meant that they could be a major source of virus transmission. This will let us be aware about it if someone gets infected with that virus and possibly prevent their death.

The coronavirus is dangerous enough to have more studies on it. In April of 2020, COVID-19 had infected more than 1.5 million people globally, with more than 159,000 people from the United States. In the studies, they have discovered more types of coronavirus in bat droppings. Studying about the virus might be able to prevent it from getting into other people. This will help prevent more deaths from the coronavirus.

Counting the number of COVID-19 deaths is hard. It is also very dangerous. The reason is that if you detect someone with COVID-19, you might get it too. This is not good news, so we try to catch bats. Since COVID-19 comes from bats, we can measure the number of bats and try to find out how many deaths there will be. This is one purpose of catching bats. The other is to not allow the bats to even get to humans. “‘The goal is to prevent the virus from getting into the humans in the first place,’ says Marc Valitutto, lead author of the study and a former wildlife veterinarian with the Global Health Program.” It is not easy to do this: “Searching for new viruses is ‘a grueling job,’ he adds, ‘but this is what’s required if you want to prevent 90,000 deaths, which is what we’re seeing today. So, it’s a small investment monetarily compared to what we’re spending now.’” Also, “Zoonotic pathogens, which spread between animals and humans, have caused almost three[-]quarters[!] of infectious diseases in humans [in only] this century. This interaction happens because of changes in land use and other human behavior.” Bats are not rare though, “One cave that the researchers studied in Myanmar, Linno Cave, had more than half a million bats. Tourists would visit the area to watch the bats leave the cave each night. Caves in Myanmar also serve as religious sites, and local people go there to collect bat droppings for fertilizer.” This may be one of the reasons there are so many COVID-19 cases. “We have been saying within the medical community, ‘An epidemic is coming, it’s coming soon, it’s likely to be one of these three or four viral families, it has the potential to kill a lot of people,’ Murray says. ‘Until it really touches people, it’s hard to recognize how connected we are. And as long as something’s happening across an ocean and far away, sometimes it’s hard to really feel the relevance of it.’ People now realize, she says, that “we’re more connected than we think we are.”

Finding new diseases is dangerous work,
Setting traps, getting ready there’s no perk.
Wearin’ suits from head to 2 to toe,
COVID-19 was their only foe.
“Searching 4 new viruses is a grueling job,
It’s not easy it’s no piece of cake.
It’s not something we want 4 do.” says Rob
But then you’ll have to worry every time you wake.
“Hey, Rob!” said Bob come look at this!
It’s some bats we found, in the Abyss.
Let’s test it now,
Somewhere safe n’ sound.
They tested 464 bats, 11 kinds of them.
“AHEM!” the boss said, “Hurry up, we don’t have time!”
Don’t just stand there like a mime, test, test, test!
The crew started to put the bats in and flick (the tester).
“Hey, boss!” Rob said “We found Six
new viruses!!
THE END

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