Shortly after taking power at age 21, Mehmed II and now soon to be entitled Mehmed the Conqueror launched his attack to capture Constantinople about two and a half months ago. His troops had begun firing on the city with cannons. A 26-foot gun was used, which fired 1,200 pound boulders. To keep the Turkish fleet out of the city’s harbor he ordered that a chain across the Golden Horn between the Bosporus Strait and the Sea of Marmara is created. To be able to conquer one of the greatest and untouched cities of our time he had to attack it from two sides. So they dragged 70 ships over a hill on greased runners from the Bosporus to the harbor. The city held out for the past 7 weeks and just today the Turks finally found a break in the wall and successfully entered the city. Mehmed II proved to be not only an able ruler but a magnificent warrior as well.
11/11/1453
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Rex City
Can a perfect world exist? Nobody knows, but I think that if you choose the people that you will put in your perfect world carefully then you can actually form a perfect society, because what makes a country perfect is the people that represent it. There are so many different choices that one has to make to create a perfect society, but perfect means different things to different people. So, I will try my best to form the perfect society for the perfect people!
As I mentioned before the citizens in Rex city will be chosen carefully by me and my advisors. We are not criticizing and avoiding people that are ugly or mentally or physically challenged or disabled, but we choose people that are honest, which we will prove with lie detector test, they need to be polite with everyone, no matter where they come from, what color they have, how old they are and so on. Next one needs to have ethics and morals, what I mean is that no, it’s not okay to lie, cheat, discriminate, and ignore people or your responsibilities. People in Rex City should have experienced things in their lives, that taught them lessons, and we need one essay from each person that would give a summary of some major events in their lives. No matter how old people are, even if you are 5 you can be mature, so of course there will be babies but from one point on we are looking for mature people that think about others and help others not only themselves. We want our people to have a voice, we will respect each side but we want to be able to hear everyone’s voice, so we expect from everyone to report anything that doesn’t run smoothly. But we want them to speak with respect and because they love their city so much and they don’t want it to get ruined.
There will be no distinction between the sexes, everybody will be mature enough to not disgrace people based on their sex. No, men are not perfect and women are not perfect on their own, to have a perfect society you need everyone to cooperate and work together with respect, love and fairness. We need the mentally or physically challenged or disabled and we need the elderly, and the children. There is room for everyone of course, and whoever doesn’t respect one another will not be permitted to enter Rex City.
There will be voting procedures about everything, but it would be extremely easy so everyone can vote, 12 years old and older, and it will be something done in an everyday basis, it won’t be a big deal since as we said every vice needs to be heard. There will also be public meetings in which everyone will attend, and we are hoping that everyone will want to attend them. There will be a conversation leader in those public meeting because we all believe that communication is the most important thing in the world, so it is a necessary element. No, there won’t be any wars, because they are caused by selfishness and greed, and we don’t want people like that in our society. Disputes will be solved with a peaceful conversation between the “angry” people. We want to solve all problems peacefully without violence.
The laws are simple. All members of the utopia should be excited to join in and they should really love this place, in order to do that they need to really hate the real world and want out of it. All members should be loyal and true to the system. All members must be willing to make this society work. All members will be punished if they lie to the society or act inappropriately. Every member of Rex City will be informed of the laws and they should only join if they are willing to follow them.
Yes there will be a currency called keys. There will be only plastic keys, which will be plastic rectangles 10x5 cm each and they will vary in colors. There will be a pink 2K, a yellow 5K, a green 10K, a blue 20K, an orange 50K, a red 100K, a white 200K, and a purple 500K. Everyone will contribute to the society, one way or the other. Each member will be able to choose a number of jobs they would like to work on, and they will be allowed to work on those jobs whenever they are available. They will be paid according to the job that they do and how many hours they work for. The more you work the more money you get! The people in utopia will not have to pay any taxes, because the government should always be able to support its people that in return support the society itself.
The city will be large, full of parks, trees, playgrounds, and grass with flowers. But there will be only six skyscrapers in which everybody will live in. They will both be 1000 meters tall, and in each skyscraper there will be 1500 people living inside. So our population will be around 9000 citizens. The skyscrapers will be made with all the modern equipment and technologies provided. The six skyscrapers will be set next to each other to form a circle and within the circle there will be a huge round swimming pool, which will be warmed up and covered during the winter time and comfortable during the summer. People in Rex city will not have to pay rent for their apartments, but whenever we notice that there is no respect for what we provide for any member there will be consequences, and we might even have to throw them out.
Inside the skyscrapers, there will be schools, universities and colleges. The kids or anyone that wishes to receive education will get it for free. But for university or college the student will have to pay only 20K per year. People will speak as many languages as they want but they all have to speak English, so they can communicate as a society.
Of course there will be free public health and welfare for everyone in Rex City. Medicine will be for free as well and cancer treatments and so on will be treated by experts. There will be no vaccinations, because I am strongly against them and every month each family will receive a packet full of vitamins of all sorts, which each member will have to take to keep them healthy. There will be no fast food restaurants inside the skyscrapers only restaurants that use organic food, just to make sure we stay on the healthy side.
When you walk into one of our skyscrapers you will find of course stores, in which anything you could ever imagine will be for sale or for free, but there will be no packaging for anything so this way we reduce pollution. Everything will be imported by other countries, so we won’t have any factories that produce pollution. Of course except the things that can be made eco-friendly will be made in a “factory” inside the skyscrapers. There will be no cars, trucks, trains, metros, nothing, because everything you need will be inside the skyscrapers, and outside there will be only parks and beautiful rivers. Nevertheless everyone will be recycling, everything will be recycled and whatever we need to recycle we will send it to other countries to recycle it for us. So we plan to have a ridiculous small amount of garbage, which we will send to other countries to either burn or dump in a landfill. Everyone of course will respect the environment and not harm it by any means.
As I said before there won’t be any cars or metros or any of that. People will go from skyscraper to skyscraper or park to park by foot or with these small machines that you stand on them and there are two wheels on them and with a control you turn and move and stop and go from place to place! They will be accessible for anyone, except for children under 10 years old. Their parents will be provided will a two seat “standing-car” and in each machine there will be a place to put your bag or whatever else you want. They don’t use gas or petroleum so they are eco-friendly, and they have batteries that charge in the sun.
Besides big and clean parks, the city will have one giant public pool and some other small ones, there will be rivers with pick nick areas, and all around the city without streets, only sidewalks where the “car-machines” will be able to move on, there will be small open-air cafes and restaurants and cupcake cafes, and bars, and only a few shops, the rest of them will be in the skyscrapers. Also there will be giant movie theaters in the skyscrapers, and ice-skating places. Also there will be art rooms and galleries. There will be music concerts in the public halls in each skyscrapers.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
School of Athens
This is a picture of a painting that when I first saw in class the other day I fell in love with. Something about this painting made me calm and it attracted me immediately. I found it extremely beautiful, but I cannot quite define if it has a religious or a classical theme, because for me the two philosophers in the center of the painting seem like two gods, and the whole atmosphere in the building is so peaceful and welcoming that just isn’t real! This painting was painted by a twenty seven year old artist called Raphael Sanzio. There is not an exact date as to when this painting was painted, but it’s between 1508-1511. He used the technique called fresco, which is basically a very hard technique because the colors cannot blend together, so more layers and different shades of colors will express volume and depth to the painting. The artist used perspective, that makes everything look three dimensional and of course the painting has two basic characteristics that meet the criteria for a Renaissance painting, it has a vanishing point and a horizon. Where the two philosophers are in the center of the painting is the vanishing point and the diagonal lines right below the arcs lead the eye right there and the colors fade as they are further back where the colors at the front are bright. It is a realistic piece but I think that a real school in Athens wouldn’t look so peaceful and harmonious even back then, but he diffidently made it look like a Greek school because the architecture of the building is clearly Greek style.
http://artpuzzlesgallery.com/?School-of-Athens-Raphael-Sanzio
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
the Visigoths
10/11/401
It was my birthday and I turned 9 years old!!! I was really excited because that day was a special day for my family, since it was my birthday my mom had found wool, and she sew some beautiful coats for us to go to church! It had been two months since she had been telling me that she had a surprise for my birthday and I really looked forward to it! It was extremely hard to find wool these days. But my mom had traded our cow for a sheep and that sheep was all white and clean, so we had shaved it with my brothers and gave the wool to my mom. My daddy was not coming to church with us. Because he was really sick and he didn’t want to wear his nice coat, because he said he would make the coat sick, and every time he would wear it he would be sick all over again, or something like that. It was so exciting though!!! The other girls near my house were rich and they had lots of wool to make clothes with so they go to church often. But my mom said that wool to buy is very expensive and it’s hard to find so we didn’t go to church often. But we said our prayer to God every day and night before lunch and dinner and before we went to bed.
When we were just about to wear our coats me and my three brothers that afternoon, we heard some very weird, unusual and frightening noises outside. And my light-headed brothers immediately run outside. It was the last time I saw all three of them and I love them so much, but mommy says we will be all right. As soon as the boys had left the house my daddy cursed and cursed, he had seen it coming, we were being attacked by barbarians. Daddy got up from the bed and walked over to where I slept with my brothers and opened the secret little door we have on the floor and made me and my mommy hid inside there. We didn’t want to because we wanted daddy to hide with us but he insisted and cursed and insisted all over again. So we hid there with mommy and she cried all the way until we came out. You see, the barbarians that attacked us were kind of light-headed as well. All I know is that they failed, and they were called Visigoths. Daddy was never seen again for days and days, but one day I was running around with my friends and I had seen daddy on the floor, he was looking at me with his beautiful cold blue eyes and I sat beside him and told him the story that he always told me to go to sleep. He looked so tired, and so I put him to sleep. His eyes didn’t close though so I run home and told mommy that we needed to get daddy some eye blankets and she just cried all day and night.
Monday, September 12, 2011
9/11
9/11 A date that brought extreme pain to the hearts of millions of Americans and foreigners. From that day on everybody is aware of the fact that it could be them in that tower and it could have been their mother, their husband or their son. It could have been anyone. That’s what got through every American’s mind and millions of choices that we make every minute might cause us our lives.
Many people have memories of that special day, what they were doing when they heard those devastating news, but I have none. I have no idea what I was doing ten years ago and I didn’t even know what happened I mean, I heard about it like six years ago. I am ashamed about that but back then we didn’t know anyone that lived in America so I don’t think they told me anything. And I don’t remember that here they made a big fuss about it.
I am sure that it affected the lives of so many people positively, because it made them realize how precious each moment is and how we make our own destiny by the choices we make every day. On the other hand it affected everybody’s lives negatively because it started the war of terror which, caused the lives of so many people and the fact that there are wars going on in other countries. That shouldn’t be the case. War is an awful thing and coming from this island I am reminded about it every day.
War, terror, and fear leave behind so much hate. And the problem is that hatred and devastation is all that it brought to everyone. I don’t think it had any other positive effect rather that it made us appreciate life. Because I don’t think that people that come into power have learned from the mistakes that previous politicians and leaders have made, because they keep repeating their mistakes. The fact that the US has nuclear bombs might frighten terrorists so they don’t strike again against the US, but still is fear what we need to keep peace? I thought it was love.
Anyway, even though I don’t know much about 9/11 and even though it didn’t have an impact on my life, it was very uncomfortable to talk about this because I know that most people can connect to this date, and it brings so much sadness, and since I cannot relate to it, I am afraid that I don’t know how to respect it as much as I should.
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