读趣百科

These days, owing to the advances in biomedical technology, there is a growing tendency in some countries for fresh couples to have children late in their life. From my perspective, this notable trend may associate with women themselves as well as with the increasingly soaring cost of living.

Obviously, women tend to receive longer education in their life span, which means they may get late marriage and consequently have postponed child-bearing. Furthermore, with longer and better education, women may reconsider their role in marriage. To be specific, they may attach more attention to their career trying to be professional in their field, compared with their traditional counterparts mainly performing the role of mother in a family. Apart from the reason coming from women themselves, the high cost of living in some countries may also contribute to this phenomenon. Not only can feeding a family be burdensome for young couples, but offering high quality education for their offspring could be an even more daunting task, which to a large extent hinder their progress to be parents.

Admittedly, having late child-bearing may enable women to fulfill their career ambitions and allow young couples to establish a solid financial base. However, despite the contribution of medical science, late child-bearing may make women be confronted with the pregnancy problems such as low fertility and the high risk of genetic disorder, which could be detrimental to their physical and mental health. Furthermore, postponed child-bearing could also trigger the decline of overall population, which in turn can exacerbate the problem of ageing population, ending up with more pressure on feeding the elderly for our future generations.

To conclude, although having postponed child-bearing could pave the way for women's career development, and enable young couples to better prepare for parents in terms of financial support, the risk of such practice for individuals and society should not be ignored and the analysis seems to indicate its drawbacks outweigh its merits. Thus, government and communities are supposed to do more to help our young couples to get balanced in this issue.

Every city has old buildings. Every year the governments around the world spend large sums of money restoring them. Some people consider this a huge waste of money and they believe the governments’ budget should go to building new houses and roads, while others insist that the restoration of old buildings in cities is well worth the money.

There are a host of reasons why some urban old buildings should not be restored. To start with, the old buildings are no longer suitable for people to live in, therefore they should be destroyed and give way to new buildings so that people, especially young people in the cities have more living spaces. Secondly, the old buildings can cause inconveniences for the city dwellers. Since there is not a direct route through the old buildings, people sometimes have to go to and off work by making a long detour around them, and in this way much of their time is wasted. Finally, the old buildings may give rise to safety problems. More than 100 people, for example, are killed or injured each year in my city, just because of the collapse of some ancient buildings.

Yet old buildings - at least some of them - are significant historically and culturally, and hence should be restored for that reason. They carry some important messages about the city or even the whole nation. The Summer Palace, for instance, is a perfect reminder of how the imperial family in the Qing Dynasty in feudal China were living and so has great cultural significance. Such old buildings, if well preserved, can become tourist spots and attract thousands of visitors from around the globe.

We all need a memory of our past. Many old buildings do have historical and cultural value which tells us who we were. We need to take good care of these buildings and keep them as long as possible, however much money it may involve, so that they can tell the stories of the city or the nation to our future generations. Of course, the money squandered on those old buildings with little value should be used to solve more practical problems such as housing and traffic.

Crimes can be detestable, while minor offenders and their crimes are from time to time treated with leniency. Thus, some argue that laws should not discriminate, and equally punish minor criminals—an opinion that this essay is against.

To begin with, minors are yet to approach their maturity, and their crimes, albeit serious, should be punished with the consideration of their young age. Internationally speaking, countries might define the start of adulthood differently—18 being the most common—but they commonly believe that there is a distinction between minor crimes and adult crimes. Minors are likely to be given a better chance for rehabilitation when they commit crimes because of their inexperience of life and possibly better life prospects. In that case, milder punishments are inflicted onjuvenile delinquents: lesser sentencing and relatively less harsh correction facilities are introduced in their cases.

Moreover, considering the correction process, minor offenders should not be punished equally as adult criminals. Despite the above-mentioned arguments that are in young offenders’ defense, crimes, especially felonies by minors, deserve heavy punishment to deter crimes and reduce the harm of those crimes to the society. However, sending minors to adult prison might entailunexpectedly negative results. First, minors are naturally closer to more sophisticated criminals and crimes, which aggravate juvenile delinquency. Second, when in adult correctional facilities, young criminals might be threatened by assaults by adult prisoners, mostly sexually,which is nowhere closer to the purpose of rehabilitation.

In sum, law breakers, be they minors or not, should be punished for their wrongdoings, but lesser sentences and special correctional facilities might be more reasonable and helpful.

I think the news media mainly plays two important roles in modern society – providing information and influencing public opinion – and I think its influence is generally positive.

Obviously, the news media provides people with vast amounts of information in various forms. We can access it by listening to the radio, reading newspapers and magazines, watching television and by surfing the Internet. The ability to access news media is important for individuals and organizations because we make many decisions based on the news provided to us. Some of these decisions are mundane. We check the weather forecast to see whether we should take an umbrella to work. Other news, such as that about the business world, could influence whether we invest our savings in certain companies listed on the stock exchange.

The news is often presented to us in certain ways, using specific words to try to control our feelings and thoughts. This can be the main negative influence of the news media. Very often, the news media portrays people in simplistic ways, giving us some facts, but not the whole story. In the USA, some news media tends to support the Republicans whilst others tend towards the Democrats and the portrayal of individuals can reflect this. This is somewhat inevitable, because the editors, journalists and owners of the news media have opinions and biases. So, I think that it would be better if people checked news stories from different sources instead of only using one source.

Despite the fact that the news media can report events incorrectly or with bias, I think that the general influence on society is good. More factual information gives us the chance to make better decisions, both in our personal lives and in our working lives.

In this essay, I shall explain why I think we that should value old age and youth, without suggesting that one is better than the other.

I feel that we should celebrate the fact that so many people make it to old age. In the past, thanks to war, disease and the dangers of childbirth, most people were not so fortunate. Particularly in Western societies, a large (and growing) proportion of the population is past the age of retirement and most of those people are enjoying life. Many have saved enough money to live well and travel around the world or to play golf or to do whatever it is that they enjoy. They value the time they have and want to make the most of it. Simultaneously, societies around the world value the elderly for the experience and knowledge that they have gained over the years.

At the same time, cultures and individuals around the world value youth. Some people value it so much that they are prepared to spend plenty of money on maintaining a youthful look, through the use of make-up and plastic surgery. Youth is often seen as a time to be dynamic and fun, developing new ideas and trying things differently. This can be very useful to an economy. Would China have been able to develop so quickly in recent decades without a large supply of young people ready to take their chances in Shenzhen or Shanghai?

These are the main reasons why I think that it is a mistake to value either old age or youth and not the other. Of course, most people will value one more than the other, possibly depending on their age. However, as a culture - as a society - we should value both.