【推荐1】When should people be made to retire? 55? 65? Should there be a compulsory age limit?

Many old people work well into their 70s and 80s, running families, countries or corporations. Other people, however, despite being fit and highly talented, are forced to retire in their fifties or even earlier because of the regulations of a company or the nation. This essay will examine whether people should be allowed to continue working as long as they want or whether they should be encouraged to retire at a particular stage.

Some people think there are several arguments for allowing older people to continue working as long as they are able. First of all, older employees have an immense amount of knowledge and experience which can be lost to a business or organization if they are made to retire. A second point is that older employees are often extremely loyal employees and are more willing to carry out company policies than younger less committed staff. However, a more important point is regarding the attitudes in society to old people. To force someone to resign or retire at 60 indicates that the society does not value the input of these people and that effectively their useful life is over. Age is irrelevant to a working life, surely if older employees are told they cannot work after 60, this is age discrimination. That they become old does not necessarily mean they are going to be sick. Old people could be more aware, experienced and committed than some youngsters.

Others, however, think that allowing older people to work indefinitely is not a good policy. Age alone is no guarantee of ability. Old people are only ambitious workaholics who are too selfish and self-centered to believe that a younger person could do better. Actually, many younger employees have more experience or skills than older staff, who may have been stuck in one area or unit for most of their working lives. Having compulsory retirement allows new ideas in an organization. In addition, without age limits, however, many people would continue to work purely because they did not have any other plans or roles. A third point of view is that older people should be rewarded by society for their life’s labor by being given generous pensions and the freedom to enjoy their leisure. We now have youngsters who can’t find jobs because old people are choosing not to retire. Old people are not retiring because this new generation of “old people” think they will never die due to modern advances in medicine.

With many young people unemployed or frustrated in low-level positions, there are often calls to compulsorily retire older workers. However, this can affect the older individual’s freedom and right to work and can deprive(剥夺) society of valuable experience and insights. I feel that giving workers more flexibility and choice over their retirement age will benefit society and the individual.

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【推荐1】We are the products of evolution, and not just evolution that occurred billions of years ago. As scientists look deeper into our genes ( 基因 ), they are finding examples of human evolution in just the past few thousand years. People in Ethiopian highlands have adapted to living at high altitudes. Cattle-raising people in East Africa and northern Europe have gained a mutation (突变) that helps them digest milk as adults.

On Thursday in an article published in Cell, a team of researchers reported a new kind of adaptation — not to air or to food, but to the ocean. A group of sea-dwelling people in Southeast Asia have evolved into better divers. The Bajau, as these people are known, number in the hundreds of thousands in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. They have traditionally lived on houseboats; in recent times, they’ve also built houses on stilts (支柱) in coastal waters. “They are simply a stranger to the land,” said Rodney C. Jubilado, a University of Hawaii researcher who studies the Bajau.

Dr. Jubilado first met the Bajau while growing up on Samal Island in the Philippines. They made a living as divers, spearfishing or harvesting shellfish. “We were so amazed that they could stay underwater much longer than us local islanders,” Dr. Jubilado said. “I could see them actually walking under the sea.”

In 2015, Melissa Ilardo, then a graduate student in genetics at the University of Copenhagen, heard about the Bajau. She wondered if centuries of diving could have led to the evolution of physical characteristics that made the task easier for them. “It seemed like the perfect chance for natural selection to act on a population,” said Dr. Ilardo. She also said there were likely a number of other genes that help the Bajau dive.

【推荐1】Gender(性别)equality at work benefits everyone and the way to get there faster is to empower men as allies(同盟) in the fight.

The difference between women’s and men’s earnings is on average 18 cents per dollar earned, and even more than that for women of color. After years in which women have formed about half of the college-educated work force, this significant unchanging pay gap and the lack of representation of women in the upper ranks of senior management are troubling. In fact, only a surprisingly tiny 7.8 percent of CEOs at S&P 500 companies were female at the close of 2020. Why is it taking so long to break the well-known glass ceiling once and for all?

At an individual level, men who are unwilling to work closely with women can of course have a damaging effect on the careers of their female colleagues. But men who are indifferent about gender equality and also without necessarily meaning to prevent women’s advancement.

However, men have never been entirely absent from the struggle to expand economic access and professional opportunity for women. In 1984 the Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives and another two officials-all men-spoke out in favor of naming a woman to the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and eventually, they made Geraldine Ferraro the vice president, the first woman ever to run on a major party ticket. Ferraro’s access to an important leadership role was the product not only of decades of activism and protest by women but also of powerful men’s endorsement of those demands, a practice that continues to be important today. In 2020, Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden made a promise to select a woman as his vice-presidential nominee(候选人) and ultimately shared electoral victory with running mate Kamala Harris, the first woman and first person of color to be elected vice president.

Men’s voices are important. When men speak up against gender discrimination, they not only become obvious as allies who can be counted on to support industry or company rules to advance equality, but they also improve awareness and acceptance of gender inequality as a shared problem, not a special interest.

【推荐2】After a salon(美发厅) turns away a physically challenged woman, a stranger makes a truly beautiful gesture. “Beauty isn’t about having a pretty face. It’s about having a pretty mind, a pretty heart, and a pretty soul, Oh, and pretty nails!” That may well be Angela Peters’s motto.

Last July, Peters, 36, rolled her wheelchair into a nail salon at the Walmart shopping center in Burton, Michigan, with the idea of painting her fingers. But Peters was turned away. The salon told her that they were afraid it would be too difficult to properly paint her nails given that her hands shook, What was meant to be a clay of happiness for Peters was now a disappointment.

Ebony Harris, 40, saw everything and approached Peters. Harris offered to do her nails. They shopped for nail polish. They settled on a bright blue — a statement color that would catch every eye. They then made their way into a neighboring Subway, found a table for two, and set up shop. Harris gently took Peters’s hand into hers and carefully began painting her nails.

Watching it all with awe and admiration was Subway employee Tasia Smith. What struck her most was the ease and gentleness displayed by Harris as she painted Peters’s nails, all the while chatting as if they were old friends.

Peters, who runs a poetry website, heavenlypoems. com, harbors(心怀) no bitterness toward the nail salon that turned her away. (The salon says they refused to offer Peters service because they were too busy.) “When people do us wrong we must forgive,” Peters wrote on her website. “I just want to educate people that people with different challenges, like being in a wheelchair, can have our own business and get our nails done like anyone else.”

【推荐3】We may think we’re a culture that gets rid of our worn technology at the first sight of something shiny and new, but a new study shows that we keep using our old devices (装置) well after they go out of style. That’s bad news for the environment — and our wallets — as these outdated devices consume much more energy than the newer ones that do the same things.

To figure out how much power these devices are using, Callie Babbitt and her colleagues at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York tracked the environmental costs for each product throughout its life — from when its minerals are mined to when we stop using the device. This method provided a readout for how home energy use has evolved since the early 1990s. Devices were grouped by generation — Desktop computers, basic mobile phones, and box-set TVs defined 1992. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1997. And MP3 players, smart phones, and LCD TVs entered homes in 2002, before tablets and e-readers showed up in 2007.

As we accumulated more devices, however, we didn’t throw out our old ones. “The living-room television is replaced and gets planted in the kids’ room, and suddenly one day, you have a TV in every room of the house,” said one researcher. The average number of electronic devices rose from four per household in 1992 to 13 in 2007. We’re not just keeping these old devices — we continue to use them. According to the analysis of Babbitt’s team, old desktop monitors and box TVs with cathode ray tubes are the worst devices with their energy consumption and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (排放) more than doubling during the 1992 to 2007 window.

So what’s the solution (解决方案)? The team’s data only went up to 2007, but the researchers also explored what would happen if consumers replaced old products with new electronics that serve more than one function, such as a tablet for word processing and TV viewing. They found that more on-demand entertainment viewing on tablets instead of TVs and desktop computers could cut energy consumption by 44%.

【推荐1】Early fifth-century philosopher St．Augustine famously wrote that he knew what time was unless someone asked him．Albert Einstein added another wrinkle when he theorized that time varies depending on where you measure it．Today’s state-of-the-art atomic(原子的) clocks have proven Einstein right．Even advanced physics can’t decisively tell us what time is, because the answer depends on the question you’re asking．

Forget about time as an absolute．What if，instead of considering time in terms of astronomy,we related time to ecology?What if we allowed environmental conditions to set the tempo(节奏) of human life?We’re increasingly aware of the fact that we can’t control Earth systems with engineering alone，and realizing that we need to moderate(调节)our actions if we hope to live in balance．What if our definition of time reflected that?

Recently，I conceptualized a new approach to timekeeping that’s connected to circumstances on our planet，conditions that might change as a result of global warming．We’re now building a clock at the Anchorage Museum that reflects the total flow of several major Alaskan rivers，which are sensitive to local and global environmental changes．We’ve programmed it to match an atomic clock if the waterways continue to flow at their present rate．If the rivers run faster in the future on average，the clock will get ahead of standard time．If they run slower，you’ll see the opposite effect．

The clock registers both short-term irregularities and long-term trends in river dynamics．It’s a sort of observatory that reveals how the rivers are behaving from their own temporal frame(时间框架)，and allows us to witness those changes on our smartwatches or phones．Anyone who opts to go on Alaska Mean River Time will live in harmony with the planet．Anyone who considers river time in relation to atomic time will encounter a major imbalance and may be motivated to counteract it by consuming less fuel or supporting greener policies．

Even if this method of timekeeping is novel in its particulars，early agricultural societies also connected time to natural phenomena．In pre-Classical Greece，for instance，people“corrected”official calendars by shifting dates forward or backward to reflect the change of season．Temporal connection to the environment was vital to their survival．Likewise，river time and other timekeeping systems we’re developing may encourage environmental awareness．

When St．Augustine admitted his inability to define time， he highlighted one of time ‘s most noticeable qualities：Time becomes meaningful only in a defined context．Any timekeeping system is valid，and each is as praiseworthy as its purpose．

【推荐3】Human speech contains more than 2,000 different sounds, from the common “m” and “a” to the rare clicks of some southern African languages. But why are certain sounds more common than others? A ground-breaking, five-year study shows that diet-related changes in human bite led to new speech sounds that are now found in half the world’s languages.

More than 30 years ago, the scholar Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods. Now a team of researchers led by Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found how and why this trend arose.

They discovered that the upper and lower front teeth of ancient human adults were aligned (对齐), making it hard to produce labiodentals, which are formed by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth. Later, our jaws changed to an overbite structure (结构), making it easier to produce such sounds.

The team showed that this change in bite was connected with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period. Food became easier to chew at this point. The jawbone didn’t have to do as much work and so didn’t grow to be so large.

Analyses of a language database also confirmed that there was a global change in the sound of world languages after the Neolithic age, with the use of “f” and “v” increasing remarkably during the last few thousand years. These sounds are still not found in the languages of many hunter-gatherer people today.

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