【推荐1】Retirement Age

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely.The " standard" retirement age varies from country to country, but it is generally between 50 and 70, according to the latest statistics, 2011.However, for a long time, people have got into an argument about whether the age of retirement should be increased or reduced in their own countries.

There are several arguments for allowing older people to continue working as long as they are able.Many people think that older employees have a large amount of knowledge and experience which can be lost to a business or organization if they are made to retire.Besides, older employees are often extremely faithful employees to and are more willing toimplementcompany policies than the young.A more important point is regarding the attitudes in society to old people.To force someone to resign or retire at 60 or 65 indicates that the society does not value the input of these people and that effectively their useful life is over.

Allowing old people to work indefinitely (无限地), however, is not always a good policy.Some people took the strong view that age alone is no guarantee of ability.Many young employees have more experience or skills than older staff, who may have been stuck in one area for most of their working lives.Having compulsory retirement allows new ideas in an organization.On the other hand, older people should be rewarded by society for their life' s labor by being given generous pensions and the freedom to enjoy leisure.They can have time to do whatever they like, that is, they can have their own plans or roles and achieve their retirement goals.

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.In my opinion, giving workers more choices over their retirement age will benefit society and the individual.

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【推荐2】Every August,Spain’s countryside comes alive with fiestas (宗教节日).But hardly anyone actually lives here. People come one week a year to party in the villages of their ancestors.During the other 51 weeks,villages are deserted.“There was a time when this place was growing! But not anymore.” says Felix Sacristan,who’s 55 and unemployed,living in his late grandfather’s house.“The only ones left are the elderly.There are lots of abandoned homes.”It makes for cheap housing,he says.

Like much of Spain’s central Meseta Table Plateau,this land is dusty and the climate is severe.People say it’s like nine months of winter and three months of burning hell.“This land used to be for cereals (谷物),but it’s difficult to grow anything else,”Sacristan says.“And who wants to be a farmer these days now,anyway?”

In northern Europe,the Industrial Revolution pulled people to big cities centuries ago.But in Spain,that migration happened much later.The first wave occurred after the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s;the second,after Spain’s military governing ended in the late 1970s.Now there’s been a third leaving,during the recent economic crisis.But it’s not just on Spain’s severe central land.Even villages in the country’s most fertile northwest region,Galicia,are being depopulated.The Galician landscape once supported Spain’s highest population,and half of all Spanish villages are located there.Now nearly half of these villages are abandoned.

“Some of the places I’m finding have been empty for 50 or 60 years,” Adkinson,a British-born real estate (房地产)agent who searches the countryside for abandoned properties and tries to match them up with foreign buyers,says.

【推荐3】Most of Bangladesh is at or below sea level. Rising seawaters linked to climate change has severely affected the country. High water from storms in coastal areas also adds salt to soil. The land is becoming salty. Crops are less productive and many areas of cropland in the country are becoming unfit for farming. These are big problems for the small country. More than 155 million people live in Bangladesh. Growing crops is the most common way Bangladeshis support themselves.

To find a way out, farmers in the country are learning to grow vegetables in so-called “vertical gardens”. The soil in these gardens is better because heavy rains have removed much of the salt.

A vertical garden is easy to make. Villagers fill containers with good soil and natural fertilizers. They put the containers on bricks so they are off the ground. They add pieces of the bricks to the soil to help water flow and drain(排水).

The farmers cut small holes into the sides of the containers. This permits vegetables with short roots a place to grow. Vegetables with long roots grow on top of the container. One bag of soil can produce up to eight kilograms of vegetables in one season.

The farmers also grow vegetables in containers made from large, thin pieces of plastic supported by bamboo. This “vertical tower” measures more than a meter wide. Each of these towers can produce more than 100 kilograms of vegetables. It costs about $12-S13 to build.

【推荐1】Beginning in the late sixteenth century, it became fashionable for young aristocrats to visit Paris, Venice, Florence, and above all, Rome, as the culmination（终极）of their classical education. Thus was born the idea of the Grand Tour, a practice which introduced Englishmen, Germans, Scandinavians, and also Americans to the art and culture of France and Italy for the next 300 years. Travel was arduous and costly throughout the period, possible only for a privileged class---the same that produced gentlemen scientists, authors, antique experts, and patrons of the arts.

The Grand Tourist was typically a young man with a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin literature as well as some leisure time, some means, and some interest in art. The German traveler Johann Winckelmann pioneered the field of art history with his comprehensive study of Greek and Roman sculpture; he was portrayed by his friend Anton Raphael Mengs at the beginning of his long residence in Rome. Most Grand Tourists, however, stayed for briefer periods and set out with less scholarly intentions, accompanied by a teacher or guardian, and expected to return home with souvenirs of their travels as well as an understanding of art and architecture formed by exposure to great masterpieces.

London was frequent starting point for Grand Tourists, and Paris a compulsory destination; many traveled to the Netherlands, some to Switzerland and Germany, and a very few adventurers to Spain, Greece, or Turkey. The essential place to visit, however, was Italy. The British traveler Charles Thompson spoke for many Grand Tourist when in 1744 he described himself as “being impatiently desirous of viewing a country so famous in history, a country which one gave laws to the world, and which is at present the greatest school of music and painting, contains the noblest productions of sculpture and architecture, and is filled with cabinets of rarities, and collections of all kinds of historical relice”. Within Italy, the great focus was Rome, those ancient ruins and more recent achievements were shown to every Grand Tourist. Panini’s Ancient Rome and Modem Rome represent the sights most prized, including celebrated Greco-Rome statues and views of famous ruins, fountains, and churches. Since there were few museums anywhere in Europe before the close of the eighteenth century, Grand Tourists often saw paintings and sculptures by gaining admission to private collections, ad many were eager to acquire examples of a Greco-Rome and Italian art for their own collections. In England, where architecture was increasingly seen as an aristocratic pursuit, noblemen often applied what they learned from the villas of Palladio in the Veneto and the evocative （唤起回忆的）ruins of Rome to their own ceuntry houses and gardens.