Task on on child reading and its two approachesl popular

Some parents tell their children that they can become whatever they want while others resist this approach and encourage their children to emphasize on self-control and an attitude to hard work.  

·         How would these two approaches to child rearing benefit children in general?  

Climate change and climate refugees

Global warming could create 150 million 'climate refugees' by 2050

Downloaded from the UK Press

Environmental Justice Foundation report says 10% of the global population is at risk of forced displacement due to climate change

Global warming will force up to 150 million "climate refugees" to move to other countries in the next 40 years, a new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) warns.

In 2008 alone, more than 20 million people were displaced by climate-related natural disasters, including 800,000 people by cyclone Nargis in Asia, and almost 80,000 by heavy floods and rains in Brazil, the NGO said.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, who presented testimony to the EJF, said people in his country did not want to "trade a paradise for a climate refugee camp". He warned rich countries taking part in UN climate talks this week in Barcelona "not to be stupid" in negotiating a climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

Nasheed urged governments to find ways to keep temperature rises caused by warming under 2C. "We won't be around for anything after 2C," he said. "We are just 1.5m over sea level and anything over that, any rise in sea level – anything even near that – would wipe off the Maldives. People are to move their homes because of erosion. We've already this year had problems with two islands and we are forced to move them to other islands. We have a right to live."

Last month, the president held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the plight of his country.

The EJF claimed 500 million to 600 million people – nearly 10% of the world's population – are at risk from displacement by climate change. Around 26 million have already had to move, a figure that the EJF predicts could grow to 150 million by 2050. "The majority of these people are likely to be internally displaced, migrating only within a short radius from their homes. Relatively few will migrate internationally to permanently resettle in other countries," said the report's authors.

In the longer term, the report said, changes to weather patterns will lead to various problems, including desertification and sea-level rises that threaten to inundate low-lying areas and small island developing states. An expert at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris recently said global warming could create "ghost states"with citizens living in "virtual states" due to land lost to rising seas.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts sea-level rise in the range of 18-59cm during the 21st century. Nearly one-third of coastal countries have more than 10% of their national land within 5 metres of sea level. Countries liable to lose all or a significant part of their land in the next 50 years, said the EJF report, include Tuvalu, Fiji, the Solomon islands, the Marshall islands, the Maldives and some of the Lesser Antilles.

Many other countries, including Bangladesh, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, Yemen, Ethiopia, Chad and Rwanda, could see large movements of people. Bangladesh has had 70 climate-related natural disasters in the past 10 years.

"Climate change impacts on homes and infrastructure, food and water and human health. It will bring about a forced migration on an unprecedented scale," said the EJF director, Steve Trent. "We must take immediate steps to reduce our impact on global climate, and we must also recognise the need to protect those already suffering along with those most at risk."

He called for a new international agreement to address the scale and human cost of climate change. "The formal legal definition of refugees needs to be extended to include those affected by climate change and also internally displaced persons," he said.

The world, the ageing and the liability tag.

Whenever the world covers and discusses the ageing population segment, a kind of ‘liability tag’ is getting attached to it. This is not without solid reasons.

·         What in your view are the reasons for this apathy to the ageing population?

·         What can this population segment do to do away this tag?

Ageing is the constant, and it is for all. Still, the world now sees the ageing as a burden. This apathy is not without solid reasons, and this segment can do much to remove the liability tag once and for all. 40 words

The ultimate reason for this is the alarming disproportion of the people ageing. For example, demographic statistics say, by the year 2050, the world would have greater number of people above 60 years than those under sixteen. This is too alarming to be taken lightly when the world talks of them.  

This is followed by the ever-expanding world of the young. Today, their world is a level-playing field where opportunities galore and access to them is open for all. In such an opulent order, the world may describe the ageing with a tinge of liability. Finally, declining size of the family and the dwindling value systems make this worse for the ageing.   

Anyway, the things these people themselves can do to discard this tag, in my view, are three; accept, anticipate and engage. If the ageing can digest the fact that they have put in their best and it is the time of the young, the going would be smoother for both. Coming to anticipate, it is important for all to expect an evening in their life, and to make it free from dependence, they must save a little. And, finally, they must engage in some affordable and useful activities.

In short, the reasons for the ‘liability tag’ being attached to the ageing may be different in different parts of the world, but the three must do’s- accept, save and engage- would help them unclip this ugly tag. People must grow older gracefully.    

280 words, 6.8.15

Under-trials and jail term: how do you react to these?

Some say that if the jail term a convict is awarded is equal or less than the time s/he had spent behind bars between conviction and real trial, s/he should be freed right-way, while others say the court verdict is to be carried out as it is, no matter how much time one had been an under-trial – under-trial is a convict who awaits court hearing to prove his position, guilty or not guilty.

How do you react to these two views on under-trials and court verdict? .

Global population scenario. longer life.

The population above sixty-five years is expected to get doubled by the year 2030.

·         Try to see the long and short of this population scenario.

The world is witnessing remarkable rise in life expectancy and many demographic findings show that on an average a person is likely to live 15 years longer than usual.

·         How is this spurt in life going to influence the world; positively and negatively?

Media cover of terrorism Vs more terrorism

There is a saying that ‘violence breeds violence’. Therefore, some people say that media should stop covering violence like terrorist attacks and hostage dramas.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this view?

Media coverage of terrorism ‘leads to further violence’

Downloaded document

Violence, so the saying goes, begets violence. Now evidence is emerging that suggests even the reporting of violence can trigger further attacks. Research has found that sensationalist media coverage of acts of terrorism results in more such acts being committed.

The study will prompt further debate about how the international media responds to atrocities. It also raises the possibility that media reports about a terrorist act can be viewed as a “warning” that follow-on attacks will be perpetrated in the near future.

Michael Jetter, a professor at the School of Economics and Finance at Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, and a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn, Germany, analysed more than 60,000 terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2012 as reported in the New York Times. Jetter notes that over the past 15 years “the world has experienced a terrifying, exponential increase in the number of terrorist attacks”. The Global Terrorism Database listed 1,395 attacks in 1998, a figure that has steadily risen since then, reaching a record high of 8,441 in 2012.

The total number of casualties from terrorist attacks in the past 15 years has soared from 3,387 to 15,396. At the same time, terrorist groups have increasingly sought to use the media to promote their agendas. Graphic videos of beheadings filmed by Islamic State and released on the internet have turned the group into a globally feared brand. But they have also prompted anguished questions about how much such organisations should be given “the oxygen of publicity”.

“Terrorist organisations receive extensive media attention,” Jetter says. “Whether it is the Taliban, al-Qaida, Boko Haram or, recently, Isis, terrorism is everywhere on TV stations, newspapers and the radio. We also know that terrorists need media coverage to spread their message, create fear and recruit followers.

 “However, until now we did not know whether media attention actively encourages terrorist attacks. This paper derives an empirical methodology to provide an answer to that question.”

Jetter compared headline-grabbing terrorist attacks with those that occurred during a bigger story, such as a natural disaster, and found a clear link between the number of articles devoted to the initial terrorist incident and the number of follow-up attacks over the next few weeks.

The research builds on earlier work by other economists that suggests terrorism causes media attention and vice versa, leading to an inflationary spiral.

According to Jetter, one additional New York Times article about an attack in a particular country increased the number of ensuing attacks in the same country by between 11% and 15%. On average, he calculates that an additional NYTarticle appears to result in between one and two casualties from another terrorist attack within the next week.

Different types of terrorist activity were found to have different media impacts. Jetter’s paper, to be presented at the annual European Economic Association congress in Mannheim, Germany, later this month, found that suicide missions receive significantly more media coverage, which he believes could explain their increased popularity among terrorist groups.

He also found that less attention was devoted to attacks in countries farther away from the US. Significantly, Jetter concluded that the media attention devoted to a terrorist attack was predictive of both the “likelihood of another strike in the affected country within seven days’ time and of a reduced interval until the next attack”.

The findings raise the question of whether limiting the reporting of acts of terrorism would result in a decline in attacks. Jetter pointed out that 42 people die every day from terrorist attacks, compared with 7,123 children who die from hunger-related causes.

“What this article is suggesting is that we may need to rethink the sensationalist coverage of terrorism and stop providing terrorists a free media platform,” he said. “Media coverage of other events that are causing more harm in the world should not be neglected at the expense of media marathons discussing the cruelties of terrorists.”

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

There is a saying that ‘violence breeds violence’. Therefore, some people say that media should stop covering violence like terrorist attacks and hostage dramas.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this view?

Solved paper: Celebrity endorsement and wrong consumer behaviour

The world over, celebrities from various fields – film, sports, adventure, arts - are contracted to don ambassadors for promoting body-care products. Some people view that this promotion model is making wrong consumer behaviours.

Do you agree or disagree with this view?

In a global commercial order, appointing celebrities as product or brand ambassadors to win over the minds of buyers is rampant. This promotion practice, in my view also, is making wrong consumer tendencies.  Let me substantiate my position.

The funniest and strange thing about celebrity endorsement is that these fames hardly use the products they promote. Rather they simple utter a few words of virtue about a lotion, or soap or a cream in a flash of lights and sounds and music and go laughing all the way to their banks.

In the market where I am part of, supermarket racks are overflowing with products that are able to make all the dark-skinned, rash-faced girls into beaming epitomes of beauty and bag-like men and women into slim and smart fames. The sorry thing is that the consumers, who are carried away by their favourite stars and icons, keep on oiling and soaping and creaming their system throughout their life in vein.

Another point to be noted is the plum price tags of such products. They are so big because the manufacturers pay millions to their brand ambassadors and media campaign bills may amount to billions. Consumers happen to believe that the huge price is proportional to the quality attached and they shop and shop till they drop without having any idea on whether a particular product is of some use or harmful for them. This is not only wrong but dangerous as well. Celebrities promote this.

Therefore, the conclusion is that celebrity endorsements of body-care products are making wrong consumer tendencies. And, consumers? Most of them go under the foolish impression that their stars are so handsome and head-turning thanks to the products they promote. This is false and farce.

285 words 2.8.15

Celebrities and product promotion. agree or disagree

The world over, celebrities from various fields – film, sports, adventure, arts - are contracted to don ambassadors for promoting body-care products. Some people view that this promotion model is making wrong consumer behaviours.

Do you agree or disagree with this view?

Technology and eating and life making us poorer. discuss

Everything we do from technology to our eating habits and, ultimately, modern life itself are eroding our brains, and making us slower, denser and poorer of original thought.

Discuss

People staying away from home... ups and downs

Nowadays, more people live alone and away from home compared to past .It is undeniable fact that many factors which (the which here makes this part wrong. If you use which, here, you may sound that you are going to write something more about the factors with a relative pronoun which ) influence individuals to accept this situation and it would change the lives of such people.

It is well- known to all that, in this fast-moving world, people have are inclined to (not have inclination to) to find better opportunities in order to lead a quality life. For instance, people from developing nations migrate abroad (abroad has no to, you cannot say migrate to abroad)  in search of greener pastures. At times, individuals cannot take (take, not bring) their families with them. Consequently, they have to stay alone. Furthermore, education plays a tremendous role for this human condition. Sometimes, people do higher education for better career in foreign countries. Eventually, they would find new jobs and try to settle in host nations as well.

 In addition to that, many considerable changes would be happening in the life of a person who lives alone   and far away. First of all, individuals can have better standard of living and get many job opportunities. To cite an example, individuals get more chances to mingle with people from different countries when stay in foreign countries. Besides, they have to face many challenges in order to complete their studies or missions at a distant location.  As a result, people may become more responsible and accountable.

However, these human conditions may make some detrimental effects on people’s life such as psychological stress, depression, emotional imbalance, health problems and so on.

From the above mentioned points, it can be concluded that, in this fast-paced world, people have a tendency to stay away from home for better life. Even though (these new trend) this new trend would make many changes in the lives of an individual, sometimes, it will affect them negatively also. Therefore, people should be cautious when they choose such distanced lives.

Addicts and state funded support and benefits

Some people view that addiction to drugs, tobacco and alcohol, and at times, food-formed extreme obesity can have profoundly damaging impacts on people’s chances of taking up meaningful employment and such addicts are putting great pressure on the medical system of the State.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the opinion that such people need not be given governmental support and benefits?

The addition-generated infliction isso damaging that it keeps people invalid and debilitated.  They are a burden to any government in many ways. This fact notwithstanding, it is not fair to deny support instruments and benefits to them. I cannot agree with this view fully.

My position is this. Additions, whatever they are, even food-formed, are byproducts of the society. Basically, people basically are not addicts, but pick up these deadly habits by way of compulsions like poor living standards, frustration, failures, physiological urge to mention a few. Naturally, such people need support. That they are not doing any job or putting pressure on the medical system is not at all reasons strong enough to deprive them of any support they are entitled to get.

Let me substantiate it with an example from my place where great many people are addicts. They are very much sure that they are going to end up in great misery at the end of the day, but most of them are under the clutches of these substances and are actually in a “no U turn” condition where what they need is supports and benefits. Denial would aggravate their urge to go on addicted.

However, it is fair to put up a warning like denying employment for addicts, disqualifying addicts from taking up higher positions, and even denying entry into services if the applicants are found to be under substances. Here restricting state-funded welfare instruments may be fine.

In short, addiction is not a solid ground for denying state-funded allowances and supports. Rather there should be a system in places to salvage addicts, and stop the young ones off substances. So warning on denying employment or higher positions may work wonders.  

280 words.  

Addicts are putting great pressure on the system. can they be denied benefits?

Some people view that addiction to drugs, tobacco and alcohol, and at times, food-formed extreme obesity can have profoundly damaging impacts on people’s chances of taking up meaningful employment and such addicts are putting great pressure on the medical system of the State.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the opinion that such people need not be given governmental support and benefits?

Some say people should pay to get into museums. some say it be free...

We should pay to get into museums

Downloaded article..

In 1867, Mark Twain visited the Paris Exhibition, where he saw a marvelous automaton displayed by a jeweller called Harry Emanuel. Like all those lucky enough to clap eyes on this particular mechanical creature, Twain fell deeply under its spell, an experience he later recorded in his book The Innocents Abroad: “I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes; watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass rather than a jeweller’s shop; watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it.” Impossible to believe, from his description, that this enchanting routine lasted a mere 40 seconds – unless you happen to have seen it yourself.

I have seen it many times, for the Silver Swan resides, as he has done for more than half his long life, at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, County Durham, to which he was brought in 1872 by its passionate, generous and far-sighted founders, John Bowes, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Strathmore, and his wife, Joséphine Chevalier, Countess of Montalbo.

In the 21st century, still quite content on his stream of twisted glass rods, he dives every day at two o’clock in the afternoon. A door is opened. A handle is turned. Music box bells begin to chime. Having undergone a thorough restoration in 2008, his movement is as deft as it ever was, comically pernickety but also elegant, even a little raffish. He twists his head left and right, he preens himself, and then – the sudden glint of sunlight on polished metal – he dips his neck. How can something so swift be so unforgettable? Sometimes, the gathered crowd finds itself so astonished by his antics, it breaks into applause.

It costs an adult £10.50 to clap eyes on this wondrous bird. Does this sound a lot? I know that it does, for all that he nests among paintings by Canaletto, Goya and El Greco; that on the banks of his stream are priceless collections of porcelain, furniture and fabrics. But I also think that there is a chastening value in the inward wince a person may experience as they hand over their credit card in this, or any other, public treasure house. The totting up of pounds and pence cannot, and should not, be separated from what it is you are in reality paying for.

This isn’t just a way to eat up a rainy afternoon. It’s not even a means of bagging a place beside a clockwork toy as its keeper winds it up. You are buying the future, slapping a preservation order on the lovely and the magical. How much does this swan’s upkeep cost? Who looks after it and who pays their wages? Who, above all, will ensure it paddles on into another decade, even into another century? Whether you like it or not, the answer to the last question is: you.

In York, a great fuss has blown up. The city’s art gallery, which is about to reopen after an expensive redevelopment, is to charge visitors a £7.50 entrance fee. This step, it says, isn’t one it took “lightly or willingly”, and should be set in the context of a fall in the funding it receives from the council, a figure that has plummeted over the past three years from £1.5m to £600,000. Some of those who are fussing live in York and have a decent argument to make about the relative unfairness of charging residents and tourists alike the same sum.

Others live elsewhere and fear that their towns and cities will blindly follow suit. After all, local authority funding for museums and galleries has declined nationwide from about £310m in 2010 to £240m in 2014. Either way, people are upset.

On the York Press website, commentators railed at the York Museums Trust for its “dishonesty” and shortsightedness. They predicted, somewhat gleefully, that visitor numbers would now fall dramatically. One even likened its philistine attitude to art to that of the Nazi regime.

I can’t go along with all this. The last free gallery I visited that was new to me was the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke on Trent. As I walked around it, half swooning at its collections – not without reason did A N Wilson once describe it as the greatest museum in the world – two things occurred to me. The first was that, on this rainy weekday morning, I was one of only half-a-dozen people in its ceramics galleries; its entrance policy did not seem to be having much of a positive effect on its gate. The second was that I felt ashamed. Standing in front ofthe Minton peacock, a huge earthenware sculpture from 1873 that has come to rival the Silver Swan in my gallery-going affections, I felt badly that I’d shoved only a fiver into the donation bucket on my way in.

I work. I’m not in (much) debt. I believe, in a quite appallingly sentimental way, in art and all that it can do for people and places. I should pay up and well. In the high days of New Labour, when money seemed to grow on trees, I used to bang on about the “miracle” of its decision to scrap entrance fees at our national museums. But the word has different connotations for me now. The real miracle is that such madness has lasted this long.

It seems pretty rum to me that it is precisely the people who complain that London sucks all the money when it comes to arts funding who go nuts when their supposedly beloved local institutions attempt to redress the balance a little. People worry about exclusion or they say they do.

This is naive at best and disingenuous at worst. The truth is that, while visitor numbers to many museums have increased since 1997, their profile has changed not a jot. They remain, in large part, middle class, educated, in work. I don’t see why those people – people like me – shouldn’t help to subsidise the less well off, to fund not only the concessions that must be maintained for children, pensioners and students, but also – this is so much more important – to pay the salaries of those working hard to bring in new social groups: the curators, the youth workers, the people who run educational programmes.

If you like visiting galleries, and are lucky enough to be able to afford to do it on a regular basis, why not share the love? John and Josephine Bowes died before their splendid museum opened, but hundreds of people still feel their generosity every week. It falls on them like a blessing, in the flash of a silver bird’s wings.

Staying alone and away from home has become a reality for many of late.

What are the forces behind this human condition?
How beneficial is it in terms of social uplift?

Engaged parenting, fathers are as good as mothers. extent of agreement.

Some people say that more engaged fathers are as good as engaged mothers when it comes to real parenting.

·        To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion.

There is great substance in the opinion that an engaged father is in no way short of those qualities that are associated with an engaged mother in terms of parenting per se. I agree with the opinion to a greater extent, though mothers at times are at a little greater advantage than fathers.

Parenting as such is not cut more for mothers than for fathers, rather it is a job perfectly cut for both if they are engaged ones. Here we need to see who or what this engaged father or mother is. Such parent is one to shed his or gender tags and take up the job of caring, loving, sharing, showing, protecting and preserving to mention a few. Here the thrust is more the job than on the genre called father or mother.

Culturally, we are brought up under the impression that mothers are a special breed and fathers are another. As a matter of fact, both belong to the same breed when they come to have a couple of children to be made into real human beings. Let me prove it with an example. Today, a working mother is able to give parenting ways to a not-working father and a full-timer mother can give it to a part-timer father. And, at the end of the day what happens is called engaged parenting. Here an engaged father is as good as an engaged mother.

However, at times, mothers stand a better chance to be in the upside of parenting. This is mainly with regard to infants and maturing female children. So the bottom line is that both fathers and mothers, if engaged well, are equally smart in parenting. Mother may do a little more parenting, not different parenting as such.  

280 words.