A serious problem for today's society is who should be responsible for our elderly and how to improve their lives. It is not only a financial problem but also a question of the system we want for our society. I would like to suggest several possible solutions to this problem.

    First, employers should take the responsibility for their retired employees. To make this possible, a percentage of profits should be set aside for this purpose. But when a company must take life-long responsibility for its employees, it may suffer from a commercial disadvantage due to higher employee costs.

    Another way of solving the problem is to return the responsibility to the individual. This means each person must save during his working years to pay for his years of retirement. This does not seem a very fair model since some people have enough trouble paying for their daily life without trying to earn extra to cover their retirement years. This means the government might have to step in to care for the poor.

    In addition, the government could take responsibility for the care of the elderly. This could be financed through government taxes to increase the level of pensions. Furthermore, some institutions should be created for senior citizens, which can help provide a comfortable life for them. Unfortunately, as the present situation in our country shows, this is not a truly viable answer. The government can seldom afford to care for the elderly, particularly when it is busy trying to care for the young.

    One further solution is that the government or social organizations establish some working places especially for the elderly where they are independent.

    To sum up, all these options have advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that some combination of these options may be needed to provide the care we hope to give to our elderly generations.

    Trees are useful to man in three important ways: they give him wood and other useful things, they give him cool places, and they help to stop drought and flood.

    Unluckily, in many parts of the world, man has not found that the third of these points is the most important. Man wants to make money from trees, so he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had. And also, he is usually too careless to plant and look after new trees. So the forests slowly disappear.

    This does not only mean that man will have fewer trees. The results are even worse: for where there are trees, their roots break up soil-make the rain in-and also bind the soil, thus stopping it from being washed away easily; but where there are no trees, the rain falls on hard ground and flows away, causing floods and carrying away the rich top-soil. When all the top-soil is gone, nothing is left but useless desert.

    In the future we might live somewhere other than Earth, like Mars. Some people ask how this will be possible. Well, Mars is in fact a lot the same as the earth. The days are almost the same as those on the earth. However, the two planets vary in temperature.

    Since there is mostly carbon dioxide on Mars, it would be quite difficult for a human to just land on it. So, special types of homes and space suits have to be designed. The space suits should be almost like the ones astronauts use now, and except that they have to be warmer so that the astronauts can survive the cold temperatures. The space suits must also be able to withstand (承受) high pressure and potentially dangerous radiation that can kill.

    The houses should be similar to our homes today with a slight difference. All of the houses and other buildings should be built inside a large dome (圆顶状物) or bubble. The domes should be made out of glass, and would also be able to prevent radiation from affecting the people inside. The domes will be connected to a machine (like plants which turn carbon dioxide into oxygen).

    With Mars' population growing, how would the people on its surface get fresh food and water? Just like humans use domes, they can also use domes to grow plants. However, the domes where the plants are grown must be built to expand. Once we upgrade the domes to a larger size then we can grow more food by cultivating (种植) more plants. To get the food or come in connect with other domes, there will be long narrow tunnels like roads that connect to each dome separating them by several doors so that the pressure in each dome can remain the same.

    On Mars, so many other things are available to us. As humans, we can have access to rare and fairly expensive metals that aren't very easy to get hold of on Earth, and a colony on Mars enhances (提高) our chances of finding these metals. So when someone here on Earth says that going to Mars is impossible, please tell them that they'll never know it until they try and they may try very soon. After all it's our future. Why not make it on Mars?

    It began as a game: High school and college students studying computer technology figured out they could use personal computers to break into telephone company computers and make free, long-distance telephone calls. These young computer talents soon gained the name "hackers".

    Police arrested a few hackers, but many went on to even more complex hacking. One of them was arrested for making illegal telephone calls and later he used a phone to change a police officer's credit records to get back at the officer for arresting him. He also used a computer to change his college records to give himself better grades.

    As hackers gained experience, they began invading computers at banks, airlines and other businesses. In one case a hacker instructed an airline's computer to give him free airplane tickets.

    The U.S. government is worried that hackers may break into its networks of defense computers. The government's secrets are easily attacked because thousands of government computers are connected by telephone lines that hackers can get into.

    In November 1988, a college student entered a U.S. Defense Department computer network called Arpanet. The hacker injected a computer program that made copies of itself throughout Arpanet. Some hackers use viruses to destroy all the data in a computer. But in this case, government officials shut down the network before the program reached every computer in the system. Shutting down the system angered many researchers who were using the computers. The hacker turned himself in to the police and he was charged with a crime.

    The incident put the spotlight on computer hacking in the United States. Many companies have hired experts to protect their computers from hackers, and many computer experts now advise companies on how to protect their computers.

    The U.S. government believes foreign governments have hired hackers to try to break into top-secret defense computers.

    Experts disagree over whether a computer network can ever be safe from hacking. But in the future, some of the most outstanding minds in the U.S. will be working to frustrate the attempts of computer hackers.

English Language Courses at ELC Los Angeles

At the English Language Center (ELC) Los Angeles you will find a variety of English courses and programs that meet the highest academic standards of any English language school in the United States. Through its 40 years of teaching students at all levels from all over the world, ELC has developed teaching and training techniques and programs that really work for everyone.

ENGLISH COURSES OFFERED AT ELC LOS ANGELES

● GENERAL ENGLISH COURSES

Intensive English Course

Semi-intensive Course

Individual Intensive Course

● TEST PREPARATION COURSES

Cambridge Preparation Course

TOEFL Preparation Course

● BUSINESS ENGLISH COURSE

Individual Executive Business English Course

ENGLISH CLASSES LOS ANGELES FACT FILE

● Length of lesson: 50 minutes

● Number of levels: 12

● Average number of students per class: 8-9

Maximum number of students per class: 10 (14 during July and August only)

ADDITIONAL SERVICES AT ELC LOS ANGELES

The ELC Los Angeles staff is eager to assist international students in achieving their long-term learning goals. ELC offers the following support services to ensure each student's time at ELC is enjoyable, effective and worry-free:

● Student Visa

ELC has been approved by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)to issue the SEVIS Form I-20. Students enrolling in a minimum 24-lesson-per-week course are eligible (有资格的) to receive an I-20 form in order to apply for an F-1 student visa in their country.

● English Level Evaluation with Multi-level- Placement

Each student benefits from our English level evaluation with multi-level placement. Our method means students usually have different teachers for different levels and ensures that students study English in the learning environment that is best for them.

● University Admission Services

ELC is pleased to offer free counseling and university placement services to all ELC students interested in continuing their education at an American college or university in California and around the United States.