Competition in the Olympics should be between athletes who use their own strength or speed. If some athletes don’t follow the rules, it ruins the fun for everyone connected with the game. It also gives an extremely unfair advantage to the athlete using the drug.

———Jim from Atlanta

Drug use among top athletes has long been a problem. Without drug testing, the Olympics would be about who uses the most drugs, not who trains the hardest and has the most athletic skills. Also drugs hurt people and they could even kill people.

———David from Houston

Why should athletes be allowed to compete when it’s not really them who are actually competing? It’s the drugs that do all the work. Athletes who use drugs are like runners with skates. It’s cheating and irresponsible, which must be strictly forbidden. It’s unfair to other competitors who don’t use drugs.

———Bruce from Chicago

Most sports athletes are held to a standard of being drug free. Olympians should not be held any differently. They take part in highly competitive sports for their country and win medals for it. Testing the athletes for drugs must be done in every country and every sport. No drug testing would be unfair to people who don’t use drugs.

———Sam from Los Angeles

Although popular opinion is against athletes’ using drugs, I believe they do help make the Olympic sports more wonderful. I enjoy seeing human beings achieving things that couldn’t be done with normal conditioning. I enjoy seeing stronger, faster and longer performances by make good use of drugs.

———Jack from New York

We often hear about schools cutting back on bus routes to save money, yet plenty of communities have their buses stopping almost as often as the mail truck. While the presence of sidewalks, and the safety of area roads, play a role in who gets house-to-house pickup or end-of-the-street pickup, Peter Mannella, director at the New York Association for Pupil Transportation says community culture can play an even larger role in the transportation situation.

For example: Several years ago, Bethlehem tried spacing out its stops, says Mannella. The parents were unhappy, expressed as much and, within three days, the routes were back to their original frequency. “You can say ‘We are going to save $100,000 by not stopping at every house,’ but parents don’t want their kids walking,” Mannella says. As you’d expect, this is especially true in bad weather or during winter.

As a student in the 1980s, we walked to our stops. The neighborhood wait-spot was a good quarter mile away. Parents didn’t make a fuss (大惊小怪), and no child was injured. In fact, the walking was good — it woke us up each morning. Not to mention, the sense of community that came with hanging out together each morning waiting for bus No. 23 to roll up and take us all to school.

Thing is, a lot has changed since the 1980s. Too many people are texting and driving, making them as dangerous on the roads as drunken drivers. And, with reduced work forces at many companies, parents often work longer hours, meaning they aren’t around to guard their kids to and from stops like many parents did when we were growing up.

So I’ll give them an understanding pass on not wanting their children to walk a mile each way to get to and from school. I can’t agree with the complaints of having kids walk to a community neighborhood stop, though. If you worry they’re going to be cold, get them a hat. If you fear they may miss the bus, send them out the door five minutes earlier.

The most important lessons in life that we need to learn are the results of our poor decisions. Although time and experience are the best teachers, we also suffer from experiences such as our sacrifices, suffering and the hardships. Good judgment develops only when we truly learn from our mistakes. However, many people keep repeating the same mistakes before learning their lessons because as they say, they are just humans who tend to make mistakes.

Our weaknesses in life can be turned into our strengths if we immediately acknowledge and recognize the fact that we mess up and learn from them. Our good or bad experiences help us learn better judgment in life. Yet, too many people are in denial and place the blame on others without realizing that the minute they take responsibility for their action is when the learning process begins. Aside from learning from our own experience, we can also learn valuable lessons from the experience of others. It allows us to observe our behavior from another angle.When we recognize our mistakes and prevent them from happening again, we are, therefore, learning.

Quickly identifying our mistakes and changing behavior accordingly requires less time and energy than denying mistakes. However, acknowledgement of mistakes requires belief in the idea that the perfection is not possible.

It is easier to analyze our mistakes especially when we talk to others, which can help people to sort out comments or criticisms after a mistake is made. Despite our tendency to avoid mistakes, timely acknowledgement is one of the best ways to prevent them from repeating.