Cosmetic surgery (整容手术) is not something to be entered into lightly. Unfortunately, in this modern world, we have become confused by very narrow standards of beauty. Images of celebrities who never seem to age are seen everywhere these days. We forget the fact that most of these images are the result of super photo manipulation (处理), driven by the incredibly powerful beauty industry. We are all different — why should we all look the same? Isn’t there more to life than undergoing surgery in order to have the same boring face that everybody else wants to have?

—Dr Elisabeth McKenna, Psychologist

Yes, it’s fake! That’s what I told my friends when they started asking me about my nose job. I’d always been sensitive to my nose, but it took me a long time before I decided to go for cosmetic surgery. I took advice from several doctors and after careful consultation I finally decided to have it done. I had been saving money from my part-time job and my parents helped me out with the rest. It was quite expensive but I don’t regret a penny of it. In fact I wish I’d had it done a few years ago. I’ m sure I wouldn’t have been teased so much at school.

—Debbie Caron, Student

It makes me really angry to think of the millions of people who spend a fortune on cosmetic surgery. Surgery should be carried out for medical purposes, not vanity (虚荣心). I would rather all the money spent on cosmetic surgery was available to treat people around the world who are in need but can’t get proper medical treatment. Furthermore, there are thousands of under-qualified surgeons out there who only care about getting as rich as possible and as quickly as possible. They don’t care about the psychological and physical damage they do. The whole industry makes me sick. We should do something to ban it.

—Danny Glass, Student

The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping — where you hand over notes and count out change in return — now happens only in the most minor of our retail (零售的) encounters, like buying a bar of chocolate or a bottle of milk, from a comer shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail store — Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance — you don’t go and stand at any kind of cash register. When you decide to pay, the staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa, which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money.

But across society, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned. But earning money isn’t quick or easy for most of us. Isn’t it a bit weird that spending it should happen in half a blink of an eye? Doesn’t a wallet — that time-honoured Friday-night feeling of pleasing, promising fatness — represent something that maters?

But I’ll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment. Everything about the look and feel of a wallet — the way the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets — is the very opposite of what our world is becoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smart phone or an iPad. The rounded edges, cool glass, smooth and unknowable as a pebble (鹏卵石). Instead of digging through pieces of paper and peering into comers, we move our fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show your wallet, if you still have one. It may not be here much longer.

In its reaction to reports that its Kindle business is exiting the Chinese mainland market, Amazon said customers can still buy Kindle devices through online and offline, while some of its devices have been sold out in the mainland.

No one knows whether customers bought all its products or the company produced too few, leading to the sellout, but it is obvious that Kindle has shut down several online sales channels, forcing many in China to put their Kindles up for sale.

On the other hand, Data shows the number of digital readers was higher than before. The total market value of the digital reading industry grows 21.8 percent over that in 2019.

The reason for the industry’s growth even as Kindle drops is the Smartphone existing everywhere. When it can meet most daily needs, why would one want a Kindle device? In fact, all electronic devices that specialize in single functions are fading out, be it Kindle, MP3 or MP4 players. Even tablets account for only one-tenth of mobile devices sales because one cannot use one to make a phone call.

Besides, Kindle itself has problems. The electronic books that can be bought are expensive, while Kindle Unlimited, a program that allows customers to read any number of eBooks for a monthly subscription (订阅) fee, seldom includes new titles.

In a nutshell, while electronic reading is a booming (繁荣的) market, the market for electronic reading devices is shrinking. That’s why many jokes that the only function left for a Kindle device is to act as a cover for a steaming cup of instant noodles.

Of course, Kindle offers some very good professional resources for scholars, while also allowing users to install an electronic dictionary to let them read in different languages. That’s why many users are saddened and hope Kindle does not disappear forever. Maybe Kindle can find a way to reinvent itself and continue serving its customers.