Evanston, Illinois. June 26, 2009.

The London Wasps Academy Apprenticeship is a two year scheme for aspiring elite rugby players that combines player development and academic study.

An Apprenticeship provides every opportunity for aspiring elite rugby players 16-18 to reach their potential: a high level of rugby. It also takes account of and rigorously supports the need for continued progression towards other options: study or a different career. It is a means of meeting both sporting and academic aspirations.

The apprenticeship meets the needs of the Rugby Football Union:
Long Term Athlete Development 16-18 should be “Train to Compete” 15hrs a week. Traditional rugby schools “Train to Win” ethos is usually about the developing player preparing for the School 1st XV to win fixtures.

The apprenticeship meets the needs of London Wasps:
We would like to continue to develop our own players who will continue to further the reputation for excellence of London Wasps.

The club takes pride in the fact that the rugby element of the London Wasps apprenticeship is conducted by London Wasps professional staff at the 1st Team training facilities at the Senior Teams Training ground at Twyford Avenue, Acton.

Excerpted from ‘What is a London Wasps Apprenticeship?’ on the official site of the London Wasps, a professional rugby team from London that won the Heineken Cup in 2007.

San Diego, California. June 11, 2009.

Carnival’s VIP Check-in is an exclusive service designed to afford our Platinum guests (10th cruise or more qualifies), and those traveling in deluxe suite accommodations, with special registration privileges. This service is now available at all ports. If you are entitled to these exclusive services, please ask for our VIP Check-in immediately upon arriving at the cruise terminal.

Excerpted from the Frequently Asked Questions section of Carnival Cruise Lines.

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. June 20, 2009.

For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”

But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.

“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.

Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.

“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”

Excerpted from ‘Parental Lifelines, Frayed to Breaking,’ by Christine Haughney. Published June 9, 2009, in The New York Times.

New York, New York. November 3, 2007.

The Museum of Modern Art is New York’s permanent meeting place for the contemporary artistic energies of Europe and America. About a mile and a half uptown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art sedately displays its accumulated masterpieces of the past, but here, amid brownstone fronts and small sidewalk trees, the strikingly modern building of the Museum of Modern Art has become a symbol of those technical and imaginative innovations that have transformed the character of art during the past seventy years.

Before the establishment of the museum the more advanced forms of modern art had made their appearance in the famous “Armory Show of 1913, in Alfred Steiglitz’ “291 Fifth Avenue” and in exhibitions of the Société Anonyme. These showings, with occasional purchases, infrequent exhibitions, and such private collections as that of John Quinn, had given New Yorkers a hint of the strange aesthetic events taking place here and across the Atlantic.

Today the Museum of Modern Art sponsors the more important forms of aesthetic experiment. As a consequence New York has been treated for the first time in its history to the spectacle of long lines of people waiting on the street for a chance to look at paintings. The great Van Gogh exhibition of 1935 caused New York journalists suddenly to note that art can attract as many people as a prize fight.

Excerpted from New York City Guide: American Guide Series: A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis – Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Richmond – Prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration in New York City. Copyright 1939, Random House.

Ensenadas, Mexico. June 13, 2009.

On the 25th of November 2007 the largest flag with a total area of 18,843 m² (202,823.55 ft²) was unfurled at Masada Airfield, Israel organised by Sar-El Tours. The location was chosen very carefully - between two other record locations: the Dead Sea on the Israel-Jordan border (the lowest exposed body of water on Earth, at 400 m (1,312 ft) below sea level) and Masada, where, according to the historian Flavius Josephues (c.37-100), some 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide by cutting each others’ throats during a siege by the Romans in AD 73, thus resulting in the largest mass suicide of ancient times.

The flag was created at the initiative and financing of Sister Grace Galindez-Gupana, a Philippine business woman and ardent supporter of Israel, to honour 50 years of friendly relations between Israel and the Philippines after the idea was conceived 2.5 years ago. Sister Grace, who has been working for many years to promote tourism between the two countries, decided to make two flags of equal size – one each of Israel and the Philippines.

The flag, which weighs 5,200 kg (11,464 lb), was sown over the course of three months by six professional sewers, all under the direction of two designers, and requiring the help of 40 volunteers.

As reported by the Guinness Book of World Records on December 5, 2007.

The California Coast, Pacific Ocean. June 12, 2009.

DETROIT — It was said that the Detroit Red Wings could not lose Game 7 of a Stanley Cup final on home ice. They did.

That Marc-Andre Fleury could not be counted on to win big games. He has.

That these Penguins were not ready to be champions. They are.

They defeated the Red Wings, 2-1, in Game 7 at Joe Louis Arena last night to earn the third Stanley Cup in franchise history.

The driving forces behind the victory were forward Max Talbot, who scored both goals, and Fleury, who turned aside 23 of 24 shots and made a lunging game-, season- and Cup-saving stop on Nicklas Lidstrom with about a second to play.

Excerpted from ‘Penguins beat Red Wings, 2-1, in Stanley Cup thriller,’ by Dave Molinari. Published June 13, 2009, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

San Diego, California. July 10, 2009.

If I had a gun for every ace I have drawn / I could arm a town the size of Abilene. / Don’t you push me baby, ‘Cause I’m all alone / And you know I’m only in it for the gold.

All that I am asking is for ten gold dollars / And I could pay you back with one good hand. / You can look around about the wide world over / And you’ll never find another honest man.

Last fair deal in the country / Last fair deal in the town. / Put your gold dollars where your love is baby, / Before I let my deal go down.

Excerpted from the lyrics to ‘Loser’ as written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead, later covered by Cracker on their album Kerosene Hat.

Venice, Italy. March/April 2001.

299. Venetian gondola. Lent by A. T. Morgan, Esq., 1888. N. 1818.

The earlier gondolas has a light arched frame carrying a gaudily-coloured covering, open at each end, but in the 16th century an edict was issued rendering the use of black compulsory.

In 1645 Evelyn writes: – “Taking a gondola, which is the water-coach (for land ones there are many old men in this city who never saw one, or rarely a horse), we rowed up and down the channells, which answer to our streets. These vessels are built very long and narrow, having necks and tails of steele, somewhat spreading the beake like a fishe’s tail, and kept so exceedingly polish’d as to give great lustre; some are adorned with carving, others lined with velvet (commonly black) with curtains and tassells, and the seates like couches, to lie stretch’d on, while he who rows stands upright on the very edge of the boate, and with one oar bending forward as if he would fall into the sea, rows and turns with incredible dexterity. The beakes of these vessels are like the ancient Roman rostrums.”

This description applies to the gondolas at the present time, except that sometimes they are propelled by two men, one forward and one aft. Steam launches, often worked on our omnibus system, are, however, superseding these boats for general traffic in Venice.

The dimensions of this gondola, which is a rather large one, are: – Length, 36 ft.; breadth, 4.5 ft; depth, 1.5 ft. Length of house, 6.5 ft.; breadth, 3.75 ft.; height, 5 ft.

Excerpted from the Catalogue of the Naval and Marine Engineering Collection in the Science Division of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. With Descriptive and Historical Notes. Published by Wyman and Sons, 1899.

The Forbidden City, Beijing, China. September 7, 2007.

PARIS — There is a civil contract implied by photographs. An Israeli writer, Ariella Azoulay, published a book making that point. Henri Cartier-Bresson made it too. He described shooting pictures of people as a “sort of violation,” adding, “if sensitivity is lacking, there can be something barbaric about it.” There can be, of course, and not just when the subject doesn’t like the image.

We, viewing the pictures, are complicit. As consumers of images we bear witness through them. Or we’re voyeurs. In either case we complete a transaction that we instigated, in that a photograph is made hoping someone will look at it. It’s a message tossed into the ocean of time, and how we read that message, whether indifferently or with compassion, can have moral dimensions.

Excerpted from ‘When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Debates, Give or Take,’ by Michael Kimmelman. Published June 3, 2009, in The New York Times.

Cozumel, Mexico. July 26, 2008.

A breathing tube will let you swim or float effortlessly. Finding a dollar bill on the bottom of the Atlantic was as big a surprise as if I’d seen Wilbur Shaw pacing a tricycle race. It was in a tangle of seaweed 10 feet down in the clear water of Key West, Florida. I was snorkeling along, surface-diving occasionally to pick up a shell, when I saw it.

Why. Even when you don’t find sunken treasure, snorkeling is a lot of fun. More of these gadgets than ever are being used this summer. The purpose is not to make a submarine out of you, churning along with all but the tube tip submerged. Instead, the idea is to let you breathe normally while swimming or floating face down.

Exerpted from ‘What You Can Do with a Snorkel’ by Denis Sneigr. Appearing in Popular Science, July 1953.

Ellendale, Minnesota. September 25, 2008.

Q. (By Mr. Conger). How do your prices compare on the line of road you operate on in relation to distance from this market? Do you pay as much for the grain at the farthest point as you do at a nearer point? – A. No, not exactly; but the railroads in the tariff rates for a long distance will haul grain pretty close the local. The long haul is what you are after.

Q. Then you pay approximately as much for grain 1,000 miles as 300 miles from Chicago? – A. Yes. look at the fish industry at Fairhaven. We can ship fish from Puget Sound to Boston as the same rate as we can ship to Chicago. That is on account of these proportionate rates. Now, I have always complained about these proportionate rates, because I do not think they are right. You can start to-day a train of 50 carloads of grain; you can have in that 50-carload train 25 carloads destined to Chicago, and I will have 25 cars billed through; on the same train; identically the same service performed. When it gets to Chicago, you say, “Mr. Counselman, I wish you would clean that grain for me.” “All right,” I clean it. I put it out on the eastern train, and these other 25 cars come in and make up the eastern train of 50 cars. Twenty-five cars will pay, say, 38 cents on to New York; the other grain, that you had cleaned here, will pay a 40-cent rate. Now, they have performed identically the same service, but charge you the additional rate simply because you did not bill it through.

Excerpted from a testimony by Charles Counselman, a grain and stock merchant in Chicago, on November 17, 1899, as recorded in Report of the Industrial Commission on Transportation, Volume IV. Printed by the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1900.

Louisville, Kentucky. November 14, 2007.

Now, in our world, many many people are studying for better life in the future. There are two ways of doing this : studying at home and studying with a group. From my own experience, I prefer to the second choice, studying with a group.

Firstly, studying with a group, students can save time. If one has a mathematical problem, it may take him a lot of time to think about a solution for it, he may have to read several books, post to some forums in the internet and so on. But if he studies in a group, other student can give him some advice and suggestions and he can solve the problem quickly.

Secondly, students can gain better result. I would like to take an example of learning English. When one studies alone, reading books, listening to cassette tapes and speaking to himself are very boring and he may not get the expected result. It would be wonderful if he studies with other, they can practise speeking English, do some vocabulary quizes. I am sure that after a short time, his skills will be much better.

Morever, it will encourage students to study harder and harder because no one wants to be lagged behind. They always think that if the others can solve the problem, why they can not. So it is the great motivation for them to learn more. It is also a good experience for them in the future when they work, because the world now is more competive, people have to compete to gain success.

In conclusion, I think studying in a group is better for students. they can save time, get good results and are under pressure to work harder. They are very essential to a sucessful man in our harsh society.

Excerpted from a message board asking TOEFL question Topic 184: ‘Some students prefer to study alone. Others prefer to study with a group of students. Which do you prefer? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer,’ found on the Test Magic forums.

Key West, Florida. July 25, 2008.

NEW YORK — Piracy is an important issue and Carnival Corp. is working with the U.S. military and British Ministry of Defence to protect its passengers and crew from any attacks, the cruise ship operator told its shareholders Wednesday.

Concerns about piracy have increased since Somali pirates took an American freighter captain hostage off Africa’s eastern coast earlier this month.

“We take it extremely seriously,” Carnival’s Chief Operating Officer Howard Frank said in response to a question at Carnival’s annual meeting of shareholders. “We’d never put any passenger in jeopardy or crewmember.” …

In 2005, a cruise ship sailing under Carnival’s luxury Seabourn brand — which operates cruises to destinations in Africa and the Middle East — was attacked by armed pirates off the Somali coast.

The captain evaded the attack and none of the ship’s 151 passengers was hurt, although one member of the 161-person crew was injured.

Excerpted from ‘Carnival cruise line takes piracy ‘extremely seriously,” by Kristen A. Lee. Appeared on April 15, 2009, in the USA Today.

Tijuana, Mexico. August 15, 2006.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — This Mexican border city is planning a fashion makeover for its throngs of street vendors by giving them an ultimatum: Wear brightly colored, traditional garb or leave.

The new dress code initially took effect June 25 in a popular pedestrian mall in time for the busy Fourth of July weekend — although most vendors ignored it and wore jeans and sweat-jackets.

But it will gradually be extended to other streets, including Avenida Revolucion — the bustling main tourist drag where one vendor donned a giant sombrero with the words “Mr. Viagra” written on it. He beckoned tourists to be photographed for $5 in a donkey cart.

The new decree, ordered by flamboyant Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, is designed to showcase the city’s melting pot of Mexican cultures to the outside world. He said the fashion mandate will allow visitors to “feel Mexico.” Those who disobey will be given two warnings and then forced to leave the area where the dress code applies.

The dresses “are very nice, very clean, very colorful, very happy-looking,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday in his City Hall office, which he shares with a caged parakeet, a parrot and a python in a glass tank.

Excerpted from ‘Tijuana orders fashion makeover for street vendors,’ published July 4, 2005, in the USA Today.