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+\documentclass{article}
+\usepackage{parskip}
+\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.5}
+\pagestyle{myheadings} \markright{Exercises}
+\pagenumbering{Roman}
+\begin{document}
+CAN VENICE BE SAVED?
+
+Water and Venice have always a complicated relationship.
+The world's most famously wet city is also one of its most
+famously endangered ones, forever being flooded by its
+signature canals. Even since the 14th century, Italian
+engineers have dreamed of ways to control the water. Now
+a solution may be at hand: the Moses project, a vast series
+of sea gates that may finally the sodden city dry.
+
+The need for Venetian water control has never been greater.
+Especially high tides have caused major floods 10 times in
+the past 67 years alone, most diastrously in 1966 when the
+water in parts of the city climbed to more than 1.83 m.
+Compression of sediment under the city, along with rising sea
+levels, often causes smaller floods, shutting down businesses
+and making sidewalks and squares impossible.
+
+The source of the problem is geography. Venice is primarily a
+small cluster of interlocked islands set in the northern end of
+a 536-sq.-km lagoon. A long ridge of land seperates the lagoon
+from the far larger Gulf of Venice except at three major inlets.
+These openings allow high gulf tides to become high Venetian tides,
+with the water sometimes climbing far enough to swamp the city's
+seawalls.
+
+In 1984 a commission composed of Italy's 50 largest engeneering and
+construction firms was formed to find a way to control the water
+flow through the inlets, and Moses is it. Moses, an acronym for the
+plan's technical name as well as a lyrical reference to the parting of
+the Red Sea, calls for 78 hollow sea gates---each up to 5 m thick, 20 m
+wide and 27.5 m long---to be hinged to foundations, or caissons, in the
+seabed and to lie flat there. The gates would usually be filled with
+water, but when tides rises to a height of 1 m or more, compressse air
+would pump the water out. The free end of the gates would then float
+upwards, breaking the surface after about 30 minutes and sealing off
+the inlets. Sea locks would permit permit ships to pass while the gates
+are up.
+
+The project---which would take as long as ten years and cost at least
+\$2.7 billion---could still run into obstacles, especially given the
+fickle nature of Italian politics. Concerned that gates would be raised
+so frequently and remain there so long that they would cause water in the
+lagoon to grow stagnant, Greens are making that argument in an
+environmental-impact review that could delay or even scuttle construction.
+Even so, this is the closest Venice has come to a permanent solution to
+its water problems in 700 years. By local bureaucratic standards, that's
+not too bad.
+
+%---By Jeffrey Kluger. Reported by Jeff Israely/Rome---Time, June 2, 2003
+
+\bigskip
+ADDITIONAL INFORMATION TO THE GATES.
+
+The gates are made of steel covered with a resistant coating to prevent
+building of algae and crustaceans. Every five years they're are scheduled
+for removal and cleaning.
+
+The 78 hollow sea gates are filled with water most of the time and remain
+out of sight in a foundation or cassion. During especially high tides,
+compressed air flushes out the seawater. Within 30 min.\ the gates rise
+to the surface and block the inlets. When the danger passes, water is
+admitted back into the gates, causing them to sink within 15 min.
+
+\bigskip
+PREFACE TO THE \LaTeX-GUIDE
+
+\medskip
+A new edition to ``A Guide to \LaTeX'' begs the fundamental question:
+Has \LaTeX\ changed so much since the appearance of the third edition in 1999
+that a new release of this manual is justified?
+
+The simple answer to that question is `Well \dots.' In 1994, the \LaTeX\
+world was in upheaval with the issue of the new version \LaTeXe, and the
+second edition of the `Guide' came out just then to act as the bridge
+between the old and new versions. By 1998, the initial teething problems had
+been worked out and corrected through semi-annual releases, and the third
+edition could describe an established, working system. However, homage was
+still paid to the older 2.09 version since many users still employed its
+familiar syntax, although they were most likely to be using it in a \LaTeXe\
+environment. \LaTeX\ has now reached a degree of stability that since 2000
+the regular updates have been reduced to annual events, which often appear
+months after the nominal date, something that does not worry anyone. The old
+version 2.09 is obsolete and should no longer play any role in such a manual.
+In this fourth edition, it is reduced to an appendix just to document its
+syntax and usage.
+
+But if \LaTeX\ itself has not changed substantially since 1999, many of its
+peripherals have. The rise of programs like `pdf\TeX' and `dvipdfm' for
+PDF output adds new possibilities, which are realized, not in \LaTeX\
+directly, but by means of more modern `packages' to extend the basic
+features. The distribution of \TeX/\LaTeX\ installations has changed, such
+that most users are given a complete, ready-to-run setup, with all the
+`extras' that one used to have to obtain oneself. Those extras include
+user-contributed packages, many of which are now considered indispensable.
+Today `the \LaTeX\ system' includes much more than the basic kernel by Leslie
+Lamport, encompassing the contributions of hundreds of other people. This
+edition reflects this increase in breadth.
+\end{document}