conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled Gondola about div>&#147;A, News</I></B></div with the genre: Arts & Photography, Music.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <div>&#147;A delightful look at the gondola as cultural icon, marvel of construction and object of romance and mystery.&#8221;<B>&#151;<I>Opera News</I></B></div>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Gondola
  And what more popolare than the lament of the young woman who discovers that the heart of the man she loves is already full to over flowing? Cecilia Bartoli, special guest artist, unites the world of opera and barcarole and shows the special beauty of both.
  Though the gondola is the boat most intimately associated with the city of Venice, many other boats ply the waters of La Serenissima. Some of them – the sàndolo, the caorlìna, the peòta – are propelled, as is the gondola, by oars. Others, the large transport boats that bring in the mineral water and washing machines, have motors, as do the ACTV vaporetti that take residents and tourists on long-established routes around the city. All of these boats, even the enormous – at least by normal Venetian standards – vaporetti serve the needs of the residents by moving them around their city and bringing to them the things that are nowadays necessary for the running of their lives. In 2002, the city of Venice reported that public transport made up less than 9% of the water traffic in the historic center of the city. By 2006-7, that number had grown to 13%. During the same years, the transport of merchandise went from 24.5% to 28%.
  But. But. But there are now other boats to be seen in the city. Like some of the others, they are propelled by motors: unlike most of the others, they in no way serve the needs of the majority of the citizens of the city. These are the multi-decked cruise ships which – like the ravaging tribes that a thousand years ago drove the inhabitants of the area to flee in terror from their invasion – have come to Venice to endanger the lives of the natives and lay waste the city, though this time they do it with music playing from their decks.
  In the face of the original invasion of the Huns and Lombards, brave Venetian leaders led their fellows to seek shelter from the approaching enemy in the marshes not far from the mainland and subsequently radiated out from the city they built in the midst of the pristine waters of the laguna to fight their way to the creation of an empire. The men who rule the city today, however, demonstrate significantly less far-sightedness in the face of an insidious invasion which puts the city at risk.
  Caesar tells us that all Gaul is divided into three parts. Common sense tells us that all Venice is divided into two: those who are in favor of the cruise ships and those who hate them. In favor are those who stand to profit from the arrival of an extra few million tourists each year: everyone else in the city falls into the second category.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There is little scientific doubt about the correlation between air pollution and lung cancer: the WHO has calculated just how much particulate matter in the air will cause mortality to increase, and by what percentage. Further, they have published a study reporting that, until now, the link between diesel fuel and lung cancer has been underestimated. Even the Chinese are worried, for God's sake. Venetians, however, need not concern themselves with such things because the health service of Venice has not rendered the relevant statistical studies of mortality public since 2002, when it projected numbers of deaths up until 2009. That report, however, suggested that Venice is the Italian city with the highest incidence of lung cancer. Though there is no proof that the cruise ships are the cause, there is no proof that they are not.
  Once the ships clear their moorings and move out to the open waters of the Adriatic, they are subject to the muddle of laws regarding what can and cannot be dumped into the waters in which cruise ships sail or burned and let free in the air around them. They are meant to control the dumping of substances such as dry cleaning fluids, paint, solvents, heavy metals, batteries, to make no mention of human waste. Some laws exist, as well, about what can and what cannot be burned, and where, in the incinerators of cruise ships, yet one researcher states that cruise ships incinerate hazardous waste, oil, oily sludge, sewage sludge, medical and bio-hazardous waste, outdated pharmaceuticals, as well as plastics, paper, metal, and glass.
  In return for this damage, the 58,000 residents of the city are offered the promise of economic reward: the Port Authority will earn more docking fees, and shops in a city that already suffocates under the presence of millions of tourists will have a few million more. Passengers on cruise ships sleep and can eat on their boats, so hotels and restaurants are unlikely to share in the spoils.
  Citizens and residents protest, organize committees, sign petitions, stand at the side of the Canale della Giudecca and hold up signs telling the tourists their cruise ships are not wanted. The local government gives a benign smile, and more and more cruise ships receive permission to sail past, dwarfing the cupolas of the Basilica. One looks out into the Bacino or into the even more narrow waters of the Canale della Giudecca, and the ghost image of the Costa Concordia, still lying like a dead whale in the waters off the Isola del Giglio, flashes into memory, as does the claim of an employee of the White Star Line's Titanic that "not even God himself could sink this ship." The happy tourists on the decks wave back at the friendly natives, and all of those hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of displaced water continue to slide across to the rivas on both sides of the canal to give the city the Kiss of Death.
  Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal): 'The Mouth of the Grand Canal looking West towards the Carità', c. 1729/30 (detail)
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Further, they have published a study reporting that, until now, the link between diesel fuel and lung cancer has been underestimated. Even the Chinese are worried, for God's sake. Venetians, however, need not concern themselves with such things because the health service of Venice has not rendered the relevant statistical studies of mortality public since 2002, when it projected numbers of deaths up until 2009. That report, however, suggested that Venice is the Italian city with the highest incidence of lung cancer. Though there is no proof that the cruise ships are the cause, there is no proof that they are not.
  Once the ships clear their moorings and move out to the open waters of the Adriatic, they are subject to the muddle of laws regarding what can and cannot be dumped into the waters in which cruise ships sail or burned and let free in the air around them. They are meant to control the dumping of substances such as dry cleaning fluids, paint, solvents, heavy metals, batteries, to make no mention of human waste. Some laws exist, as well, about what can and what cannot be burned, and where, in the incinerators of cruise ships, yet one researcher states that cruise ships incinerate hazardous waste, oil, oily sludge, sewage sludge, medical and bio-hazardous waste, outdated pharmaceuticals, as well as plastics, paper, metal, and glass.
  In return for this damage, the 58,000 residents of the city are offered the promise of economic reward: the Port Authority will earn more docking fees, and shops in a city that already suffocates under the presence of millions of tourists will have a few million more. Passengers on cruise ships sleep and can eat on their boats, so hotels and restaurants are unlikely to share in the spoils.
  Citizens and residents protest, organize committees, sign petitions, stand at the side of the Canale della Giudecca and hold up signs telling the tourists their cruise ships are not wanted. The local government gives a benign smile, and more and more cruise ships receive permission to sail past, dwarfing the cupolas of the Basilica. One looks out into the Bacino or into the even more narrow waters of the Canale della Giudecca, and the ghost image of the Costa Concordia, still lying like a dead whale in the waters off the Isola del Giglio, flashes into memory, as does the claim of an employee of the White Star Line's Titanic that "not even God himself could sink this ship." The happy tourists on the decks wave back at the friendly natives, and all of those hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of displaced water continue to slide across to the rivas on both sides of the canal to give the city the Kiss of Death.
  Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal): 'The Mouth of the Grand Canal looking West towards the Carità', c. 1729/30 (detail)
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Galleria Estense, Modena. Inv. 2937. Courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Archivio Fotografico della SBSAE di Modena e Reggio Emilia
  Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal): 'The Molo, looking West with the Dogana and Santa Maria della Salute', Venice, c. 1730
  Tatton Park, Cheshire, National Trust, UK. Photo: Copyright © Leemage/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
  Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal): 'Saint Mark's Square from the Basilica towards the Church of San Geminiano and the Procuratie Nuove', Venice, c. 1735 (detail)