The applicants must submit letters of recommendation and a personal essay and go through two rounds of interviews with the program's youth leaders.

CNN: Troubled youth kicking it 'old skool' at San Fran bistro

They must have a cover page indicating the category (children or youth), the title of the essay, the name of the participant and their personal information (mailing address, phone number, e-mail address, nationality, age as of June 2010, sex, school name (if any) and word count).

UNESCO: THEMES

Informative articles in the latest issue include a list of 12 exercises that can do more harm than good and a personal essay from a woman training for the London Marathon.

CNN: Site Seer: Get fit on the Net

The story goes back, in fact, to Hemingway's personal experience, which he described in an essay called On the Blue Water, published in Esquire in April 1936, when in fact he did catch a huge marlin and on the way home is attacked by sharks.

NPR: The Enduring Depths of 'Old Man and the Sea'

In an essay on his personal site that's been circulating the interwebs, Marc Deslauriers outlines the pangs he and the Linux community have felt over the years trying to use iPods on the open source platform, surmising that Apple is intentionally and repeatedly seeking ways to block non-iTunes programs from syncing in any way with its devices.

ENGADGET: Palm complains about Apple to USB governing body, while Pre / iTunes sync "fix" is explained

By contrast, virtually every work in "The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth Century China" warrants its own essay on the composition's literary or political allusions, the lineage of its brushwork, and the personal and historical context in which the painter dipped brush into ink.

WSJ: Paths Easy and Daunting | Ming Masterpieces | Artful Recluse | Lacma | Asia Society | By Lee Lawrence