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I'd love to see the logo be an image of Fidel dressed-up as a penguin.

I'm pretty sure the guy has a sense of humor. When I was a kid, I was a "shortwave listener" (before I got my ham license) and sent of to Radio Havana (among others) for a "QSL" card, confirming that I had heard their station.

Besides the card, I got other periodic mailings, including a Christmxxxx New Year card one year, bearing the cartoon likeness of Fidel Castro, laid-out on the dining-room table as a pig, complete with an apple in his mouth. I kid you not. I'll bet he had a big laugh.

Yeah, good old Castro.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y07/sep07/28e2.htm

Berks County, PA - Fidel Castro's daughter has a sense of humor.

Addressing a virtually full house Tuesday night in the Perkins Student Center Auditorium at Penn State Berks, Alina Fernandez Revuelta entertained and informed the audience with humorous stories and facts about her Cuban homeland.

She also spoke of Castro, whom she described as a tall, hairy man wreathed in cigar smoke and dressed in green fatigues who visited the home where she lived with her mother, Nati Revuelta.

Fernandez described her mother as striking: tan and blonde, "with a voluptuous criolla figure like a Coca Cola bottle."

Nati married Orlando Fernandez, a doctor who had operated on her ruptured appendix and fell in love with her, Fernandez said.

They had one child, Fernandez's older sister, but then Fulgencio Batista overthrew the government.

The struggle against Batista brought together Nati and Fidel Castro, then an opposition candidate.

Nati and Fidel wrote to each other when he was imprisoned, Fernandez said, and she believes it was through those letters that they fell in love.

Fernandez told of watching cartoons on television one day in 1959, when she was 3 years old. Suddenly the images showed triumphant men marching through the streets.

"The cartoons were replaced by hairy men - for 50 years," she said.

Shouts of "Viva Cuba libre!" (Long live free Cuba!) were soon replaced by shouts of "Paredon!" (To the wall!), as the revolution ensured its permanence by brutally annihilating the opposition, Fernandez said.

Orlando had to abandon the country, taking his daughter with him, because his clinic was an example of free enterprise. Street vendors were prohibited for the same reason.

"They even took out the parking meters," she said. "Well, maybe that was a good thing."

At age 10, she learned who her biological father was.

At first she enjoyed the freedom from having to write essays at school about her counterrevolutionary father and older sister, but then people started bringing petitions to her, hoping to catch Castro's ear.

But for all its rhetoric, the regime could never answer her questions about social issues.

Discontented, Fernandez studied medicine and later diplomacy but did not finish her degrees.

She became a model and later a public-relations director for a Cuban fashion company.

She also became a dissident.

Friends in the United States sent her enough money to engineer her escape to Madrid, disguised as a Spanish tourist, in December 1993.

Two weeks later her teenage daughter was allowed to leave.

Does she miss anything from Cuba?

"I miss the dancing," she said, describing how a record player and a place to dance were all the entertainment people needed.

Would she go back to a post-Castro Cuba?

"It's not a place I want to go back to," she said, "but maybe, if I could feel useful."

Yep, Google did evil in China...but that's a totally different discussion.

No, it's part of my point. Left-wingers act "bravely" when attacking entities that are extremely unlikely to do them harm (ie, the American federal government or America in general) and are sychophantic with entities that wouldn't think twice about murdering anyone who gets in their way (the terrorist-sponsoring, nuclear-bomb-building Iranian theocracy, Islamic terrorists in general, Castro's librarian-jailing dictatorship, the ChiCom dictatorship and its laogai but to a lesser extent now that their economics are going capitalist, the Soviets back in the day, etc).

The irony is that if we right-wingers really were the bastards the Left makes us out to be we wouldn't have to listen to so much whining. If Rumsfeld really were a mass murderer, maybe trustafarians would wear trendy T-shirts glorifying him instead of Che.

So Google "stands up" to the Bush administration and capitulates to the ChiComs, then in typical liberal fashion gives a useless apology for the latter afterwards.

I remember seeing a pic of a CT in a real-life situation before. I know it's a cheap joke, but...

*taps 'E'*
Come with me!
http://www.cubanet.org/mira/nyt_photo.jpg

DeMeh!

Of course, there is always an explanation for that, because USA is the best, but when one child dies in Cuba that's because of evil Castro.

Except for some people, for whom it's the exact opposite. Stop painting things in extreme; real life is shades of grey.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/jul01/26e4.htm and
http://members.allstream.net/~dchris/CubaFAQ111.ht ml give figures of 23% and 30+% for the number malnurished children in Cuba.

It just shows that Castro (his government) cares about children and actually does something for them. Meanwhile the US government (and the President) prefer empty rhetoric about leaving no children behind without funding or any actions.

Give me a break. Children can not live on milk alone. The US government, mainly the states as is appropriate in a federal system, gives out millions in food stamps and welfare. Both societies obviously care about the children; a serious comparison of the two is probably worth a dissertion or at least a term paper.

(BTW, the second article above points out that the free milk is only to age 6.)

The amount of watching of educational TV depends on how much programming is produced.

There's tons of educational TV being produced, for schools and private purchase. Furthermore, it's cheaper to make an educational video; there's no million dollars being given away at the end of the night. There is no problem in supply.

College courses are education, not edutainment, even when they are designed for TV.

People who want education can find educational material. People who watch "Who Wants to Marry My Dad" don't want to watching education instead.

In any case, why are they college courses? A college course without interactivity, a book, homework or tests isn't really a course. You don't learn nearly as well passively, especially if it's material that's not going to be on the test.

TV is just a medium.

Mediums have strong points and connotations. There's a much more limited selection on TV than in even a small library; it's slow and harder to replay (frequently necessary in the learning process) than a book; and it's understood as a tool for entertainment, not education.

The fact that the US government prefers people watching 4 hours of entertainment per day is just sad.

The US government does not control what is on TV or what people watch. In a capitalistic, democratic society, there's no need for them to. People watch 4 hours of entertainment every day because they want to.

Showing educational courses on TV is one of the most efficient investments in education that you can make

What an assertion! Of course, without evidence, its value in this debate is zero.

average class is 30 children in the US and 20 children in Cuba.

And why doesn't Cuba spend that money on more TV programs?

less children drop out of school in Cuba, proving that the state cares about the children

Everyone cares about the children. It's been drilled into our essence during hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

For one thing, the US's population has a large transiant immigrant population. And students who don't stay in one school for long have a hard time graduating.

You want to toss a few unverified facts out and come to a dramatic conclusion about the US government. It just doesn't work that way in real life.

Certain Cubans would agree with you. (Zoom in)