My portable Wikipedia is my personal plane and time machine, and boy do I enjoy using it! The other day, I used it to look up the year 1913, to get a sense of what was happening in the world a hundred years ago. I got sucked in by the article and went on to read a pile of really interesting things. Let me tell you about some of them.
Read More“Living by one’s wits” is a Cuban idiom used to describe the behavior of people who go through life without working, finding ways to skimp off other people or to make money informally.
Read MoreAfter watching the film “One Night” by the British director Lucy Mulloy, I’ve made three resolutions for the future: I won’t be so willing to jump on a bandwagon. I will doubt the verdicts of juries. I will distrust dynamic rhythms, “natural” acting and fidelity to raw reality.
Read MoreIn the Cuban Five trial defense attorneys had access to only 20 percent of the case documents, something which seriously hampered their work. In addition, they were constantly denied the possibility of meeting with the detainees in order to adequately prepare their defense.
Read MoreRecently, a video recording of the final match between the world’s best Dota 2 teams sparked off a discussion with some friends of mine. I’ve never liked this strategy game all that much and was initially drawn to it by the excitement it seemed to awaken in others. The only thing it inspired in me, however, were criticisms. (9 photos)
Read MoreIf public transportation within city limits is “terrible”, we would need a particularly harsh adjective, something along the lines of “disastrous”, to capture the experience of those longer journeys, known as “interprovincial trips”, which Cuba’s coach company Astro has been offering for a number of years now.
Read MoreTo put an end to the dysfunctional workings of the FEU we would need to stop treating “autonomy” as a bad word, “academic freedom” as a dangerous possibility and the co-management of student affairs (by professors and students) as an unthinkable option.
Read MoreOn the 3rd of June of 1979, a bullet ended the life of the young Basque woman we see in the photograph. I have just gotten to know the story of this dark-haired girl who stares at us so serenly. Her name was Gladys del Estal Ferreño, and she had a future to look forward to.
Read MoreTime heals all wounds. After 55 years the multinationals are back in Cuba and the last name of the President is still Castro. The exploitation of the island by the former, and the nationalization by the latter, now seem to be forgiven as multinational corporations get an early stake, and take a huge lead, ahead of local producers.
Read More“You will learn, but not too much” – this was the maxim that a number of martial arts masters in ancient China stuck to, fearing that, one day, their disciples could outdo them. It would appear that the Cuban government is founded on precisely that idea.
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