Unthreaded
Stewgreen: yep. Tough, isn't it?
Radical Rodent
It always amazes me how many people have died in the attempt to flee such wonderful places as Cuba, that the likes of Galloway and Corbyn are keen to praise, but not to live in.
golf charlie
@RR Talking about the need to communicate clearly, you dropped the swear words and then put your message in a huge block of next with no paragraph breaks..It was difficult to read it.
stewgreen
Sometimes my students want to rush into using swear words
I explain to them that is quite difficult to use swear language properly.
It is very much a top level language and very effective, cos you can convey a lot quickly and precisely.
The way that we use swear words is tonal, akin to Chinese, with each tone having a clear different meaning. That's why when foreigners try swear it comes out wrong.
I do prefer it to work in an environment where everyone swears all the time.
stewgreen
RR sometimes swear words used in abundance work. I half recall a Peter Sellars film in which he masqueraded as a hoodlum with huge shoulder pads in which every other word he uttered was foul. But this was the point - it was excruciating funny -all words were pronounced in a mock Italian accent. However the classic scene occurred in a lift - once seen, never forgotten.
ACK
Can I recommend this informed and objective view of Cuba by John Simpson in the Spectator
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/cuba-really-like-fidel-castro/
Ross Lea
The plight of Cuba is not primarily a consequence of Castro's revolution but to 1) the USA's embargos and its attempts to isolate it from the world community, 2) its overall poverty before and after the revolution and 3) it only had one cash export - sugar which was sold originally to the USA then to the USSR in exchange for petroleum products. After 1991 the USSR market disappeared and Cuba lost access to petroluem products (fuel, pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertilizers - all seemingly essential to its agriculture). Somehow the Castro regime managed these enormous problems creating the best educated population in the whole of Latin America, an innovative health system that is the envy of many and whose new techniques were exported worldwide (except to the USA), an agricultural system reinventing old techniques that just about kept its population from starvation (rice and beans mostly) and it created a new pride in its people exemplified by its success in international.sport. It has been many years since I visited (but after the revolution) and it didn't feel like a communist dictatorship, people spoke to you in the street and bitched something shocking about their governments.
I have always been interested in Cuba because if peak oil had been imminent, it provided an illustration of how we might have managed with limited petroleum products.
ACK
I'll second your comments about Feersum Endjinn, RR. I especially enjoyed many of Iain M Banks SF books that always contrived a happy ending.
michael hart
Stewgreen: my comment was not that language should be constrained and never allowed to evolve, it is that it is being corrupted, in diction, usage, spelling and punctuation. Following a common spelling makes reading much easier, for reasons I have already given; punctuation also allows for better comprehension – read Eats Shoots and Leaves to find out why. Diction, nowadays, seems to be intent on reducing the language to guttural grunts – “Do’wha, i’sson duh innerneh inni’ …” What does the BBC have against the letter “T”? Why should people feel the need to demonstrate their “street cred” by unlimited utterances of swear-words (commonly the four-lettered variety; perhaps because anything longer becomes an intellectual challenge?)? Surely, limiting your use of foul language gives any use of it more impact – one of the best-known film quotes is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The only “cuss”-word used in that film, and one that caused palpitations at the time; now, we have to endure such delights as the opening sequence being an endless stream of the same four-lettered swear-word. Ho ho ho; how clever. If the films are to be believed (and why not? – after all, they are so often mimicked), the only way to open a conversation with a pretty girl is to start with a four-lettered word of foul language. Yet, read the classics, from Don Quixote to the Discworld series, and very, very rarely are such words used, as the masters of the written word really have no need for such vulgarities; it is not “strong” language; it is weak language.
Radical Rodent
2002 I was 5 weeks in Cuba
I have reason believe that their something fishy about the health claims ..just like Fidel's 99% vote claim
There was not plenty but a lot of American stuff their and adverts, cos it could easily come thru EU subsidiaries rebadging stuff.
Everyone fiddled and stole from their workplace.
I met many people who had been in jail
70% of people said Fidel was a great guy
70% would leave the country the next day if they could.
I hitched around and sometimes stayed illegally with people. I speak enough Spanish.