Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

The revolution is dead: From Jane Macartney of The Times:

China's Communist leaders are taking another step away from their Marxist-Leninist roots by removing the word 'Revolutionary' from the titles awarded to those who die an heroic death.

¡Viva la revolución!: Xinhua reports:

Cuban army general Raul Castro was elected the new president of Cuba on Sunday during a legislative session held at Cuba's Palace of Conventions in Havana.

Raul said his older brother Fidel Castro would remain a key figure and vowed to be on guard against U.S. 'meddling' as he assumed the presidency.

On Sunday, 597 deputies unanimously elected a 31-member Council of State for a term of five years, which in turn elected Raul as president of the country.

Lu Jinbo on marketing Internet literature: Eric Abrahamsen talks to celebrity publisher Lu Jinbo about print publishing and Internet authors:

Rongshu, where he works now, is not a publishing house in the legal sense, but once the publishing numbers (刊号, kānhào) have been bought, the entire publication process – from editing, printing and distribution – is under their control. The company as a whole is heavily invested in the internet. "About 50% of our content comes from the internet or internet-related writers," says Lu, "compared to about 10-20% for traditional publishers. When it comes to publicity, as well, the internet is an extremely important tool – an advertisement on Sina, for instance, is far more effective than on in a newspaper. Part of that has to do with our target audiences. The majority of them are young, under the age of 30, and those readers pay very little attention to traditional media. Almost everything they do involves the internet."

Blue sky trickery: In The Wall Street Journal, Steven Q. Andrews reports on how the 'blue sky day' statistics for Beijing's air quality are being manipulated:

More than a month after Beijing's manipulation of air-quality data was first exposed, the government's response has been to -- wait for it -- manipulate the data even more. This year to date, record numbers of 'blue sky' days have been reported in the run-up to the August Olympics, thanks mainly to statistical shenanigans. The authorities are getting away with the deception, at least to judge from all the flattering media coverage they're generating.

Beijing Olympics logos abound: b. cheng at A Modern Lei Feng looks at Olympics-related logos, from the well-known stylized "jing" character to lesser-known designs like the one for Olympic Ticketing:

Walking around Beijing, you are met with an overwhelming number of Olympics related logos. It seems like BOCOG has gone a bit insane with logos, not being in any previous host city, I don't know how they treated the Games, but to me, by August it might seem like there are a hundred different logos and even more different "official sponsors."