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April 10, 2012 - Exactly 100 years from the day when the Titanic sailed from Southampton, the English port city is paying tribute with a series of events to mark the tragic anniversary. The ship hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912.

March 5, 2012 - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been declared the official winner of Russia's presidential election, taking 63.75 percent of the vote. Putin is now set to return to the presidency after serving a maximum two consecutive terms from 2000 to 2008, followed by the past four years as prime minister. He is to be inaugurated in May, and his next presidential mandate will be newly six years.

February 22, 2012 -The UN says Iran has stopped a team of inspectors from visiting the Parchin site, south of Tehran. It is suspected that Parchin was the site where explosives related to nuclear weapons may have been tested in recent years. Iran insists it is purely for peaceful purposes.

February 12, 2012 - The Greek parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told lawmakers shortly before they voted that they would be mistaken if they rejected the package that demands deep pay, pension and job cuts, as this would threaten Greece's place in the European mainstream.

January 26, 2012 - North Korea has warned that any of its citizens caught trying to using mobile phones during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il will be branded as "war criminals" and punished accordingly.

January 16, 2012 - French President Nicolas Sarkozy shrugged off his country's loss of its prized AAA debt rating, saying the downgrade by rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P’s) would change nothing. On Friday, S&P's said France was being downgraded one notch, to AA+. On Monday the Moody's agency confirmed that it would keep its top rating. However, the S&P decision could seriously damage Sarkozy's bid for re-election.

January 10, 2012 - President Bashar al-Assad pledged at Damascus University to crush Syria’s 10-month-old uprising with an "iron fist" in public address that left little doubt he remains undeterred in his determination to stay in power.

I could hardly choose a more optimistic topic for the first post of the kevinspin.com blog than a brief note on how Kevin Spin inspires children. If you already know Kevin Spin a little, I think you are surprised with the first sentence. Kevin is not a character that should inspire anyone, and especially not children. Unless we want our children to learn new moral excesses or discuss with them how to avoid paying taxes through an unclear structure of the off-shore companies at a dinner.

Fortunately, inspiration I have in mind is a visual inspiration. It is a sheer joy of cartoon characters, colors, and shapes, without understanding of sarcastic communication we laugh at.

This short post was triggered by illustration of a seven-year-old girl, who drew her "Kevin Spin" based on actual comic strips. As children usually do she took a real picture of Kevin, put it into her children's reality and here is the result:

The story of the strip is not very sophisticated. Kevin Spin goes to a school, and the teacher calls him on. In front of the board, he stumbles and the whole class laughs at him. When she was telling me the story, her eyes were shining with joy. At that moment I realized I would be very happy if Kevin Spin stories brought the same kind of joy for you. I know this is difficult to achieve, but I also know it is worth trying ...