Today is George Orwells Birthday

[ErnestLynch]

Orwell coined the terms:

Thought police
Thought crimes
Cold War
Big Brother
Doublethink

What a visionary.

[Winehole23]

1984 seemed more like a fantasy when I read it as a kid.

rereading it recently on the john, it seemed filled with realistic touches, but Orwell wasn't a prophet -- imho he merely extrapolated from his own experience and turned out to be right.



(tangent: heavy metal dudes may be interested in various coincidences in:






(Orwell''s discourse on torture in 1984 may have special relevance for Americans, post 2003)

[baseline bum]

1984 seemed more like a fantasy when I read it as a kid.

rereading it recently on the john, it seemed filled with realistic touches, but Orwell wasn't a prophet -- imho he merely extrapolated from his own experience and turned out to be right.



(tangent: heavy metal dudes may be interested in various coincidences in:






(Orwell''s discourse on torture in 1984 may have special relevance for Americans, post 2003)

I love 1984, but he was wrong about language being able to be used to control thought. Though in Orwell's defense, he wrote the book 10 years or so before Chomsky's work on the universal grammar showed thought is independent of spoken language.