In memoriam: Donald Sutherland

 

Peter

Making progress, slowly

 

Healing continues after last Monday's procedure.  I find that things are improving more slowly than I'd like, and more slowly than after the first two procedures, but I suppose that's inevitable.  One's body gets very tired of being pushed, prodded, cut and diced, and makes its unhappiness known.  I've had to deal with higher pain levels and greater tiredness this time round.  It's not enjoyable, but it goes with the territory, and if it produces a permanent "fix" and heals the problem, so much the better.

One of the trickier bits is coping with cats while fitted with a drain, so to speak.  Both of them like me, and like my company, so they try to get onto my lap for some cuddles now and again.  Unfortunately, Ashbutt is very large (about 18 pounds), so when he lands unexpectedly on my mid-section, it's . . . memorable.  Kili is only about half that weight, so her arrival is less traumatic.  Oh, well.  Ashbutt enjoys the sounds I make when he pounces, so I suppose I'm now a cat entertainment device!

I see the doctor again on Monday, and hopefully the final stent will be removed at that time.  I'm not looking forward to the process (I've been there before . . . "Just hold still, this won't hurt!" - TUG!!! - insert weeping, wailing and anguished noises here . . . ) but I'll be glad to regain control of my output, so to speak.  Being vulnerable to unexpected flooding is awkward, to say the least, particularly when the volume is such that it can actually be heard.  However, there's nothing I can do about it, so I have to put up with it - hopefully not for much longer!

Libertycon will be held in Chattanooga, TN this weekend.  I'd been looking forward to attending, but this procedure has prevented that.  My wife and many of our friends will be going, so I'll have to enjoy myself vicariously through their feedback.

Thanks again for your prayers for healing.  They're much appreciated.  As for the "streams of living water" bit in the Bible, I don't think the Lord had this sort of overflowing enthusiasm in mind!

 

Peter

Old, but it still makes me laugh out loud

 

This meme came out years ago, but every time I see it, I still laugh.  What's more, I have no idea where or when the picture was taken, but the tank resembles a South African-modified Centurion, and the scenery in the background is very like parts of South Africa, so it might even be from my old stamping-grounds.  Click the image for a larger view.

Ah . . . military memories!  I'm sure most veterans, seeing that, will be laughing too.

Peter

Bladder hell?

 

Thank you all for your kind wishes as I recover from surgery.  Some of the comments about catheters, etc. reminded me of an incident with a friend that still makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

He had some sort of bladder problem that required him to be fitted with a catheter and a urine bag.  So far, so good . . . until the first morning after he returned home.  His twin daughters, aged about 5 or 6 at the time, came running into the bedroom and jumped on the bed to be with Mom and Dad - and one of them landed right on his (full) urine bag.

His comment:  "Have you ever tried to pee backwards?  It sheds a new and horrible light on the human condition!"

I had to sympathize, even while laughing my tochus off at his predicament!

Peter

Good news, but greatly increased pain too...

 

Yesterday's surgical procedure (the third and last of 3 that were planned) appears to have gone well.  My right kidney has been suffering from a condition known as hydronephrosis, which basically means that it's been blocked internally, leading to bloating, twisting itself into weird shapes, and generally causing a lot of trouble.  Yes, a kidney stone was involved, but that's only one aspect of the condition.

The first two procedures cleared up part of the problem, but blockages remained.  They had to be dealt with, or else the kidney might deteriorate to the point that it could no longer recover, and might have had to be removed.  This third procedure appears to have cleared the final blockages, in that it's now working like a firehose.  That's a problem in itself:  from the first twinge that lets me know something wants to come out, to an eruption of fluid, can take as little as five seconds, and because I still have an internal stent, I have absolutely no control over it.  The volume is also significantly increased, so that conventional absorbent underwear (as discussed earlier) can accommodate only one incident before needing to be changed.  The (frequent) sudden scrambles for the bathroom also make it difficult to share a bed with my peacefully sleeping wife.  Our living-room couch, suitably waterproofed, will likely come in for some use over the next week or two!

As for the pain level, it's greatly increased at present, and I'm popping more painkillers than ever before.  I've been assured that as soon as the last stent is out, that will change.  Can't happen fast enough for me!  The doctor says I must give it a week or so to let the kidney empty itself out, then he'll remove the stent and we'll see how it copes over a few weeks of "normal" operation.  If it does, great.  If not, well, back to the drawing board, as they say in the classics.

Blogging will be ad hoc for the next day or two.  I hope to feel well enough to get back to a normal schedule by Thursday or Friday.

Thanks to everyone for your prayers and good wishes.

Peter

Under the knife again

 

By the time Blogger auto-publishes this, I'll be getting ready to go under the knife again for the third of three surgical procedures.  I hope the third time will do for all, and be successful.  If it works, I'll have a final stent removed in a week to ten days, and then my recalcitrant kidney will be back to normal.  If it doesn't, then I guess I'll end up losing that kidney - not a life-threatening situation, but one that puts a permanent "Handle with care!" sign on my other kidney.

Blogging will be as and when I can manage it for a day or two.  I hope to resume normal schedule by Thursday at the latest.

Prayers for a successful surgery and full healing will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 214

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

No Snippet today

 

I'm getting ready for another surgical procedure on Monday, and trying to deal with a lot of bits and pieces before then;  so I haven't had time to prepare the usual Saturday Snippet.  Meanwhile, please amuse yourselves with the bloggers listed in the sidebar.

Prayers for a successful procedure on Monday, and a full recovery, will be gratefully appreciated.  Thanks!

Peter

So much for Pride Month!

 

First prize to whoever dreamed up this position statement.

https://x.com/TheMistressRox/status/1801556745191350558

Brilliant!

Peter

Venezuela: will it go to war to avoid internal collapse?

 

Venezuela appears to be in a very parlous state, according to Peter Ziehan.  The brief video below is worth watching.

That puts a different emphasis on Venezuelan President Maduro's threat to take over a resource-rich area of neighboring state Guyana.

Venezuela continues to build up military infrastructure and hardware close to the border with Guyana as President Nicolas Maduro and his supporters scale up their threats to annex an oil-rich piece of Guyanese land.

In a report shared with CNN, the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) warns that while the Venezuelan government “has little to gain and much to lose from a full-blown conflict” it continues to play “a dangerous game” over its claim over the densely forested Essequibo region.

“The constant drumbeat asserting ‘the Essequibo is ours,’ alongside the creation of new military commands and legal structures to oversee the defense of the region, is helping to institutionalize a sense of perpetual prewar footing,” it wrote.

There's more at the link.

That's a very old tactic indeed:  distract one's population from severe internal or local problems by focusing them on an external grievance, war or other provocation.  Argentina did it with the Falkland Islands when the former's military junta was about to lose control of the economy and drive the nation into ruin.  An appeal to patriotism, particularly in a continent that fought a war over a soccer match (!), is almost guaranteed to divert attention.

Unfortunately, that won't help Guyana, which is much smaller and weaker than Venezuela;  and it won't help peace and stability on the entire South American continent, where drug cartels and other evils will use the distraction to shore up their own positions (and, probably, fight with each other to gain "market share" in the perennial drug war).  It might also drag the US into intervening in a war nobody except Venezuela wants.

This will bear watching.

Peter

A ... er ... sticky (legal) situation?

 

Well, here's a conundrum if ever I heard one.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday heard arguments over whether car insurance should pay out benefits to a woman who caught a sexually transmitted disease from a policyholder in his insured vehicle.

. . .

"Upon review of the parties’ arguments, the court finds that consensual sexual relations inside a car do not constitute a 'use' of the automobile within the meaning of the subject policy," the judge wrote in his decision. 

But M.O. and Brauner appealed to the Eighth Circuit to have the district court's decision reversed. The couple contends that the language of Brauner's insurance policy is so broad as to justify M.O.'s bodily injury claim ... Attorneys for GEICO disagree ... A three-judge panel consisting of U.S. Circuit Judges Steven Colloton, Michael Melloy and Raymond Gruender heard these arguments in court on Wednesday.

The judges questioned M.O.'s attorney, David Mayer, on whether his client's argument would make GEICO responsible for every unwanted pregnancy that might have occurred in an automobile.

"I don't believe that's a cause of action but that's a good question," Mayer responded.

. . .

... by quibbling over the meaning of what is an "appropriate" use of a car, Beck told the judges, "you are turning what is an automobile policy into a general liability policy without restriction."

There's more at the link.

If one takes the plaintiff's view to its logical conclusion, if a woman becomes pregnant after sex in a car, doesn't that make the car insurer liable for any and all medical costs incurred by the child during its entire life?  After all, none of those costs would have been incurred if pregnancy had not occurred.  Does that mean the insurer can insist that the woman must have an abortion, so as to avoid those costs?

Simple basic common sense should surely dictate that the insurer is not liable.  However, this is the USA, where litigation has long since lost all sense of balance and reasonableness.  Who knows how it'll turn out?

What's next?  A clause in insurance policies stating that no teenagers should ever be allowed to use the vehicle - or even get into it - except under the policyholder's direct and immediate supervision, for fear of the carnage that might result?

Peter

Quote of the day

 

From Sgt. Mom at Chicago Boyz, writing about "the LGBT-BLT lifestyle":

It used to be said that it was the love that dare not speak its name, now it’s the love that never shuts up.

Word (or words!).

Peter

If you can't take the heat, keep this out of the kitchen

 

I was amused, but also concerned, to read this BBC headline:  "Denmark recalls Korean ramen for being too spicy".

Denmark has recalled several spicy ramen noodle products by South Korean company Samyang, claiming that the capsaicin levels in them could poison consumers.

. . .

But the maker Samyang says there's no problem with the quality of the food.

"We understand that the Danish food authority recalled the products, not because of a problem in their quality but because they were too spicy," the firm said in a statement to the BBC.

"The products are being exported globally. But this is the first time they have been recalled for the above reason."

It's unknown if any specific incidents in Denmark had prompted authorities there to take action.

The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said it had assessed the levels of capsaicin in a single packet to be "so high that they pose a risk of the consumer developing acute poisoning".

There's more at the link.

Actually, I can understand the Danes' concern.  I regularly buy various flavors of ramen noodles, because both my wife and I enjoy them as quick snacks.  Some of the Korean offerings have proved to be so hot that I got heartburn after only one or two mouthfuls, and one left me with a very tender feeling in my chest, almost as if I'd been punched there.  I don't like super-spicy foods anyway, and I've learned to avoid the so-called "red and black label" Korean offerings as just too spicy for my palate.

I wonder if we're seeing with Korean ramen noodles what we've already seen in the so-called "hot sauce" market?  Ever since some hot sauce manufacturers realized that there were individuals who'd try anything once, they've been competing to make their sauce hotter than anyone else's.  There are innumerable videos on YouTube showing a "hot sauce challenge".  Some of them are downright scary, judging by the looks on their participants' faces.  I get particularly worried when I see kids being suckered into these contests.  I suspect their less developed bodies might suffer real injury if the spice levels are too high.

Be that as it may, I'll continue to avoid red-and-black-packaged ramen noodles.  I've already had two heart attacks, and I don't want a third!

Peter

Saving on household running costs

 

We've spoken often in these pages about preparing for emergencies.  Food supplies, weapons, security issues, and a host of other topics have been covered.  However, there are several areas that are seldom mentioned in "prepping" circles:  threats that are so everyday, so routine, that we lose sight of how they might escalate into a real problem - or make preparing for a real emergency harder to afford, because of other drains on our wallets.  I've been discussing some of them with correspondents in recent weeks, and in this article, I'd like to tackle a few of them.

Let's take property and vehicle insurance.  They've gone up a lot over the past few years:  I've seen estimates that they're up more than 25% since 2020, and some estimates put it at over 40%.  Certainly, my wife and I have seen ours go up steeply, but that's partly because our insurer calculates the replacement value of our home at a considerably higher figure than we do.  I'm in the process of discussing that with our insurer, citing local costs and sales prices to prove our point.  That should help to bring our premiums back down, but it won't erase the higher costs completely.

How does one "prepare" for such increased costs?  It's important to watch your premiums closely, particularly notices warning you of an increase.  Your insurer will rate the value of your home according to a formula for your area, which might add too much value for your specific town or location (e.g. a valuation formula for "Northern Texas" is not as focused as one for "Arlington TX" or "Muenster TX").  Don't be afraid to raise such issues with your insurer, and negotiate the replacement value of your home down to a more reasonable level - one that'll cost you less in premium increases.  By doing that every year or two, the cumulative increase in your insurance costs over several years might be quite a lot lower than if you didn't.

Another option is to buy less expensive vehicles;  either a smaller, cheaper new car, or a used vehicle at a lower price than a new one.  Their insurance rate is calculated according to their value.  Buying the higher-end model might cost as much as $50-$100 more per month to insure than buying the entry-level model - and does it really make that much difference to drive the less luxurious version?  When considered along with all the other increases, those savings start to look attractive.  (Until recently, given the outlandishly high prices being asked for used vehicles, it was in many cases cheaper to buy a lower-priced new one such as Kia's Soul or Ford's Maverick light pickup.  Not only did they cost less than a used smaller SUV, but they offered similar interior space for passengers, and depreciation losses in today's market are minimal compared to years past.  I know a number of families who did that, and they've generally been happy with the deals they got.)

How about electricity bills?  They've been rising pretty steeply in our part of the world.  Even though we aren't major consumers of electricity, we're paying several hundred dollars a month for it, particularly now as the heat of summer makes big demands on our HVAC system.  There are many ways to save electricity, from shutting off major appliances like water heaters, not using ovens to cook, adjusting the internal temperature to levels that don't require as much electricity to maintain, and so on.

I'm seriously considering installing a mini-split air conditioning system for our main room in addition to the central HVAC system, because the former functions off a 120-volt circuit instead of 240, and consumes less than a quarter of the power needed by the central system.  If we shut off our central HVAC system when we're out and about, and run only the smaller unit for six to eight hours a day, it'll keep the central part of the house at a comfortable temperature but consume a lot less electricity.  I figure that in two years, the savings will pay for the entire mini-split system, including installation, and after that the savings are all gravy, so to speak.  I've not made a final decision yet, but it's a tempting thought.

If your HVAC system is getting old and you're considering replacing it, it might be worth your while to look at installing two or more mini-split or multi-split systems instead of one big central system.  The cost of installing the former can be half to two-thirds the cost of the latter, and their power consumption, even taken together, will usually be at least a third less than a central system.  Add up those savings and it becomes a rather attractive option, provided your home is constructed in such a way that the smaller systems can be "plumbed into" it relatively easily.

What about municipal and/or county rates and taxes?  It's worth checking on their valuation of your home, and contesting any sudden increases.  Too many counties issue bonds to construct new infrastructure such as schools, emergency services, etc. and then clobber residents with big increases in their rates.  These can be contested, particularly if actual sales prices achieved by comparable properties in your area demonstrate that the valuation is too high.  A lower valuation leads to lower rates, saving you money.

These are just some ways one can economize on one's overall household expenditure.  I'm sure readers have more they can contribute.  If you do, please share them with us in Comments.  We're almost all finding it hard to make ends meet these days.  Why not help each other to make our dollars go further?

Peter

Knowledge workers run headlong into the threat from artificial intelligence

 

A journalist and writer ponders what she calls "My last five years of work".

I am 25. These next three years might be the last few years that I work. I am not ill, nor am I becoming a stay-at-home mom, nor have I been so financially fortunate to be on the brink of voluntary retirement. I stand at the edge of a technological development that seems likely, should it arrive, to end employment as I know it.

I work at a frontier AI company. With every iteration of our model, I am confronted with something more capable and general than before. At this stage, it can competently generate cogent content on a wide range of topics. It can summarize and analyze texts passably well. As someone who at one point made money as a freelance writer and prided myself on my ability to write large amounts of content quickly, a skill which—like cutting blocks of ice from a frozen pond—is arguably obsolete, I find it hard not to notice these advances. Freelance writing was always an oversubscribed skillset, and the introduction of language models has further intensified competition.

The general reaction to language models among knowledge workers is one of denial. They grasp at the ever diminishing number of places where such models still struggle, rather than noticing the ever-growing range of tasks where they have reached or passed human level ... The economically and politically relevant comparison on most tasks is not whether the language model is better than the best human, it is whether they are better than the human who would otherwise do that task.

. . .

Many expect AI to eventually be able to do every economically useful task. I agree. Given the current trajectory of the technology, I expect AI to first excel at any kind of online work. Essentially anything that a remote worker can do, AI will do better. Copywriting, tax preparation, customer service, and many other tasks are or will soon be heavily automated. I can see the beginnings in areas like software development and contract law. Generally, tasks that involve reading, analyzing, and synthesizing information, and then generating content based on it, seem ripe for replacement by language models.

There's more at the link.

Hers is a timely article.  With more and more white-collar workers being displaced by artificial intelligence and expert systems, it's going to be an ongoing and increasingly important debate:  what will we do when there's no longer anything that we're needed to do?

This also calls for a re-examination of the much-derided concept of universal basic income.  If automation reduces the number of available jobs far below the number of workers available to fill them, who's going to provide for the unemployed workers?  They can't be abandoned to starve, so some form of UBI appears to be inevitable.  What form that might take is currently being debated world-wide, but that it will be required seems incontrovertible.

Food for thought - particularly for a wordsmith, blogger and writer like myself.

Peter

A giant of the Cold War skies bids farewell

 

It's been announced that Russia's Air Force will retire its last remaining Antonov An-22 strategic transport aircraft this year.  The photograph below shows the prototype aircraft at the Paris Air Show in 1965, the year it first flew.

The An-22 was a behemoth.  It could carry up to 80 metric tons (approximately 88 US tons) of cargo, roughly equivalent to today's Boeing C-17 Globemaster III and almost twice the payload by weight of the contemporary Lockheed C-141 Starlifter.  It was routinely used to ferry intercontinental ballistic missiles around the Soviet Union, as well as carry large, heavy cargoes to favored client nations.  It was the largest turboprop-powered aircraft ever built, using the same engines that powered the Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bomber.

The An-22 was regarded by the Soviet Union as a strategic asset due to its missile-ferrying duties, which led to a potentially serious incident back in 1975.  At the time, the Soviet Union was pouring armaments and surrogate forces into Angola to support its favored MPLA "liberation movement" (a.k.a. terrorist organization).  South Africa, with US encouragement, was at the same time intervening on behalf of another such organization, UNITA.  I'm informed by sources I consider reliable that in late 1975, some South African special forces were camped out within sight of the runways at the international airport in Luanda.  They managed to get their hands on a number of man-portable ground-to-air missiles (presumably taking them off MPLA forces that "no longer needed them"), and sent an excited signal back to South Africa saying that they planned to sneak up to the runway and shoot down as many as possible of the parade of An-22's arriving every day, filled with armaments.  They would have been "sitting duck" targets, having no alternative airport within range to which they could be diverted after their long flight down the African continent.

I'm told that this was mentioned in passing between a South African liaison officer and the US embassy in Pretoria, and led to seismic-level upheavals.  The CIA was convinced that if South Africa shot down some of the Soviet Union's scarce strategic transports (only 68 were ever built), the Soviets would react very harshly, escalating the war in Angola out of control, and would probably act against other important US client states around the world.  The reconnaissance forces near Luanda were duly told not to carry out their plan, but to allow the An-22's to arrive and depart undisturbed.  They were bitterly disappointed, and I was told that some of the signals they sent back to Pretoria were "sulfurous" - but they obeyed orders.  I've often wondered what would have happened if two or three of these monster aircraft had bitten the African dust . . .

As far as I know, there's only one An-22 flying outside the Russian Air Force, a privately-owned example operated by Antonov Airlines of Ukraine.  I don't know whether it's still operational.  To give you some idea of the enormous size of this plane, here are two video clips showing its arrival and departure at European airports.

So, at last, a giant of the skies goes to its rest.  It will not be forgotten.

Peter

Are vehicle service departments taking a leaf out of the "fast lube" racket's book?

 

I'm sure many of my readers have had the experience of getting an "instant lube" or "fast lube" for their vehicles from businesses like Jiffy Lube and others (there are thousands of them, all over the USA).  Basically, they promise to change your engine oil and get you back on the road within ten or fifteen minutes.  Of course, that doesn't always work that way.  I've several times been accosted by a service clerk showing me a dirty air filter, and suggesting I need to change it as well.  One time I demanded to see my vehicle with an empty filter casing, and the employees (and the manager) tried for all they were worth to stop me doing so.  Sure enough, my vehicle's filter was still in place - they'd shown me another one, hoping I wouldn't check.

Thing is, twice in a couple of months I've had the service department at an auto dealer (once at Nissan, the other at Toyota) show me dirty air filters, suggesting they need to be changed.  That's never happened before, and it's making me wonder.  Are manufacturers' service departments trying the same trick these days, hoping to generate extra revenue?

Of course, I have no way of knowing that:  but if more of us are experiencing the same thing, it might be worth investigating.  Therefore, readers, if that's happened to you at a branded service department, please let us know about it in Comments, as well as roughly how long ago it happened.  I'm curious to see whether this is becoming an industry-wide racket.

Thanks!

Peter

The trap of government subsidies

 

UnHerd has produced a masterly analysis of the trap into which government spending and subsidies has led much of American life today.  Here's an excerpt.

Democrats and Republicans alike, under the cover of good intentions, have been passing laws that undermine the economic well-being of American families. Even more disturbing, these policies have created a whole new class of robber barons, who rely on government policy to enrich themselves. But these new robber barons aren’t railroad tycoons or rapacious oil companies. Indeed, many of them are non-profits: they include universities and hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, K-12 school districts, and real estate investors.

. . .

This is how it works: Claiming to be the guardian of “quality”, policymakers put up barriers to entry, making it extremely costly, for example, to launch a new university or hospital. This is the restriction of supply. At the same time, in the name of “helping” consumers, they push billions of dollars into student loans or healthcare payments. This is the subsidisation of demand.

. . .

... all of the universities, including elite colleges in the Ivy League, have reaped billions of dollars in economic rents — excess profits — from student loan programmes, even as the value of many of their degrees has fallen dramatically.

At the same time, the universities operate an accreditation system which makes it extraordinarily difficult and costly to launch a new university that might compete with them. In fact, you usually can’t get your new university accredited until four-to-six years after you open. That means that your first students aren’t eligible for federal student loans — their subsidies — until you get your accreditation. It’s a huge handicap for anyone who wants to disrupt the current oligopoly of higher education.

These dynamics play out in all of the most important sectors of our economy. In healthcare, new hospitals in many states have to apply for a “certificate of need”. Often that certificate has to be signed by the other hospitals in the area — in other words, their potential competitors. Meanwhile, federal and state governments flood the healthcare system with subsidies that increase demand and drive prices up: almost 50% of health care spending comes from governmental entities in the US.

In housing, similarly, we restrict supply by making it harder and harder to build new units, especially in city centres where demand is the highest. Meanwhile, we subsidise demand by providing government-guaranteed mortgages and by offering huge tax breaks for anyone who purchases real estate, especially investors.

And in K-12 education, school districts around the country are trying to stamp out charter schools, which increase supply, while at the same time arguing for higher and higher per-pupil spending. The cost to educate one child for one year has increased 173% (adjusted for inflation) since 1970, and half the kids still can’t read.

The pathologies of these sectors all follow similar patterns. Politicians proclaim their desire to “protect” quality and “help” consumers. Industry lobbyists step up to write bills that restrict supply and subsidise demand. Prices go up. Providers become more and more reliant on the government for their profits. Consumers become more and more reliant on the government to afford homes, healthcare, and schools. Instead of investing in innovation, providers spend their money on political donations and lobbyists. Politicians become dependent on those donations. Consumers demand more and more help because prices are going up, and they’re getting ripped off. And the beat goes on. “It really is a self-reinforcing process,” says Kling. “People don’t understand that the subsidies drive up prices, so they keep demanding more.”

There's more at the link.

To all those negatives, add two more:

1. All those subsidies and other government programs add layer upon layer of bureaucrats to government to administer them.  In other words, government becomes a fulfilment machine rather than an administrator.  More and more of its money is spent on such subsidies and fulfilment programs rather than on the business of government.
2. The level of government involvement in such programs affects how government governs.  Lower-level governments - e.g. town and city councils - don't have enough money to subsidize such programs, so they push it up to state level.  State legislatures don't have enough money either, so they put pressure on their congressional representatives and Senators to get that money from the federal government.  The feds duly provide it, but have to increase taxes and/or borrow more money to pay it;  and they also have to hire more bureaucrats to administer it.  The state governments also need more staff to administer where the money comes from and where it goes, expanding state government.  Finally, at the "coalface" where the money is paid out, more government staff are needed to administer, account for and report back on how it's used.

It's a self-perpetuating nightmare.

The only way to stop this perpetual motion machine is, of course, to take away many of the things it currently does that were never envisioned by the Founding Fathers.  They'd be horrified if they saw the myriad things on which the federal government spends its money, things that were never envisioned in or authorized by the constitution, but which now consume the vast majority of government income and effort.

The problem, as always, is this:  how do we break the cycle?  If we cut off the subsidies, those deprived of them will scream blue murder, and vote against the politicians who acted responsibly by terminating them.  That means the politicians dare not tackle the monster they've helped to create.  Argentina is trying to do so by dismantling whole swaths of its national government, but that's because the problem had grown so great there that the state had become a behemoth that was strangling the country as a whole.  President Milei has only just begun the job, and there's no guarantee his opponents - now united against him - will allow him enough space and time to finish the job.  I wish him every success, but the odds are against him.

Do we have a President Milei who can do the same for us?

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,114

 

Today's award goes to Artemio Sanchez-Ortega of New Mexico, who decided to demonstrate his burning passion for his former girlfriend literally rather than figuratively.  A full report may be found here, or you can simply watch the video below.

I'm very grateful that there were no casualties among his intended victims.  I hope the police catch him soon, before he has any more bright ideas.  Of course, he could try exercising matchless ingenuity . . .

Peter

State of the nation?

 

According to Stephan Pastis, this might be it.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the comic's Web page.

"Peace Dove" . . . one wonders whether that will end up being used as the name of the latest FPV attack drone!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 213

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

English folk/progressive rock group Magna Carta was formed in 1969, and - after many hiatuses (hiati?) - performed their last concert 50 years later.  They were never a major musical success, but developed a loyal fan base and influenced a number of other composers and groups in the genre.

I've selected five tracks at random from their early years, which I think were by far their most creative period.  First, from their album "Seasons", here's "Elizabethan".

Next, from the album "Songs from Wastie's Orchard", is "Time For The Leaving".

From the same album, an instrumental track:  "Sponge".

From the album "Lord Of The Ages", the opening track, "Wish It Was".

And finally, from the same album, "Falkland Grene".

Quite a mixture, with medieval, Renaissance, folk and rock influences.  I enjoy their music.

Peter

Saturday Snippet: Seventy-five years ago today...

 

... one of the classic novels of the 20th century was published.

'Nineteen Eighty-Four' received critical acclaim from its first publication.  It's never been out of print, and in 2019 was named by the BBC as one of its '100 Most Inspiring Novels'.  It was also its author's swan song, so to speak:  Orwell died (of tuberculosis) eight months after its publication.

In honor of the anniversary of publication, I could find no better memorial than to bring you the opening chapter of the book.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste—this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak [Newspeak was the official language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology see Appendix.]—was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more successful. He went back to the livingroom and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.

For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do.

But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past. He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that. He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ('dealing on the free market', it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speakwrite which was of course impossible for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984.

He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.

For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say. For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up. Moreover his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.

Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was setting down. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops:

April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water. audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never—

Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But the curious thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to writing it down. It was, he now realized, because of this other incident that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.

It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything so nebulous could be said to happen.

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the middle rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably—since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner—she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once when they passed in the corridor she gave him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.

The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming—in some indefinable way, curiously civilized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox. Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between O'Brien's urbane manner and his prize-fighter's physique. Much more it was because of a secretly-held belief—or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope—that O'Brien's political orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess: indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien glanced at his wristwatch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a couple of places away. A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.

The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even—so it was occasionally rumoured—in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.

Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard—a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party—an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed—and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein's specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army—row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers' boots formed the background to Goldstein's bleating voice.

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheeplike face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day, and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were—in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the book. But one knew of such things only through vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!', and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off: the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.

It was even possible, at moments, to switch one's hatred this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one's head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.

The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandyhaired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant of 'B-B!....B-B!....B-B!'—over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second—a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human chanting of 'B-B!....B-B!' always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened—if, indeed, it did happen.

Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew—yes, he knew!—that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. 'I am with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!' And then the flash of intelligence was gone, and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as everybody else's.

That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any sequel. All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others besides himself were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the rumours of vast underground conspiracies were true after all—perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it, some days not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory walls—once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the hand which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition. It was all guesswork: very likely he had imagined everything. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again. The idea of following up their momentary contact hardly crossed his mind. It would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it. For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.

Winston roused himself and sat up straighter. He let out a belch. The gin was rising from his stomach.

His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals— 

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER 
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

over and over again, filling half a page.

He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.

He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:

theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother—

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.

Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and moved heavily towards the door.

Chilling, but also prophetic.  We'll never know how many tens of millions of people died at the whim of totalitarian regimes during the 20th century.  Will that total be surpassed in the 21st?  It's by no means impossible . . .

Peter