MetaFilter posts tagged with orwell

Be seeing you

sloe — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:12:13 -0800

iWatch PSA. The LAPD recently launched a new program named iWatch which encourages and establishes guidelines for citizen reporting of suspicious activity. There's also a 7 minute action movie playing out a fictional case study of the program. NPR interview with Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton regarding the program. Comments from ACLU policy counsel Mike German in this AP story. Related: PSA for Australia's National Security Hotline (via via) NYT report on the extent and wide ranging uses of government surveillance within Britain.

Big Brother is watching you! But don't watch him!

Don't_deceive_with_belief — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:44:20 -0800

Police do it to the British public 24/7/365. It has become pervasive in the UK and shows little sign of changing. Apparently, however, Joe Blogs may find that his rights may be greatly compromised when photographing Police or even criminals. With big question marks hanging over the efficacy of CCTV coupled with their increasing sophistication are we sacrificing too many of our human rights as well as our privacy for little to no real gain? If we can see an event in public, should we not be able to make a record of that event? For art? For an aide memoir? For historical documentation? Unlike Orwell's 1984 seems Big Brother is actually camera shy. [Previously on MeFi]

Dreaming is a private thing.

teraflop — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:47:59 -0800

A team of researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto have managed to reconstruct black-and-white visual images from an fMRI scan of a test subject's brain. Some more examples of the recovered data. The organization responsible claims that the technology to record thoughts and dreams is just around the corner. The paper, "Visual Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity using a Combination of Multiscale Local Image Decoders", is the cover article of the December 10 issue of the journal Neuron. [via]

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm

KokuRyu — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:18:01 -0800

How the Poor Die My right-hand neighbour was a little red-haired cobbler with one leg shorter than the other, who used to announce the death of any other patient (this happened a number of times, and my neighbour was always the first to hear of it) by whistling to me, exclaiming "NUMÉRO 43!" (or whatever it was) and flinging his arms above his head. This man had not much wrong with him, but in most of the other beds within my angle of vision some squalid tragedy or some plain horror was being enacted. Previously Much of George Orwell's writings can be found online, including his essays. Here are a few from the site linked in the FPP: You and the Atomic Bomb It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. Books vs. Cigarettes With prices as they now are, I am spending far more on tobacco than I do on books. The Lion and the Unicorn As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. A highlight of the site is the Road to Wigan Pier: Mr Brooker was a dark, small-boned, sour, Irish-looking man, and astonishingly dirty. I don't think I ever once saw his hands clean. As Mrs Brooker was now an invalid he prepared most of the food, and like all people with permanently dirty hands he had a peculiarly intimate, lingering manner of handling things. If he gave you a slice of bread-and-butter there was always a black thumb-print on it. As I Please, his collection of wartime essays for the Tribune, can also be found in bits and pieces on the web.

Kiki and Bubu

homunculus — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:00:26 -0800

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]

Shepard Fairey Meets George Orwell

jonson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:09:25 -0800

Shepard Fairey's cover art for Penguin releases of 1984 & Animal Farm.

Down The Mine

homunculus — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 13:50:29 -0800

Down The Mine. An essay on coal mining as seen by George Orwell in 1937. [Via The Huffington Post.]

Down the memory hole

blacklite — Tue, 15 May 2007 23:24:45 -0800

Gonzales pushes plan to criminalize copyright infringement, making it punishable by life imprisonment; to increase wiretaps; and to require Homeland Security to notify the RIAA in certain circumstances. "To meet the global challenges of IP crime." I'd comment on this, but I'm afraid that someone might think I was copying someone else. The Intellectual Property Protection Act (official press release) appeared previously in a speech (2005) and as a draft (2006) - now the Justice department is pushing Congress to bring it forward. [newsfilter]

Flip Flop

bardic — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:53:47 -0800

Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake by National Review editor Jonah Goldberg.

Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism

mulligan — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 08:36:28 -0800

The misuse of language [pdf] has been embraced by our leadership. This heavily documented report provides tangible examples of the various redefinitions used in modern America.

Orwell Redux

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 20:52:19 -0800

George Orwell né Eric Arthur Blair is probably best known to readers for his eerily prescient novels 1984 and Animal Farm. This comprehensive Orwell site betrays an erudite, complex, fascinating personality who wrote about a variety of subjects, from an exposition on British class relations affecting the art and practice of murder, to the complex moral compromises of Gandhi's practice of non-violent resistance, to the doublespeak-laden corruption of the English language as a telling reflection of a corrupt, brutal, post-WWII culture — and much, much more. This site also includes Russian translations of much of Orwell's work.

Orwellian Carnivore

augustweed — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:29:04 -0800

“You know, I don’t think there’s a single piece of meat in this stew. Looks like meat. Tastes like meat. It isn’t meat at all. Doubleplus good!” ~ George Orwell: 1984

Those dastardly cowards!

Malor — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 04:13:54 -0800

Three of the clever, committed terrorists in Guantanamo Bay committed an act of war against the United States on Saturday morning.

AT&T-NSA documents leaked

Ryvar — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:24:48 -0800

Wired News has obtained a copy of a file detailing AT&T's involvement with the NSA that was sealed in the EFF's class-action lawsuit against AT&T. At 2AM EST this morning they have published that file on their site for anyone to download (this is the fixed link, the one on Wired is currently broken).[via]

A Presidency in Shadow

digaman — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 10:22:52 -0800

Notice: henceforth, the Minister of War shall address the people only through the Ministry of Truth. The story-behind-the-story of the Vice President's hunting mishap is the denigration of the MSM^TM as the traditional proxy of the public interest, says NYU journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen. "It strikes me that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is just as valid a news outlet as The New York Times is," Cheney told cherry-picked Fox "News" correspondent Brit Hume yesterday. GOP spokesperson Mary Matalin underlined the point by saying that Cheney considered holding a news conference, but that "would have meant a lot of grandstanding" by reporters; Donald Rumsfeld often goes even farther, claiming that terrorist organizations manipulate the American press directly through "media committees." Judging by the administration's contempt for the Fourth Estate, says Rosen, "The public visibility of the presidency itself is under revision. More of it lies in shadow all the time. Non-communication has become the standard procedure, not a breakdown in practice but the essence of it." Even arch-conservative pundits like George Will are starting to get nervous about the lack of check and balances under the current regime. There's no doubt that the White House press corps seems angrier these days -- but are they missing the bigger stories by focusing their wrath on Scott McClellan's birdshot spin?

A cop in your trucnk: mandatory GPS tracking for your car.

orthogonality — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:04:38 -0800

Merry Christmas! Santa knows if you've been bad or good. The U.S. Department of Transportation wants to know where you're driving. Where you're driving, right this very minute, tracking you in real-time using GPS. If the GPS signal is obstructed, your car's engine will turn off, Citizen!

LanguageFilter

MetaMonkey — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:55:41 -0800

Orwell: Politics and the English Language. Some timely links in the fast changing world of instant communication. Alistair Cooke Needles the Jargonauts in Assessing the State of the English Language. The Electronic Revolution by William S. Burroughs. On Wittgenstein's Concept of a Language Game. The Economist Looking for a sign. John Zerzan Language: Origin and Meaning. Hakim Bey: Aimless Wandering: Chuang Tzu's Chaos Linguistics also Chaos Linguistics. The Language of Animals. John C Lilly on Interspecies Communication. Language Log: Natural language and artificial intelligence. Natural Language Processing AI News.

fun and games

nofundy — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 09:53:51 -0800

The Ministry of Reshelving
This week, we launched the Ministry of Reshelving project. My partners in crime as founding members of the ministry: George, Kiyash, and Monica. This weekend we relocated 19 copies of George Orwell's 1984 in four different bookstores in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and Berkeley. It was high stealth adventure. You are invited to join our efforts.
Sounds like mischievous fun. Which books would you reshelve?

Terror Alert: Yellow!

digaman — Wed, 11 May 2005 20:49:53 -0800

Be afraid: The national threat-alert level today is yellow or "elevated," with "significant risk of terrorist attacks," says the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, the alert level has been elevated since December of 2003, when it was raised from orange. During the election season, the Fox News network flashed the terror alert level in their "crawl" as if there was breaking news -- the sort of thing that prompted some liberal wags to ridicule the entire system. Now former DHS secretary Tom Ridge says that the Bush administration was "really aggressive" about raising the threat-alert level during his tenure, even when the agency felt that the intelligence didn't warrant it.

Orwell would be proud

skechada — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 10:07:47 -0800

Eastasia plans attacks on Eurasia "Efforts each of you make to be vigilant – such as reporting suspicious items or activities to authorities – do make a difference. Every citizen using their common sense and eyes and ears can support our national effort to stop the terrorists. Thank you for your continued resolve in the face of the ongoing threat of terrorism. We must continue to work together – to ensure that the freedom we just celebrated continues as the hallmark of this great nation." Are you scared yet?

Don't worry your pretty little head about it.

dejah420 — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 10:12:14 -0800

White House "disappears" women's info. The Bush administration has quietly removed 25 reports from its Women's Bureau Web site, deleting or distorting crucial information on issues from pay equity to reproductive healthcare. There's a long article about it over at Salon, behind the premium wall.

Bletch — Sat, 03 May 2003 16:35:40 -0800

"Orwellian, Dude!" Elusive, legendary author Thomas Pynchon resurfaces to intoduce a new edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four with a critical eye on the present. And finds optimism in the appendix.

The CIAs Animal Farm

Dreamghost — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 08:04:41 -0800

Many know about the WWII propaganda films made by Warner Bros & Disney. But few know of the CIAs efforts to produce Cold War propaganda films. Like this take on George Orwells, Animal Farm.

Orwell on political language

klaatu — Thu, 20 Mar 2003 04:38:00 -0800

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Words are to be likely casualties of the next few hours/days/weeks/months - time to double-check George Orwell's informative field medicine manual for the English Language...

Pigs Fly: Animal Farm Performed in China

namespan — Mon, 10 Mar 2003 15:57:12 -0800

Pigs Fly. Orwell is in the house in downtown Beijing: a theatrical production of one of his most famous works opened last November. It escaped the censors -- actually getting the approval stamp in three days -- though it was altered somewhat by director Shang Chengjun. [more inside]