Posted by Jock on June 14, 2006 at 14:49:00 from 81.76.86.2 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Milk In Tea posted by Peter Roche on June 14, 2006 at 13:56:44:
I followed the link provided by Mark Dudley and discovered that all this research was prompted by George Orwell's centenary. Dr Stapley, MA, MEng, PhD, AMIChemE, MIFST, spent two months studying such questions as India or China, cup versus mug, as part of research to mark the centenary of the birth of George Orwell, the author and celebrated tea drinker. Now I've long been fascinted by Orwell and see parallels with 1984 in surprising places. So much encouraged, I typed 'George Orwell' to see what the search engine would find.
This lead me to a great George Orwell site right here. I particularly liked the note that the text on the site is protected by Copyleft (emphasis added). Clicking around on this site lead me to this absolutely brilliant piece of fan fiction. Here is a short extract.
Winston’s head was beginning to swim. “Independent?” he stammered. “The Party allows private businesses?”
“It started when someone at Minitrue, I think his name is Bartlett Roget, discovered that fully half of all the telescreens in operation at the time were non-functioning, and another fourth seriously degraded or compromised.”
“I never heard.”
“Not surprising,” the girl said. “Imagine if word had got out that so many people were unmonitored. Scary to even think about!” She shuddered and resumed shooting the new telescreen with her bullets of light. “So comrade Roget realized that certain functions of the government were just too crucial to be handled with such inefficiency, things like armament production, tax collection, and, especially, surveillance, and couldn’t be entrusted to --”
Good isn't it? Of course, it couldn't really happen. Follow the link below for the complete story.
(I wonder if AR appeared on Orwell's contoversial 'writers blacklist'?