Wrap your head round this one, Doctor Freud

This morning I awoke with a start from a dream in which I had been tricked into going through the extensive appraisal and interview process for a job as a management consultant. And they wouldn't let me leave. It was horrible.

People I have spoken to this week

The man who signs all the banknotes, and: a man whose job title is "managing director of Chaps". Attention all chaps: this man is your boss.

Variations on a theme by James Cameron

Theme: The Terminator. You've all seen it - computer becomes self-aware, decides that humanity is a threat, tries to wipe us out, sends a robot back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance. Great film.

Variation 1: The Italian Terminator. This is a short story by Primo Levi, published in "The Sixth Day" and called "For a Good Purpose": once the European telephone network passes a certain level of complexity it becomes self-aware and decides to make Italian men call their mothers more often. Great story.

Variation 2: The John Buchan Terminator. 1917. Locked in a grinding, bloody war on two fronts, the German General Staff hatches a Fiendish Plan: take Russia out of the war by sending Lenin back in time to 1905 (in a sealed train, "like a plague bacillus"), in order to ensure a Bolshevik success in the 1905 revolution, creating anarchy and chaos in Russia and ensuring that, twelve years later, the country will be in no state to participate in the Great War. Naturally, British Intelligence gets wind of the Fiendish Plan and sends Richard Hannay back in time to stop him. This book has yet to be written (by me).

Variation 3: The Japanese Financial Regulatory Reform Terminator. This film really exists. I quote: "When inventor Mariko Tanaka (Hiroko Yakushimaru), who works for Hitachi appliances, accidentally re-engineers a washing machine for time travel, the Japanese government then convinces her to go back in time to prevent the passage of a fictitious law that would prevent the usage of real estate as collateral for loans, which was a major cause of the bursting of the Japanese asset price bubble." Further variation ideas, please.

Bad news for freelancers and children

There is a single-character Chinese word, yù, that means "to sell your children during a famine". Arguably more depressingly, this character also appears in the word "yuwen", which means "to write for pay".

A real headline

SEC Charges New York Hedge Fund and Wall Street Professionals in Galleon-Related Enforcement Action

Aharrrrr. This must be why they calls it "offshore finance", me boys.

A bright cold day in December

A Christmas Carol and Nineteen Eighty-Four are actually disturbingly similar. Both of them have 'everyman' heroes who are not particularly sympathetic; Winston Smith is an unambitious civil servant, no close friends, no real interests; Scrooge is, well, Scrooge. Notably, they're both standoffish misanthropes - they both pretty much despise most of the people they meet, namely because both Scrooge and Smith think they are more intelligent than the proles they pass in the street and the clerks they meet in their offices. They are each, as far as they know, the only people in the country to have seen through the propaganda and emotional manipulation surrounding Big Brother's Ingsoc ideology or the terrible sentimentality of the Victorian Christmas.

But they're not completely selfish or actually evil either. Scrooge does, after all, give Bob Cratchit the day off - with pay - for Christmas (though he moans about it first). Winston Smith helps out his neighbour Mrs Parsons with plumbing repairs. They're not very good company, but Ebenezer Scrooge and Winston Smith are both basically honest citizens. You wouldn't buy Scrooge a drink - he wouldn't want it - but you'd trust him to look after your money. You'd probably trust Winston Smith, too.

But, unfortunately for the two heroes, both of them give vent to their weird and anti-social beliefs. Winston Smith's scribbling of "I Hate Big Brother" in his diary is matched by Scrooge's outbursts that Christmas is "humbug" - a word that's lost its meaning nowadays, but which, in Dickens' time, meant, literally, high-minded and hypocritical nonsense used by the bossy to bring other people into line. A public school master exhorting his boys to work hard for the honour of the Old School is producing humbug. Big Brother and the whole cult of personality in Airstrip One is also "humbug" in this sense of the word.

Neither of them, importantly, go any further than words. Smith does not want to overthrow Big Brother. Scrooge, like the good, tolerant man he is, doesn't want to stop anyone else enjoying Christmas if they want to - "Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine," he tells his nephew.

The only crime of both Smith and Scrooge is one first named by Orwell: thoughtcrime. And both men suffer the same terrible penalty - heralded, in both cases, by the appearance of someone they regarded once as a friend, who has now become an agent of the enemy; O'Brien for Winston Smith, Jacob Marley for Scrooge. They are abducted and terrorised by enemies with an appallingly detailed knowledge of their lives; it seems that both Scrooge and Smith live in a panopticon state. Threats of physical force (well, if someone suspended me high over London by no very obvious means and made it clear that it was only him keeping me from falling to my death, I'd feel threatened) are coupled with brutal psychological warfare.

Climactically, both men are threatened with a penalty worse than death, again best named by Orwell as vaporisation. Not only will they die, but they will be blotted out. Scrooge is terrified by the vision of his rooms emptied of all his possessions, and an oblivious replacement occupying his office; while people still remember his name, they don't mourn his death. Smith knows perfectly well what vaporisation of a thought criminal involves - in his work in the Records Department, he's helped do it himself.

And both men eventually crack under this overwhelming pressure. The last scene of both books show the heroes, now broken men, submitting (with the aid of alcohol) to the forces of humbug. They now comply instinctively with the ruling ideology, and even take pathetic pleasure in demonstrating their loyalty at any opportunity. Tears running down Scrooge's face, he realises: "But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Christmas."

Keeping an eye on things

Tension mounts in the Korean Peninsula in the wake of the artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island. Russia's Far Eastern Command has gone on alert. The US Navy is unloading tanks and loading missiles. South Korea has promised to meet any further attacks from the north with overwhelming force.

Meanwhile, in the Hermit Kingdom itself:
Kim Jong-Il is Looking At Things

Worth noting

"NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life."

Commentary here - the speakers are: a biologist who's written about life on Mars; an oceanographer who's written about exotic photosynthesis; an ecologist who specialises in tracking biologically necessary trace elements; and a scientist from the Cassini mission's Titan team.

This all looks rather interesting.

Ahaaaarrr!

I suspect that reading this link may make James want to become a pirate. It does me, a bit. A rich cargo, me lads!

Conspiracy of the Fire Cores

Previous Weird Lists:

WW2 bomber names
Causes of death in 17th-century Cumbria
Names of the children of a 19th century vicar
Insults used by Captain Haddock
Names of guest publications on Have I Got News For You

And now for something completely different:

Summer Entropy Commandos
Summer Tranquility Disturbance
Conspiracy of the Fire Cores
Morning Sabotage Group
Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
Happy Sleep's Apostates
Nikola Tesla Commandos

This is a bit easier than previous ones, but: guesses, and suggestions for reuse, in the comments, please, or click here for the answer and lots more.