June 25, 2006

Big Brother is watching you. The man who brought a new paranoia to generations of readers, author George Orwell, was born on this date in 1903. In his two most famous novels, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Orwell writes of what happens when leaders run amok with too much control. In the first, a barnyard of animals flee human control and take over a farm; the pigs treat the other animals worse than the humans did. In the second, a totalitarian government controls people's thoughts and deeds, claiming to know what is best for its citizens.