War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

So wrote George Orwell in 1948 in his dystopian novel of the future, Nineteen Eighty-Four (which you may have thought was 1984, but it isn't).

Last week I heard another statement of the same sort. This time it spilled from the lips of none other than former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore:

"The freezing is part of the warming."

It's my new favorite saying. From mid-December until now, the water in our patio birdbath has been frozen solid most of the time. This may be normal in Kennebunkport, Maine, or in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, but it is not at all normal in Canton, Georgia.

The freezing is part of the warming.

Here are two more quotations from 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four:

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

Did you know that George Orwell wasn't his real name? (I'm speaking of George Orwell now, not Al Gore. Al Gore's name, as far as I know, has never been George Orwell.) Well, it wasn't. That is a nom de plume (a pen name, for those of you in the Central Time Zone).

His real name was Eric Arthur Blair, and that's okay. If Benny Kubelsky could call himself Jack Benny, and Archibald Alexander Leach could call himself Cary Grant, and Bernie Schwartz could call himself Tony Curtis, and Leonard Slye and Frances Octavia Smith could call themselves Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, I have no problem with Eric Arthur Blair calling himself George Orwell. At least he didn't change genders like Mary Anne Evans who called herself George Eliot, not that there's anything wrong with that.

This has been another rambling, meaningless post from your friend freezing friend in Canton, Georgia, Rhymeswithplague (nom de plume of Robert Henry Brague, Esq.)

And that is a good thing.

Or Double Plus Ungood, as the case may be.

All truths are equal, but some are more equal than others

Some guy named William Faulkner once said, "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

I agree.

That being said, I just discovered today, 43 days into this new year, Dave Barry's 2015 Year In Review. I recommend it highly for your reading edification and pleasure because not only has Dave Barry already won a Pulitzer Prize, he is probably on somebody-or-other's short list to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I jest.

But I do hope you will read and enjoy his take on 2015 because (a) it proves that sarcasm is alive and well, (b) we ought to be able to laugh at ourselves, and (c) some other guy named George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Some guy named George Orwell once said something sort of similar to the title of this post.

Figures never lie, but liars often figure

Continuing with our semi-non-indepth look at the U.S. House of Representatives, we now know (or we would if we read the preceding post) that the U.S. contains 435 congressional districts. According to the census taken in 2010, the official population of the United States was 308,745,538. But wait! (as they say in television infomercials) -- that figure includes the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), which is represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by a 436th member who does not have voting privileges. When the 2010 population of the District of Columbia (601,723) is subtracted from the national total, a new total for our purposes emerges: 308,143,815.

So then an “average” congressional district in the U.S. according to the 2010 census -- obtained simply by dividing 308,143,815 by 435 -- would contain 708,376 people.

However, there is no such thing as an “average” congressional district because the population of the United States is not distributed evenly across the 50 states (that is -- pay attention, you there in the back -- some states have more people than others). Also, the districts do not cross state lines. The most populous congressional district, the entire state of Montana, has 989,415 people. The least populous congressional district, the entire state of Wyoming, has 563,626 people.

Seven states in all have a single congressional district comprising the entire state. They are Wyoming (563,626), Vermont (625,741), North Dakota (672,591), Alaska (710,231), South Dakota (814,180), Delaware (897,934), and Montana (989,415).

Five more small states have only two congressional districts. They are Rhode Island (1,052,567), New Hampshire (1,316,470), Maine (1,328,361), Hawaii (1,360,301), and Idaho (1,567,582). So a current Rhode Island representative represents, on average, 526,283 people; a New Hampshire representative represents, on average, 658,235 people, and so forth.

At the other end of the chart are the most populous states, California (37,253,956 people, 53 congressional districts), Texas (25,145,561 people, 36 congressional districts, New York (19,378,102 people, 27 congressional districts), and Florida (18,801,310 people, 27 congressional districts).

Do the math. The average California congressional district contains 702,904 people; the average Texas congressional district contains 698,487 people; the average New York congressional district contains 717,707 people; and the average Florida congressional district contains 696,344 people.

In between the five single-district states and the four most populous states (which have 143 seats between them in the House of Representatives) are 41 other states with their own calculated “average” congressional district. For example, Georgia, where I live, had 9,687,663 people in 2010 and its number of congressional districts was increased to 14, giving us an “average” Georgia congressional district of 691,975 people.

Isn’t this fascinating?

What do you mean, you don’t think so?

Of course it is.

Because I said so, that’s why.

And I said all of that to say this:

What George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm is true:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

I (heart) Peggy Noonan

God bless her. Her column in today’s Wall Street Journal
says it better than I can.

Reading it brought to mind the famous essay “Politics and the English Language” that George Orwell wrote in 1946. Here is a summary, by Wikipedia, of George’s points. If you are interested, you can Google the title of the essay and read the whole thing for yourself.

The point of Peggy Noonan’s column is not President Obama’s policies or his appointees or even current attempts at health-care reform, the point is that if the values Americans have held dear for more than two centuries go to Hell in a hand-basket, language such as Peggy Noonan and George Orwell decry will be one of the reasons.

Maybe only former English or journalism majors really care. And just so you know, the way to tell whether you are a former English or journalism major is to read Peggy Noonan’s column and see whether it brings to mind the famous essay “Politics and the English Language” that George Orwell wrote in 1946.

As undoubtedly another former English major once said (and if he or she wasn’t, he or she should have been), “Eschew obfuscation; espouse elucidation.”