Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for December 29, 2011

1984? Interesting choice of books, Sergio! (Also, one of my all-time favorites.)

Meh, Theres not enough competence in the world to make that one a reality

I never had to read that in high school, but a few years ago, my 9th graders were complaining about it, so I read it. Hated it. Most disappointing ending ever! (FYI, I don’t teach English)

SOPA instead of SIPS. Also have you had the pleasantry of encountering the well dressed border guards. Armored jack-boote

Reminds me of all the vatos failing Spanish becausethey think, Grammar is an elderly, female relative.

In George Orwell’s book it was some unseen bueracracy that controlled our actions. We have something even scarier now. Ourselves!

If anything like Orwell’s vision comes true — I used to think not, but some trends are ominous — it won’t be because of some shadowy conspiracy from one end of the political spectrum or the other, or the triumph of evil multinational corporations, or anything of the sort. Rather, we the people will eagerly vote it in, and embrace it with both arms, even as it puts its chains on us..We’ll do it because we’re scared, and it will offer stability, and structure, and security against chaos. Our own hard-wired human nature — demanding to avoid risk at all cost, and to choose short-term gain over long-term loss — will all but guaranty it. You want a precedent? Think Germany in 1930, and what it produced..Sorry for the pessimistic note to close out an already bad year…I’d genuinely welcome a good rebuttal.

Tech’s advances combined with capitalistic initiative have given us cell phones that report on THEIR location at all times; satellites to pinpoint; data-base shuffling…totally one-sided distraction in our electronic entertainment…modern banking(ho ho) so as far as PRIVACY, it’s an outmoded concept UNLESS you step off the grid. Leave your cell(nice name, eh? your CELL, like in prison?) and your phone sometimes.

Live where there isn’t any connection. Move to an under-developed country, colonize and help them upgrade…up to a certain point, tech is GOOD.

It’s all in your mind’s attitudes: you exist, therefore you can be observed. The observing predators, those who collect the taxes and will swoop on you if or whenever you have stepped over whatever lines they have drawn, will do what they do. You must become truly human and live your life as your own, as a cockroach does, not knowing nor caring, really, about what the GREATER POWERS are about. What you do with your experience is what makes you truly human and more consciously so…or just a member of a penned demographic.

Hauled in for waterboarding? what could ‘they’ learn that they don’t ALREADY know? Live your own life.

If you ever become a THREAT, it’s the same as it always was: the Innies will strike back, so what? that’s the game.Ignore THEM and do YOUR thing.

Hey! how did we (? ME?) get off on ‘1984’ and such stuff?

I like reading aloud, and will listen to others, although it’s been years since anybody else ever read to me.

Read 23 novels one winter to a glorious woman who had the class and wanted instead to practice her couture skills…she made me some wonderful shirts and some outstanding slinky-man pants…anybody want to be read to?

One of the basic premises of 1984 was that only governments could afford computers and the complex information systems they make accessible. He never envisioned the possibility that there would be information terminals in homes (computers and pads) and pockets (phones). After carefully studying Orwell’s opinions on politics and society, I think he’d be optimistic about social networking but alarmed at the laws waiting in the wings to allow government/corporate control of the internet, like the Stop Online Piracy Act aka H.R. 3261).

Interestingly, the Spanish-language version of this strip also has Gracie referring to “Idioma Inglés”, and Sergio is reading to Baldo en Español…

The problem with today’s government is that when they make a mistake you will pay for it. They are by definition “infallable”

Don’t forget that the computer is a two-way medium, and individual users have to take active steps to protect themselves from outside monitoring. Same goes for pads and smartphones – the smarter the device, the easier you can be tracked.

I read 1984 in high school. Read it to the family (kids in college, but still at home) a year or so ago. It is hard to not be pessimistic when I understand what the world must like in order for the end time prophecies in the Bible to come to pass. If one can’t buy or sell without the mark of the beast, that seems to indicate a one-world government and one-world monetary system. Back when I was a kid, credit cards were pretty new, so cash & checks were the primary way to pay for things. Now with the widespread usage of plastic, and they’re trying to move us to use smartphones instead, think how much easier it would be to prevent people on their blacklist from purchasing?

Back to the point of the comic strip, we homeschooled our sons until they entered college, and I read lots and lots of books to the family. Family discussions often centered around the book we were in the process of reading, and created tight family bonds, instead of each person doing their own thing all of the time. Novels by G.A. Henty, Brother Cadfael & Sherlock Holmes mysteries, novels by Joel Rosenberg, and many others were enjoyed by my guys. So much so, I was often begged by them to keep reading, instead of putting the book away. Great way to stretch vocabularies, use their imaginations, and help them to understand what it was like during various time periods &/or the reasons behind the wars.