Susan's making me post, so here it is.

If you're ever looking for new authors, you could do much worse than checking out John Scalzi's Big Idea posts.

I just finished reading John Dos Passos' USA trilogy. (The 42nd Parallel, Nineteen Nineteen, and The Big Money.) I first read these for a history class in college and fell in love with them. I figured it was about time to reread them.

They're a mixture of contemporary headlines, stream of consciousness autobiography, biographies of contemporary public figures, and the stories of several characters as they live from the turn of the century up to the late 20s. The story of the USA is also told by those characters' lives. They go from small town rural kids to sophisticated, trendy urban dwellers playing in the stock market, and their development tells the same story of the country.

I really like these books, but then again I have a thing for the literature of the 20s era. Also, I'm fascinated by the first three(-ish) decades of the 20th century. That time seems to me to have been a fork in the road of American development. Things were bad for lots of people: working conditions were pretty miserable, poverty was rampant, economic recessions were commonplace and bad; and yet, there seems to have been a real sense of optimism among people. People seemed to believe that if everyone just got organized and put their minds and their backs into it, they could make the world a better place. Reading the biography sections of people like Eugene Debs is always inspiring. However, with the New Deal co-opting much of what these people were agitating for in order to take the radical edge and energy off the popular movement and then, World War II, the emphasis seemed to have changed from making the world better for everyone towards everyone getting their own house in the burbs with a white picket fence. I have to admit, I do wonder a bit how things could have turned out differently.

But no matter what you think of my ramblings, the books are worth reading.

Via Ken MacLeod, here's an interesting article on the WPA.

I just finished reading Anna Funder's Stasiland, which I learned about from Charlie Stross, and it was an unbelievably good book.

The GDR seemingly took to Stalinism with the zeal of a religious convert and completely outdid its parent state in creating an Orwellian surveillance state. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union had one KGB agent for every 5800 people. The GDR had one Stasi agent or informer for every 63 people. If part-time informers are counted, it was one informer for every 6.5 citizens. Everyone was under observation by the state.

Stasiland looks at what living in such a society does, both to the watched and the watchers, and how people have dealt with their roles in such a society now that it no longer exists. Funder does this by letting former East Germans tell their stories, whether they were imprisoned or whether they worked for the Stasi. It's almost unfathomable, what it must have been like to live in the GDR. Funder pretty much sums it up at one point: "Relations between people were conditioned by the fact that one or the other of you could be one of them. Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existance."

Once the Wall came down, and Germany was reunited, Germany took the step, which apparently no other Eastern Bloc country has taken, of opening up the Stasi files to the public. Individuals are allowed to see their files with names of third parties redacted, but with the real names of Stasi agents and informers who observed and informed on them. I cannot imagine what this does to a society, much less an individual, to know which of your family members, friends, or coworkers spied on you and to also know that these same people are still in positions of authority. After the files were opened up, even Erich Honecker and, apparently, Erich Mielke asked to see their files.

This book was infuriating, heartbreaking, and inspiring. It sounds cliche, but it was a good reminder of what people can do to each other in the name of ideology, and for any sane state, it should serve as a warning of what not to do.

OK, this is pretty good. A flickr pool of Far Side reenactments.

Here are some good ones:

What dogs hear.

Midvale.

Cat Fud.

This is the best description of the current administration's economic theories that I've heard yet:

The president and his advisers seemed to believe that tax cuts, especially for upper-income Americans and corporations, were a cure-all for any economic disease—the modern-day equivalent of leeches.

Why are they making a sequel to Repo Man?

We had a raccoon on our deck in the middle of the night last night, hanging out and eating acorns. It was cute and all until Otto spotted it and proceeded to bark for hours at it. Silly obsessive wiener dogs.

We started our fall garden cleanup today. My big accomplishment was cutting down and digging up a tree in our front yard that never did well, and my  back is constantly reminding me of today's work. Stupid getting older. The good thing is that beer is a pretty effective muscle relaxant, so that helps.

Our beds always look so barren when we prune things back; however, we've got a lot of bluebonnets and larkspur beginning to sprout, so if they make it through the winter, our spring garden is going to look really nice.

If you're looking for a new SF author to pick up, you should do yourself a favor and check out Tobias Buckell. I'm wrapping up his second novel, Ragamuffin right now, and it's a good read. You can even read sample chapters of it and his first one, Crystal Rain at his site. So you don't have to take my word for it. You can head over there and check out his work before buying it.