Conversations With Satan and Mark Twain

Mark Twain may be dead, but he's still publishing books.

"You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd 'literary remains' and 'unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted."

When Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author.

Now, published for the first time in book form, are twenty-four pieces (picked by Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley) as Who Is Mark Twain?

The collection includes "Jane Austen" where he wonders if Austen's goal is to "make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters." "The Privilege of the Grave" offers a powerful statement about the freedom of speech while "Happy Memories of the Dental Chair" will make you appreciate modern dentistry. In "Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture" Twain plasters the city with ads to promote his talk at the Cooper Union (he is terrified no one will attend). Later that day, Twain encounters two men gazing at one of his ads. One man says to the other: "Who is Mark Twain?" The other responds: "God knows—I don't."

"A man’s brain (intellect) is stored powder; it cannot touch itself off; the fire must come from outside."   — Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebook

Happy 445th Birthday

And is this how Billy looked at age 14?

Record Store Day is April 18

Remember records? LPs, albums, vinyl, 45s, 78s, singles, cardboard covers...

I do. I have half a storage room of them and I still own a turntable to play them. I keep hearing that they are "coming back" but I doubt that rumor, as wonderful as it would be.

So, vinyl is endangered - but so are the stores that sell vinyl and ANY form of music that you buy and hold in your hands rather than download.

The original idea for Record Store Day came about in 2007 as a celebration of the unique culture surrounding over 700 independently-owned record stores in the USA, and hundreds of similar stores internationally.

This is the one day that all of the independently-owned record stores come together with artists to celebrate the art of music.

Special vinyl and CD releases and various promotional products are made exclusively for the day and hundreds of artists in the United States and in various countries across the globe make special appearances and performances.I found out about it in an email from Bruce Springsteen. Well, not personally from Bruce, but from BruceSpringsteen.net. Columbia Records has produced a 7" vinyl single, with collectible photo insert, available only on Record Store Day for Bruce's "What Love Can Do" from Working On A Dream and "A Night With The Jersey Devil" on the B side.

Record Store Day festivities include performances, cook-outs, body painting, meet & greets with artists, parades, DJs spinning records and on and on. Check out your local stores and BUY something vinyl or otherwise.

Definition: For Record Store Day, they define a record store as a physical retailer whose product line consists of at least 50% music retail, whose company is not publicly traded and whose ownership is at least 70% located in the state of operation. In other words, real, live, physical, indie record stores—not online retailers or corporate behemoths.

Opening Day at Yankee Stadium

Today is the home opener at the new Yankee Stadium. Yankees vs. Cleveland at 1:05 PM.

The first game played at the stadium was a pre-season win against the Chicago Cubs on April 3.

The new Yankee Stadium cost $1.5 billion making it the most expensive sports venue built in the USA.

It replaces the team's historic and beloved 1923 stadium. While other new ballparks have been smaller (more "intimate," they say), the new stadium is 52,000-seats with an exterior modeled after the original stadium.

The Daily News is offering online some Yankees history including a story titled "First Game at Yankee Stadium; Yanks open new park by beating Red Sox, 4-1; Greatest crowd ever applauds "Babe's" Homer" dated April 18, 1923.

Let your computer desktop look good with some free classic Yankees images collected by The Daily News.

Mantle

Makes A Rutgers Alum Proud

With 1,052 students and community members decked in the infamous red stripes, Rutgers University nearly doubled the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the most “Where’s Waldo?” characters gathered in a single place.

It's not a National Championship. It's not a Nobel Prize winner. Hmmmm...

I will say that attendees at the event had to either have a children’s book or $5, which will be donated to the literacy effort in the New Brunswick school district.

All record-breakers were given an authentic Waldo hat, stripped shirt and black round glasses provided with the assistance of RutgersYOU.com, a student leadership project. After the event, students filled the streets of New Brunswick in joyous revelry.

Need more details? Daily Targum

Is Social Security A Ponzi Scheme?

I was listening to the podcast of NPR's "Planet Money" this week and on the episode about savings (3/30), economist Kent Smetters started talking about Social Security.

When you think about the fact that Social Security does not make any real "investments," but just collects money from workers (its "investors") and uses it to pay the investors who got in earlier... does that remind you of anything else recently in the news? (Clue: Madoff)

Can Social Security keep adding enough new investors (my sons) to continue paying returns to the earlier investors (me and my mom)? It seems pretty evident that at some point the Social Security scheme has to fail.

Now, a Ponzi scheme pays returns to investors from their own pool of money, or money paid by subsequent investors. There are no actual investments. It's pay—as—you—go.

Social Security paid very nice returns, especially to the earliest investors. Here's a nice little piece of SS trivia. Did you know that the first person to get a check from the new "national savings plan" was Ernest Ackerman? He was a streetcar motorman and he retired one day after the program went into effect. He had five cents deducted from his check for that one day he was a 'participant' in the program. He received a lump sum payment of 17 cents. That is a 240% return.

In 1939, a bunch of changes came to the program. People were thinking of this as a a "retirement system" (a dangerous concept that will eventually doom the system). The government moved up the start of monthly payments by two years.

According to Social Security Online, the first monthly Social Security check went out on January 31, 1940. The recipient was Ida May Fuller, a retired legal secretary from Vermont. Her check was for $22.54. After cost of living increases and 35 years of receipts until her death in 1975, she had received $22,888.92 in payments. She had contributed $24.75 to the system.

You figure out Ida May's return on investment. It makes Chuck & Bernie's schemes seem like a lousy investment.

By the way, I thought that this Social security as Ponzi scheme idea was an original thought of mine. Nope. Do a search. Lots of folks have been talking about this for a lot longer than the past few months.