
From Toronto Life: “Elaine Hoffman, a 71-year-old grandmother, sat in her suburban Indiana home and turned on her computer. A banner ad caught her attention: its claim seemed unbelievable — that she could make money with the click of a mouse. Hoffman knew her way around investments. She had a math degree and had worked as a financial planner before a liver transplant forced her to retire early. By keeping abreast of the markets and investing in stocks and bonds, she’d built enough of a nest egg to ensure that she and her husband would be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Still, she was curious about the ad. When the video ended, a phone number appeared on her screen. Hoffman dialled it and was soon speaking to a man who worked for an operation called Glenridge Capital. He explained tha Glenridge was an investment service that offered clients a way into the lucrative world of binary options trading.”
Mark Twain’s books may have been comedies but his life was a tragedy

From The Atlantic: “Ron Chernow’s new book Mark Twain forces us to a conclusion about its subject: he was clearly an idiot, and a born sucker. This conclusion will shock anyone who knows Twain only through his writing, in which the author is wise and witty and, above all, devastating in his portrayal of frauds, cretins, and sententious bores. In life, Twain was quite different. He was gullible, emotionally immature, and prone to shoveling money into obvious scams. He was also struck by a series of family tragedies that would have been unbearable even for a much less self-destructive man. The Twain of the printed page is irreverent and quotable, but the private Twain is petulant, self-pitying, narcissistic, and afflicted with tragedy and misery of his own making and of God’s. Mark Twain is funny. Mark Twain is funny the way the Book of Job is funny.”
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