Slashdot Mirror
Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait
Hugh Pickens writes "The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. 'He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,' says Shelden. 'He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.' Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
For all I know Alan Turing was great at water polo, my point is that it is irrelevant.
There's no reference to water polo in his biographer's homepage.
Most probably because his prowess was such that any mention would steer the biography away from the purely "math guy" approach.
If you don't like the country you're a citizen of, move to another "better" place. Of course, there in lies the rub. Most people LIKE where they live, when compared to other places. And even while complaining they don't like it, they aren't willing to move to somewhere else because they see it as the best place there is.
And wouldn't it all be great is we lived in one big happy world, without petty dictators and/or ObamaCare, Bush's war on terrorism, or whatever it is that ticks you off this week.
The problem is, when you think you can tell someone else how to live, you just done to the world exactly what you don't want done to you, that being others telling you how to live.
This is true patriotism: that I want the best for the country I've chosen to live it. And if that makes me a scoundrel, then so be it. Wearing a flag or whatever doesn't make one a patriot.
But neither does putting your left hand over your heart when you pretend to salute the flag (as Obama did). What it does do, is make it clear you might not be a patriot when you either ignorantly or purposely reject customs of one's nation.
It would be simply better if you don't participate in ANY customs at all, and at least be consistent. but that would mean you couldn't bow before foreign leaders because THEY expect it either.
Patriotism helps defines a nation.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.