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 #MarkTwain #AmericanCynic #GildedAge #NikolaTesla #Satire #Humor #HistoryPodcast #CrankyCynic #ClassicLiterature #StandUpComedy #AmericanHistory #Geek #GeekHistory
-https://youtu.be/WAcuUZk5FQg
+{{ youtube>WAcuUZk5FQg |America’s Sharpest Wit and Greatest Cynic Mark Twain teaches us to laugh at the absurd}}
+==== Mark Twain "The Great American Cynic" ====
+Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835, he died in 1910, better known his pen name Mark Twain has been called "the father of American literature"
+When I mention the name Mark Twain, childhood classics probably come to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), often called "The Great American Novel".
+Twain was raised along the Mississippi River in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.   "Mark Twain" is a nautical term that means the second mark on a line that measured depth, signifying two fathoms, or 12 feet, which was a safe depth for riverboats
+==== As a role model, Mark Twain is perfect for our journey as the Cranky Cynic. ====
+Some things never change... "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed." -- Mark Twain
+Twain loved science and technology and really was a geek at heart.
+Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.
+We will talk about Nikola Tesla in future episodes.  Tesla was good friends with many famous people such as Mark Twain and loved to share his party tricks and experiments with his famous friends. Tesla was an entertaining guy, he had cool party tricks, he invited the rich and famous back to his lab so he could shoot lightning bolts at them.
+Twain actually patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" to replace suspenders and a history trivia game. Twain's most commercially successful invention was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use.
+Twain was an early proponent of fingerprinting as a forensic technique, featuring it in a tall tale in Life on the Mississippi (1883) and as a central plot element in the novel Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).
+Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) features a time traveler from the contemporary U.S., using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of historical manipulation became a trope of speculative fiction as alternate histories.
+King Arthur according to medieval histories and romances, led the defense of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries.
+Mark Twain has been called the greatest humorist the United States has produced. He was in great demand as a featured speaker, performing solo humorous talks similar to modern stand-up comedy.
+Like modern stand-up comedians, Twain used storytelling wisdom and humor to poke fun at the government and politicians. I call Twain "The Great American Cynic" because his book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is a cynical look at post-Civil War America and really defines our mission as the Cranky Cynic to poke fun at the absurdities of life to see things differently.
+It satirizes greed and political corruption in post-Civil War America ridiculing Washington D.C. and many of the leading figures of the day.
+The name the "Gilded Age" meant that the period was glittering on the surface but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the late 19th century was a period of greed and guile, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, and scandal-plagued politics.
+The Gilded Age in America was based on heavy industries such as factories, railroads, and coal mining. During the Gilded Age, American railroad mileage tripled between 1860 and 1880, and tripled again by 1920, opening new areas to commercial farming, creating a truly national marketplace, and inspiring a boom in coal mining and steel production.
+Thanks to Twain the term "Gilded Age" became synonymous with graft, materialism, and corruption in public life and is commonly used in United States history to describe the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900.
+Twain lived in the ago where modern technology was being created, and this quote by Mark Twain hits on many of the topics we will cover in our journeys of the cranky cynic:
+// It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit, and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.//
+Twain's use of the "Gilded Age" makes him, without a doubt, our hero as "The Great American Cynic".