Dark Pool: Where has all the Money Gone?

      Ponzi schemes are amazing. Some are barely legal because they 'sell' a 'product. You've seem them - send $5.00 for this kit and we will show you how to make thousands, all you have to do is have four friends sell this kit to four of their friends who sell to four of their friends who sell...Well you get the idea. Each person who sells something below you ends up sending you a piece of the pie. Man on top reaps huge benefits, man on bottom loses shirt. Some schemes are illegal - send one dollar to the first name on this list of four names, take that name off and yours to the bottom, pass off to ten of your friends and pull in the dough! Then some are not only illegal but downright evil - invest with me and I will make you 30% on your money for as long as you stay. The owner of the scheme makes off with all the dollars and you get left with nothing but foreclosure notices.


       So is it any wonder that someone would latch onto this and write a novel with a Ponzi scheme in the center? But with the novel Dark Pool by Helen Hanson there is a wicked twist. Not even the man who created the scheme has the money! Where is the money? What does some kid who just spent six months in jail for hacking have to do with it? Is the man with Alzheimer's faking it because he knows about the money? Should Maggie trust the luscious Russian who just moved in across the street or is he there to kill her?  Meanwhile, across town, Kurt Meyers has to find the money O'Mara has stolen from people investing in his Ponzi scheme but soon finds the Russian mob breathing down his neck.

On Becoming Twain

Lighting Out for the Territory:

How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain

by Roy Morris, Jr.

Simon & Schuster, 2010

America Collection

ISBN: 978-1-4165-9866-4

ISBN 978-1-4165-9867-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4391-0137-7 (ebook)

 Available from Amazon

There are lots of books about Mark Twain, about his travels, his lectures, his short stories and books, but this one has an added element.  Roy Morris, Jr is, in addition to being a biographer, a former news reporter, and an author of 5 other books about the Civil War and Post-Civil War years.  In fact, there is another book about Clemens, by another author, published in 1998 with the same title.  This one, however, has more of the historical context of the times, especially the Civil War influence on Clements' life.  Morris also attempts to identify the facts by checking other historical sources, because so much of the Clemens mystique came from the “stretched” stories of his life found in his autobiography and writings.

Morris is able to present clearly the background against which Samuel Clemens' life was lived.  His most formative years were the ramp-up to the Civil War, where even in Hannibal, Missouri, the battle lines were beginning to form, folks were arguing hotly about the issues, some even sparking violent confrontations.  When the war finally arrived, Clemens was a riverboat captain, suddenly facing the possibility of having his boat or  his person, or both, commandeered to serve either side in the fray, which was a terrifying thought for someone really not cut out for politics or soldiering. He headed West.

When Optimism Isn't Enough: Pink Ribbon Blues

Pink Ribbon Blues:  How Breast Cancer Culture Undermines Women's Health

Gayle Sulik

Oxford University Press, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-19-974045-1

402 pages

Gayle Sulik's Blog

Available at Amazon 

Pink Ribbon Blues is a difficult book to read, but I'd like to see it become required reading for any student in sociology. Gayle Sulik has taken some brave steps to bring into focus, not only a sacred cow, but the elephant in the room -- corporatization reaching even into one of our most well respected charity organizations.

Every chapter has well-researched and copious footnotes. For those of us used to reading books that let us look through someone else's eyes and hear the stories of individuals told, it does seem a bit on the cold academic side, but the picture that emerges as the book goes on is far more chilling. I believe all the documentation in this case is critically important, because when an author takes on a non-profit not only with some serious political and socially well-connected associates, but with a host of high-powered corporate sponsors and donors, she needs to have her facts straight.

Pink Ribbon Blues describes an environment that is disturbingly similar to “regulatory capture,” a situation in which corporations become very close to those who regulate them, in an attempt to keep from being too closely watched. The increasing popularity of the highly visible “Race for the Cure” and the “pink ribbon culture” that it has spawned, provides a platform, as well as a huge potential market, for corporate, medical, and pharmaceutical interests. It seems that “pink ribbon culture” may be slowly mutating into a culture that could be harmful to patients and survivors of breast cancer.

The Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles

The Values of Harry Potter: Lessons for Muggles (expanded edition)

by Ari Armstrong

Ember Publishing, Denver, CO - 2011

Author's website

Available at Amazon

Warning:  If you have not read all the books, there are major plot spoilers, so you might want to at least see the movies first if you prefer to be surprised; that will also help to fully understand all the points made in this book.

Much as I hate to admit it, when the Harry Potter books came out, I had my nose deep into hard sci-fi books, and was steadfastly ignoring anything that could have been classed as “fantasy.” For me, the first mention of Harry Potter was in the trailer for the first movie. The books “from across the pond” were wildly popular in England, and even before the movie was in theaters here, fantasy fans in the US were out there standing in long lines at the bookstores whenever a new book arrived.