Mark Twain: you can chat or light out for the territories, but you can't do both. (AP)
I can't help but wonder what Samuel Clemens would have done with the live chat format. Even better, imagine him on Twitter. He probably would have gotten nothing done, endlessly distracted by the ability to propagate instant snark across the globe. Ah, Mr. Twain, you died too soon. Please come back on the next comet.
Cliff, Jay, and I probably will not live up to the Great Writer's lofty standards (see A Connecticut Yankee for Twain on baseball), but we will be trying our best for a curtain-opening, barn-raising, rip-roarin' first chat of 2011. Please join us on Wednesday at 1 PM for your questions answered as best we can, following his example. As he wrote in Life on the Mississippi, "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."