Beryl Wajsman describes a discussion with a reporter who asked him if he was against peace. Then she asked him if he was a Jew.
David Foster
Inflation and Interest Rates
Most investors and analysts seem to have concluded that inflation is not a serious problem, and that long-term interest rates will stay low for a considerable period of time. (The 10-year Treasury rate is now at 4.696%.) Writing in Financial Times (9/21), Joachim Fels, managing director and chief global fixed income strategist at Morgan Stanley, argues that such thinking is incorrect.
WWII Bombers on Tour
The Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour is now in progress. B-17 and B-24 bombers, joined in some locations by a B-25, are now visiting airports throughout the northeast and mid-atlantic states. You can visit the airplanes for a small donation, and for a substantially larger donation, you can actually take a ride! If the tour is coming to an airport near you, these planes are well worth seeing. Schedule here.
As a corrective to any excessive glamorization of WWII air combat, I recommend the air force poems of Randall Jarrell, a major American poet who served in the Army Air Forces during that conflict.
Important–Please Read
Once again, I am reminded of W H Auden’s lines:
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help, and no help came
Kobra Rahmanpoor, an Iranian woman in her mid-20s, faces imminent execution by hanging. She was convicted of murdering her mother-in-law; however, she says that it was a matter of self-defense, and that she had previously been abused by both her mother-in-law and her husband.
Here is the eloquent plea of Kobra’s father:
Like Swimming in Glue
The Washington Post has a really depressing story on the status of the program to issue unforgeable ID cards to workers at ports and other key transportation facilities. President Bush signed the worker-ID program into law in November 2002 as part of broader maritime security legislation. The program would streamline checks of criminal-background files, terrorist watch lists and immigration status for designated workers, and cards would be issued using biometric data to prevent anyone other than the cardholder from using the ID. Homeland Security officials initially told port operators that they expected to begin initial issuance of the cards by the end of 2003.