Misc.

Breaking a twenty seven year diplomatic freeze between Iran and the United States the President of Iran wrote an 18 page letter to the US president, proposing “a way forward” and ideas “to move beyond” the current stalemate over the future of Iran’s nuclear energy program.

The letter was passed from the Iranian foreign minister to Sweden’s ambassador to Tehran, who then delivered it to US officials.

Within hours of news of the letter becoming public, Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice said the letter “changes nothing”

“The question here is “what has the hundreds of billions of dollars, spent every year to pay for the Iraqi campaign produced for it’s citizens?”

As your Execellency is aware, in some states of your country, people are living in poverty. Many thousands are homeless and unemployment is a huge problem.”

– excerpt from the letter

He questions how Bush’s Christian beliefs reconcile with having other countries attacked and thousands of lives taken- here is the link to the letter at CNN

This is my attempt at planking the hull. I learned much about what not to do next time. I found a good book on the subject the other night at my local hobby shop – Planking Model Ships by Richard Mansir. Wish I had read it before starting.

Here is the model after I sanded, filled some cracks, and started on the second layer of planking. The instructions that came with the model called for some strange “alternate” method that had the second planking running verticle not horizontal. I though – umm never saw a ship or boat with planks running that way. So it may be a mistake but I decided to run them horizontal. After measuring I should have enough wood strips to complete this – fingers crossed.

Next is the deck planking. If I ever figure out the crazy translation from Italian to English I may make it to the end.