Ponies For Everyone

October 28, 2010

Is it wrong to promise a child a pony to get her to calm down before surgery? An anesthesiologist posed this question to The New York Times’ Randy Cohen in a recent installment of Cohen’s column “The Ethicist.” Cohen responded that, unless the anesthesiologist had a stable full of ponies he was ready to part with, it was indeed wrong to make such empty promises. The same lesson applies to …

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A 100-Year Promise (Picture Frame Not Included)

September 3, 2010

Not long ago, I paid $25 at an antiques store to buy an old $1,000 bond that now hangs, framed, in our office in Scarsdale, N.Y. The beautifully engraved bond was issued by the Lehigh Valley Terminal Railway Company, a newly organized subsidiary of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, on Oct. 1, 1891. It recites that the railroad “acknowledges itself indebted to the bearer hereof in the sum of One Thousand …

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