There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery. - George Washington

Propped up in bed one night, falling asleep I watched a locally produced program about Rosedown Plantation. The research was good and the staff seemed to have a clue.

As promised, the tale of my journey.

By the time we'd packed my life up into my Rodeo, it was already 10. Six lanes per side of AZ 60 becomes a two-lane road as we enter the Superstition Mountains. C shoots out the window, her iPod playing modern country.

Battle is a timeworn metaphor best used to describe actual warfare.  Particularly bad examples are “War on Terror”  “Mother of all battles” and the host of battle metaphors used in sports.   Obama is not at war with the oil spill.  For all his writing skills, Obama has failed to capture the moment.   There is no fighting this oil spill.  There is no capturing the leaking oil.  The solution to the oil spill is more akin to surgery and intensive care.   

Stephen Hawking has done more to bring the universe into focus than perhaps any scientist in history.  While Albert Einstein became a caricature of himself, often blustering about how God Does Not Throw Dice, Hawking quietly (and correctly ) replied:  "Not only does God throw dice, he throws them where he cannot see them"  Hawking gets a lot of fawning press asking many irrevant questions, but this squib on abcnews made me smile.

The deluge of information available on the Web has made the country ungovernable, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra is born to a Syriac Orthodox family in Bethlehem in 1919, into a strange amalgam of cultures, speaking the language of Jesus Christ. He would become the finest ambassador of his time between the Arabic and European worlds. Novelist, poet, translator, sculptor, painter, art collector, playwright, critic -- his talent, politesse and erudition crossed all boundaries. He represented a more hopeful world, a world that is gone: a world which will not soon return.

The latest Weekly Standard features a squib by Fred Barnes titled: He’s No Henry Clay: The president’s aversion to compromise.

Barnes has mustered up a marvellous example. It works rather better than he wishes.

What if this is all so much farting and hissing for the benefit of the public, especially the Taliban? Karzai, like most politicians, only utters something when it serves his best interests.

Précis: Tom Hanks has been lionized in Time Magazine as America's Historian . He has also become the latest target of Right Wing anger for remarks concerning American racist attitudes directed against the Japanese during WW2. Here is what Hanks said:

Honor is rare enough among today's Conservatives. So few of them served in war. The wars they've fought have not gone well and their historians fallen into disrepute for rah-rahing those wars. It has all been seen before.