Ken Martin's Blog

In solemn warning: "Two women in the house, and one of them a red-head."

Indeed.

It was pretty funny to watch my site statistics take an abrupt drop mid-Friday. It's vacation time!

I worked a half-day yesterday, and in the morning the roads were wide open. Always a sure sign of a holiday weekend or a state employee strike. But I ended my half-day in Chaska, about 30 miles from home. I gave the pressmen a chuckle as they weren't used to a designer's client who knew what to do with a loupe. I took secondary freeways home, mostly Hwy 13, and made great time through my old stomps. And as I passed over I-94, I saw an absolute parking lot. Packed!

An hour later we were on our way to see Anna's ballet program and it was still packed. It turns out there was a reason beyond the sheer volume of people undergoing ritual holiday city evacuation:

The accident [on I-94] happened when the container truck hit a retaining wall on the right side of the roadway, ricocheted across three lanes of traffic and struck the median barrier, McDermott said. The truck jumped the median into eastbound traffic, and the front axle was torn off. The axle crashed into a Coca-Cola semitrailer, which caught fire.

From The Pioneer Press this morning

That must have been exciting to drive immediately behind. Can you even imagine the concentration of grumpiness and sullen injustice over those preceding many miles of I-94. Many of these folks taking a half day, running home to get the boat, the wife, and the kids (in that order) and "hitting the road early to beat the traffic". Foiled, hot (it was very uncomfortable yesterday) and left burning up their too expensive gas going nowhere. For hours. Because of one truck driver. I hope he didn't have a heart attack or anything. But I shudder to think of the mob judgement that would have been meted out had it been discovered that he was just IM'ing on his mobile phone.

But, me? I'm happy as a clam. Well, happier I hope, as I'm not consigned to spend my life sitting in cool murk until someone comes along and rips my mouth open for a tasty treat and a chance at a prize; nature's original Cracker Jacks. Instead, I get a nice long weekend. I do have a little work to do, and I'm teaching on Sunday, so there's some studying to do. A little home improvement. A little Greek. Should be a good weekend.

Here are my hints for a nice Independence Day weekend:

• Don't say "fourth of July". Say "Independence Day".
• Watch Mel Gibson in The Patriot to get a little feel why the above might be proper.
• Otherwise, have the TV off.
• Read 1776. It's truly fantastic.
• Go see some fireworks. It's a light bug year.
• Eat a lot. Fat tastes good.
• Sleep late. Unless you work for any retail outlet I might like to visit, in which case you'd better be there on time and you'd better be cheerful.
• Listen to Johnny Dollar. No, it has nothing to do with the American Revolution, but I'm addicted, so you may as well be, too.

I know my readers include both those who will yawn at this as old news, and those who've never heard of such a thing, but in the spirit of flickr.com, del.icio.us and similar "social" web offerings, I went ahead and started to set up a LibraryThing account.

Pretty neat stuff. You're able to have a very nice catalog of all your books, and you can cross-reference with the other members of LibraryThing, seeing who else has that obscure "Gospel Worship" by Jeremiah Burroughs, and then browsing their library for similar books you might find interesting.

Also, the site uses keywords (or tags) instead of as well as categories, which means where a book may fall under one major category, you may think of it in more than one context. For example, a book on Fort Sumter may be rigidly classified "history", but I can keyword it "history, South Carolina, Places I've Visited", "American Revolution" and find it more easily in the ways I think about it.

I can use a barcode scanner (which I got off eBay for less than $20) to enter books into it with one swipe. (The barcode scanner also works with nice, non-web-based software like Books.)

Anyway, visit and peruse the beginnings of my library. It's fun. Many of the books that I've entered are actually books that I've packed away (there were entered by Kenny before they went into the box) so they're not necessarily my favorite books, but it's still kinda fun.

Or so it would seem from my site statistics.

I enjoy having a decent little flow of visitors to my little site, but what is really weird is how many people find me while searching for "novovirus". Seriously. like over 35% of folks who wander in - new, non-repeat visitors from every corner of the world - come here for that. And I made one post commenting that I thought I had it at one point. (I probably didn't, by the way.)

Anyway, here's a little something for all you wanderers searching for a little info (since I really have none):

• wikipedia.org
• cruise ships

And good heavens, I am (as of writing this) the number one result on msn.com searching for novovirus!

Funny what one whiny little blog post can do.

This article has some interesting tips for being a better and more productive designer. I especially like tips 12, 15, 21, 24, 28, 46, and 48. And my favorite: "09 TAKE A SHOWER".

President Bush recently signed an executive order: "Protecting the Property Rights of the American People." I'm glad to see property rights re-affirmed, but I wonder if it will have any real meaning or effect. As far as I can understand what I'm reading, it's meant to make sure property is not taken "merely for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties to be given ownership or use of the property taken," which is very good, but that's not really the state of the debate anymore.

The debate has shifted away from "public use" to "public good" and saying that public good can be the benefit the public can gain from increased property taxes available to a city if land is redeveloped. This topic became a big deal nationally in the Supreme Court's "Kelo v. New London, Conn." decision, which allowed such a taking, but also reinforced a state's right to be more restrictive in what's allowed.

This prompted many states including Minnesota to reform their eminent domain laws. This reform was helped along by a surprisingly diverse coalition of people and political groups called Minnesotans for Eminent Domain Reform. And reform was passed this year on May 15th.

All that said, I just wonder what's behind an Executive Order on the topic. Maybe it's the explicit instruction to the Attorney General to pursue it? Anyway, it just caught my eye as we had seen that Vadnais Heights willing to consider using eminent domain to acquire some family property recently. Have you ever had to deal with eminent domain?

Update: Oh great. It appears that my state Senator Mee Moua (District 67) and my state Representative Sheldon Johnson (District 67B) both voted against it. Sigh. And here I was giving the needle to "What's Left of Maplewood" for actually being left of Maplewood. Look at me, the lonely conservative on Saint Paul's East Side. Is there an emoticon for self pity?

I'm going to write them both to ask why they opposed it.

Bedtime. We were trying to encourage Jack to not drink all of his "nighttime" water at once. Nevertheless, slurp, slurp. slurp. "Jack... save some for later!"

"But, it's like meth!" he pleaded.

Like meth. Bwaaaahahaaa!

There are billboards around which scared Jack that show a woman's portrait before and after meth addiction. The "after" shot is pretty bad. Eventually the kids asked why people would put up a billboard like that, so we'd explained that meth, like some other drugs, can make people really want more once they have some.

Apparently, like water.

When in Sioux Falls last week (which I'll be posting about later), I had a chance to sit down with Dr. Thompson of the North American Baptist Seminary. We had a very nice conversation over a very nice mocha. One of the things we talked about was a document that he co-authored callled "Re-Envisioning Baptist Identity: A Manifesto for Baptist Communities in North America." It starts out in part: > We are writing to ask you to consider the following theological proposal. Baptists in North America have long been fragmented, and far too often the fragmentation has been for most unworthy reasons. In the contemporary theological milieu, many Baptist theologians have remained timid about stepping forward to make constructive theological proposals. Even criticism of the status quo popular theology is either excessively muted, or so heavily ideological that it seldom gets to the heart of what the Baptist theological heritage has stood for. > > For too long Baptist theology has railed against Catholics, Anglicans, Campbellites, and Methodists, not to mention liberals, fundamentalists, pedobaptists, holy rollers, or whoever are identified as the current "bad guys" in other churches or theological camps. But Baptist theology ought not to be against the church. Baptist theology needs to be for the church and the gospel in a hostile world. It's an interesting document and asks Baptists to consider how to balance the tension between the individual believer's ability to discern truth and follow conscience, and the value and authority of the Church over history and the community of believers studying together to discovery truth. I also think it touched on ecclesiastical matters, but I tend to think along those lines. Anyway, it was a public document, so I am taking the liberty to offer it in full here; just follow the "read the rest..." link below. I'm curious what you think of it. Later, I will direct you to what some others have thought of it.

I seem to have drawn a little more attention concerning my recent comments on political movings in Maplewood, MN. A blog has appeared yearningly named: "What's Left of Maplewood". (I do actually like the play on words from the apparently "progressive" blogger.) Why does the old shop-worn idea of tax/spend/regulate get called "progressive"? Marketing, I guess. Anyway, this blogger said something plain wrong about what I'd written. That's too bad, though it hints to me the strength of their position. Their blog writes of little 'ol me: > This blogger from Saint Paul [Ed: that's me!] is mostly complaining that the newspaper researched the background of interim manager Copeland (a Republican activist), but did not dig into the background of various Democrats/progressives who were quoted speaking in support of Mr. Fursman or criticizing the new council at the meeting. His complaint is bogus. The background of a completely unknown person who has just been made the executive in charge of the city is 100% newsworthy, and the sort of thing we Maplewood residents wanted and needed to know. My complaint, far from bogus, is plain and obvious. They "did not dig into the background of various Democrats/progressives". Just read the article. They didn't. My first post found that fact and the tone and language of the article odd. My second post suspected it may be on purpose, and gave reasons. Also, the "mostly complaining" comment is wrong in that I did not complain at all that Copeland drew fire, and it was much more than just the perceived imbalance that I was "complaining" about. Now, if Copeland is "completely unknown", then he's not much of a "Republican activist", is he? But of course he was not a completely unknown entity, as the East Side Review's reporting found out. And if the blogger would do me any justice at all, he would have noted that I didn't mind that Copeland got coverage, as I'd written...

Do you have any idea what Google could end up knowing about us?

They offer free web searching, free email, free calendars, free spreadsheets, free word processing, free mapping... and we use them! A lot! And soon, Google Payments.

So what does Google get for this? Ad revenues, to be sure. But what they really get is information. They can know what you email about, when you've got plans, where they are, if you know how to get there, and soon what you spend money on. This plus whatever they glean about you by scrounging the web in general.

I dunno... no news here, I guess... just strikes me as awesome, kinda in the old fashioned scary sense.