Good authors too who once knew better words,
Now only use four-letter words writing prose,
Anything goes.

The world has gone mad today,
And good’s bad today, and black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos.

So though I’m not a great romancer,
I know that you’re bound to answer
When I propose, anything goes.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking.
Now heaven knows, anything goes.

And good authors too who once knew
Better words, now only use four-letter words
Writing prose, cause anything goes.

The world has gone mad today,
And good’s bad today, and black’s white today,
And day’s night today,
When most guys today that women prize today
Are just silly gigolos.

So though I’m not a great romancer,
I know that you’re bound to answer
When I propose, anything goes.

May I say before this record spins to a close,
I want you to know anything goes.

Well, OK, but I’m not that Ken Martin, and though I’m sure he’s a perfectly fine fellow, I don’t agree with him that there should be a constitutional amendment like the one his group is supporting. In fact, I think it’s a dreadful idea. Please, vote no for the “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment”.

I’m tempted to rant… sorely tempted. But I promised myself I’d keep this short. OK, I’ll try the constraint of bullet points:

• Let’s keep our “how government spends money” questions out of the constitution and in the legislature. That’s where government is faced with all the needs and must draw up a budget. Doing this constitutionally feels like an end run around representative government.
• “Yeah, well they did it!” Yes, others have pulled exactly this shenanigan, but I don’t accept that excuse from my kids, and none of us should accept it as a basis for creating public policy.
• I don’t trust a movement that talks all about “clean water” and then has 19.75% of the funds going to “the arts and cultural heritage fund”. You want to clean the water? Go clean the water. This is the hackneyed old political shell game… and a little for my friends to get this passed.
• Only 33% of the funds actually go exclusively to clean water.
• It’s a 25 year tax hike. Hello? A tax hike. I don’t really want to increase the “Minnesota Taxes” portion of my family’s budget. Certainly not in times like these.
• It’s a constitutional amendment. Hello? OK, that’s basically the same as my first bullet, but does anyone get this? If you’re unhappy with this choice - if it turns out to be a mistake - what will you do about it? Replace your legislator? Tough cookies… won’t work. Nothing will work! That’s why you shouldn’t make it a constitutional amendment.

Look, it’s a good idea to have clean resources. A very good idea. But there are a lot of very good ideas. It’s a good idea to help disadvantaged folks. It’s a good idea to make sure folks are educated. It’s good idea to have excellent law enforcement. It’s a good idea to replace the carpet in the capitol once in a while. So what we do is we get all the good ideas together and prioritize and find out which ones we can afford. We hire and pay for legislators for this very purpose.

My guess is folks behind this initiative have tried that, and have constantly missed the “cut”. And they’re just trying to find a way to get this thing - what they think is a good idea - done.

Don’t vote for this. If you care about this, you make your legislator pay attention to them and support them, but don’t support this practically irreversible end run around how we as a people prioritize our resources.

Ken looks like a nice guy (all of us Ken Martins are), and he’s done a nice job on the web site (I look at such things). But I just disagree with what he’s doing. This particular Ken Martin in Minnesota urges you to vote “No” for the “Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment“ on Tuesday.

28 minutes. I’m OK with that.

UPDATE: Here’s 10 reasons to vote “no”.

UPDATE: One more link with nice, balanced pro and con information.

Back into the van and away we went. 700 miles yesterday, and about 500 miles today. We should be at grandad’s in the late afternoon. Maybe we can even go swimming when we get there. We grabbed a Starbuck’s in downtown Louisville and we were on our way.

This leg didn’t quite go as swimmingly. The six bladders-on-board were nowhere near as resilient or synchronized as the day before. So more stops. And this was the mountain leg of the driving, which always takes longer.

And we had another last-minute waypoint in the works. Helen was hoping to meet up with a friend who lives in North Carolina. A few emails and phone calls were exchanged as the morning went on on we had a plan. So we typed the new destination into the borrowed Garmin nüvi and it led us on our way. Though the distance was little different than just going straight to my dad’s, it was slower going because of the smaller, winding roads and 30 mph zones as we moved through the small towns. But, man… it was lovely. We ended up going through a bit of Virginia, which I’d never seen before. Wow.

Well, we were making our way - slower than I wanted, but it was OK. But there was a flaw. I tend to be a bit of a ruthless packer: I don’t want to haul extraneous things around. Well, I misunderstood something about the borrowed nüvi. I left the auto adapter at home because I already had a USB auto adapter. Mistake. While it can be charged via USB, it will not operate while plugged in to USB. So I had to charge it, then use it, the see “OK, I have 50 miles before the next turn” and charge it for a while. Monkey business. And part way through Virginia, it ran out of power. I’m in Virginia for the first time and the GPS that took me there is dead. Ken gets grumpy.

I had a paper map and finally figured out where we were. Helen called her friend and figured out where we should be going (enough time had passed that plans had to change). We finally made our way to wide, fast, and welcome I-77.

As a side note: I really like paper. I mean, I love my gadgets - computer, iPhone, GPS, etc. - but paper is so much nicer and more convenient and “information dense” than a screen. (For the geeks visiting, yes, that’s a very Tufte-esque observation.) A paper map shows so much more in such a small space… layers and layers of information. I love paper maps.

Anyway, the evening approached and we accomplished our rendezvous with Helen’s friend a bit north of Charlotte. They hugged and and spun (see photo on bottom) and gabbed, while I enjoyed the entertainment inside the Outback:

Henry at the Outback

Friendly waiter, but not very satisfying food. I’m 0-2 on culinary satisfaction so far on this trip.

Back on our way. We approached Charlotte. On a number of levels, I always love seeing “Billy Graham Parkway” on a street sign. I know my way by heart from here, and we rolled in to grandad’s place sometime around 9:30. Get the stuff in and the kids to bed. Day two done.

Driving totals:

Ken: 1,200 miles

Helen: 0 miles

The Large Hadron Collider is intended to collide a bunch of particles at about ~99.99997% of the speed of light, thus reproducing conditions quite close to the moment of the Big Bang. Some folks are concerned that doing so will unleash tiny black holes which will interact with Earth’s gravity and grow in size until we are annihilated. Which would be a drag. More on that here.

I thought this was funny, though… one paper is cheering “Success!” because the machine got switched on and we’re still here. But the experiment that could make the little black holes won’t actually be run until October, and actually maybe not even for a year, as they slowly ramp up to full power.

Although the big switch-on took place today, the first high-energy collisions are not due until October 21.

This is nice, but not really “success” in the “see, we didn’t destroy the world” sense.

I thought this was pretty good…

The CERN team insist the project is safe.

Well, if they insist it’s safe, then they must be right, right? But aren’t they running the experiment because there are things they don’t know but want to? Ah, nevermind. Anyway, as long as it’s all worth it…

They say it could even help to bring massive benefits, such as a cure for cancer and solutions to nuclear waste and global warming.

Haaa ha ha… doesn’t that sound like a line from the Simpson’s or something? The only things missing are world peace and ED.

They added that if it does actually turn out to destroy the Earth, they will issue a formal apology and form an inquiry to examine what went wrong.

OK, I made that up.

No, I’m not really worried. I’m just impressed by the vapidity of the ‘pat-pat it’s OK, dear… now run along’ infomercial-style reporting. (Reminds me of Mark’s writing in That Hideous Strength)

Thought for the day: This machine and its experiments are costing somewhere around eight billion dollars. Eight thousand stacks of one million dollars. I know “governments” funded this, but they get their money through taxing people and their companies. Best possible “public good”?

I’ve had all sorts of things I wanted to post, but wasn’t sure how to organize it, so I’m just going to start and see what happens.

I got to leave work the Friday before with that great “the desk is truly cleared” feeling. We had a little too much to do over that weekend, but we got things together pretty well, and Monday morning before 6am we were on the road, and were well into Wisconsin before the sun was actually up. Great start.

I’d loaded up the iPhone with History of Christianity I from Reformed Theological Seminary on iTunes U - awesome stuff - and that kept me occupied while everyone snoozed away the morning.

Our goal was to get to Loiusville, KY where we’d find a room for the night. We were making great time, until…

Helen had a plan. And as the morning progressed and emails were exchanged, we found that we had a stop to make. Near Chicago.

The Martins Invade Jellyfish Labs

Yes, Jellyfish Labs, where Phil Vischer (creator of Big Idea… think Veggie Tales) is building a wiggly Jellyfish army with which he’ll rule the world. Actually, he’s building Jellytelly.com, a Christian, internet-based media network for kids. Excellent stuff, well done, and with a little humor for the grown-ups thrown in. (See jellyfishland.com, too.)

Post-Jelly Naptime

We left saying “That was so GREAT!” about a million times, and then everyone fell asleep again. (Well, except for me. Mostly.) And we made our way to Loiusville. We got there a bit later then we expected and got a couple of rooms at the Fairfield Inn on the north bank of the river, where the nice desk clerk worked hard to get us a good rate. I ran over to McDonald’s to get us some passable burgers and way too many fries (what was I thinking?) and off to bed. So ended day one.

Driving totals:
Ken: 700 miles
Helen: 0 miles