Ken Martin's Blog

What was once called selfishness is now called fulfillment.

I do accept honorary memberships. :)

Keith Ellison is the DFL-endorsed candidate for Minnesota's Fifth District congressional seat. Do not vote for him.

Ellison has been the subject of pretty intense scrutiny over at Power Line, and in my opinion, that's a very good thing. Power Line seems to be doing better investigative reporting than either of our local newspapers.

Sure, I can pretty much be counted on to prefer that a democrat doesn't get voted into any particular office, but the thing that bugs me is when standard media outlets don't seem to pursue investigating all sides with equal vigor (as regular readers already know).

One tiny little thing about Ellison's speech quoted today at Power Line which made me want to post was this (the context is the alleged unfairness of prosecuting "Kathleen Ann Soliah"/"Sara Jane Olson" for her involvement in a fatal bank robbery among other things):

The idea that the people who want to prosecute Sara Jane Olson have, well,they have a "June Cleaver" concept of what women are supposed to be about. They have a "June Cleaver" idea that Sara Jane Olson, women in general, were supposed to be in the kitchen cooking -SOMETHING. Right? And are NOT supposed to be engaged in political protest, laying out political thought, and certainly not breaking out of some concrete stereotype or image that they had. In the 60's, when we fought for public housing: housing for people to live in, not shanty shacks or sugar ditches, and ghettos in Detroit, Chicago, so on.

Good heavens, what obtuse rhetoric. Interestingly, "political protest, laying out political thought, and [breaking out of concrete stereotypes and images]" weren't on her indictment. "Conspiracy to commit murder, possession of explosives, explosion and attempt to ignite an explosive with intent to murder" were.

Call me a prude, but I hold to the high example set by June Cleaver that not carrying and using explosives and not intending to murder people is good.

What could possibly be Ellison's point? Let's (painfully) grant that all her causes were noble and her heart was pure as the driven snow. Should she not have been prosecuted?

Anyway, that speech alone would cause me to run looking for anyone else to vote for, regardless of party. But if you're interested enough, the other Ellison posts by Power Line reveal someone who really wants to distance himself from his not-so-distant past views. And apparently our local newspapers are willing to help.

Ellison's probably a perfectly nice guy. And he is out there in the public arena trying to get done what he thinks should get done. I always think a level of respect should always be given to those who take on public office - even if I disagree with them - and so I tip my hat to Ellison for being in the game. Even though I hope he doesn't make it to the U.S. House.

And from a tech perspective, he has a good web site; standards-compliant and it looks like it was made with Adobe GoLive. :)

And though I'd urge you to consider Alan Fine for Minnesota's Fifth District congressional seat instead, I gotta say the code behind that site makes me cringe. Microsoft Office indeed! {shudder}

Big weekend. Replaced a bathroom faucet. Visited a family birthday party. Then spent about twelve hours at my Mac working on various projects. And finally, many are drawing to a close.

But in the midst of my busy weekend, I still had time to notice that our home is becoming a nature center. Well, it was actually last week I woke up to this baby robin hanging out at the dining room window (click for a bigger view). What I couldn't catch with the camera was Mama Robin bringing baby a worm. That was pretty cool. The baby was too young to be nervous about being near a Human's house, but Mama was definitely uncomfortable.

But big deal, right? Robins are all over the place. True, but bunnies aren't. Well, at least not out in the open taking a nap. He came out at bedtime last night and just sat there. I was able to take this picture by creeping out of the front door. He saw me and didn't even care. We wondered if it was the same one Kenny used to chase around and around the house when he was little. Probably not - that was about six years ago - but it brought back a fun memory.

OK, fine... bunnies are not exactly novel city creatures, either. Well, my favorite of the weekend was discovered Saturday morning when I woke up. I was clicking away at the dining room table, when I looked over and saw this fellow. Yes, a goat. I've heard his little bleats floating around, but I've never caught a good look at him. He's new to the neighborhood. A little mexican lady came over and tied him to the tree in our boulevard for a snack. He's their pet. There's a little kid in their family who came over and bugged it for a while. I kept hoping the goat would get fed up and bite him. Or I was going to have to. I've never understood kids who were unkind to animals; portends bad things. Anyway, to my disappointment, no one got bit.

As I was driving in to work today, I remembered that I'd sprayed some weed killer over there. I was wondering if I should tell them, but their english is poor and I wouldn't want them to think I disliked having the goat on our boulevard. Then I thought a sign might do the trick. Symbols! International!

What would I do? I thought "well, a goat with a circle slash for 'no goat'... that's good... and then a skull and crossbones for 'poison'". Then I realized that would look like "if you bring your goat here I will kill him".

So I'm not doing the sign.

It's been a tough one. It started last Saturday with a nasty sunburn earned by finishing up the garden area fencing. That was sore for a few days. Then Monday night while working on my web site it went down. Shortly afterwards a powerful, exciting thunderstorm blew through. I assumed they were related.

Tuesday came. Yes, 6/6/06. No, I don't put anything into that date. Came in to work to a broken water main having flooded the basement. Later, my boss's email went down while she was out of town. Then another employee's email for a different reason. The I find out that my blog being down was just the symptom of my provider (and friend) having lost his server to a hard drive crash. I stopped by and helped him for a few hours. We decided to rebuild using Apache instead of WebStar.

The next days were a blur of working my regular day job, working on building a new server remotely, and occasionally seeing the visiting South Carolina Martins. Little sleep. Lots of stress. A handful of big, tough deadlines looming.

Well, it's almost over. The day job deadlines have largely been met. The server is running (as you can see), though it's not complete yet. I have a bunch of catch up work to do for past clients. Looks to be a weekend in front of a screen. But forecasts promise rain, so it won't be bad to hang out inside.

Matter won.

I was out doing yardwork all day Saturday. Barefoot. Why wreck my shoes, I thought. Feet clean easily.

I had been gathering up scrap wood and twigs into our little copper fire pit and I finally decided to set it aflame. Everything was burning nicely, but I needed to tend it occassionally[1]. At one point I came in close to pick up a branch which had fallen out. I stepped on something with the foot I was leaning in on. Well, I had been stepping on things all day and usually just a little twist of the foot will relive the pain until I can shift my weight and pick up my foot. I shifted. It hurt more. And more. OW!

Well, I hadn't stepped on stray twigs or pebbles as I had thought, but rather a few burning cinders. Oh man.

It wasn't too bad and it doesn't hurt anymore, but what a surprise! It funny how benign hot cinders look in the daylight.

I guess I need to go to school.

[1] Whew. I almost split my infinitive.

But how nice to log in after my long absence and see a comment from the mayor of Maplewood on my post giving the business to the East Side Review for their coverage of recent Maplewood events. Well, I have some things to say about that and a couple of other topics, but I'm not blogging any more until I contact my mom, whom I didn't call on Mother's Day. Oh, I'm so bad. Guilt!

So until I've met my Official Offspring Obligation, adieu.

Another great class. Pete took us through an overview of "all" the verbal moods (well, the major four plus infinitive) to help us settle in on what the subjunctive mood was about. Good stuff. I'll probably turn some of it into a PDF soon. (Done. See "update" below.)

I tore right through my first reading/translation verse of the night. Bam... nailed it. Yeah, I know, big whoop. Well, it is to me. :)

Doubling up on chapters again next week as we careen toward the end of the semester.

###Homework

• Read chapters 32-33
• Vocab for both (trivial)
• Wkbk: Parse 1-5 for each chapter
• Wkbk: Try to translate 1-5 for both (at least do 1-5 in 33)

###Preview

• What is infinitive and how is it formed
• Five ways infinitive is used
• What is imperative and how is it formed
• Understand 3rd person imperative
• Five ways of saying "no" in Greek

###Recommendations

• P. H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT
• J. H. Elliott, 1 Peter, Anchor
• J. R. Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC
• E. G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter: The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes, and Essays

###Audio!

Well, I initially did this for Nichole, but now that I've done it I think I'll probably listen in again to a few parts: audio files! I recorded the class in three parts available here as MP3s: instruction, homework, reading. Please only download if you're really going to listen. My server space is gratis and I don't want to abuse the privilege. I only wired Pete, so you can barely hear our quesionts and comments, but that's probably for the best, and his stuff is the good stuff anyway.

UPDATE: Here's the Greek Verb Moods chart Pete made and was talking about during the "instruction" part of the class (mp3 available above).

I was out with all the kids, shuttling Anna to her ballet class, and since I'd overslept, I didn't have time to make the morning coffee. I decided to swing into Java Drive, mentioned before in my post lamenting Caribou Coffee's poor decision in changing their mocha recipe.

Anyway, The very nice girl there always knows what I want: a cheerful "the usual?" Yep, big mocha. Today, however, I pulled up to ask if she took plastic as I had no cash. No, she only took cash and check. "But if you just want to pay me next time you're by, I'd trust you."

Funny how such a little thing can make my day. It felt like stepping back from the contrived barriers of corporate policy into a time which perhaps never actually existed where business was something that simply happened between people.

The old, long-time hardware store below Anna's ballet school which closed down a few months ago has reopened under new management. I went in a bought a few things I marginally needed to support the local, non-big-box shop.

The old one went under because it opened a branch in a mall near Mendota Heights, but it couldn't support itself and leached money from the successful Saint Paul location until, apparently, things got too bad. It was sad to see it close. It's nice to have it back.

I appreciate and use the services of huge corporations who, because of their resources, have the ability to develop products of vast scope. But I sure do like small businesses where you're just that much closer to the people who had the passion to start the business in the first place.

In the car I heard a commercial for a Bible with study notes - like a Life Application Bible or something. During the commercial they said something like "over 10,000 notes make God's Word relevant!" Oh, puh-leeze.

Let me thank the note writers on God's behalf for going that extra mile and filling in the gaps, finally making His Word relevant. Yeah, it's the notes.

News flash: It was and is already relevant. It's not His Word that's lacking.