shelbinator.com

Is this thing on?

Welcome to another edition of the Georgia Blog Carnival! My name’s Shelby, and when I’m not contemplating ritual suicide in an engineering lab at Georgia Tech where a PhD continues to elude me, I’m one of your local citizen journalist types who currently contributes to MTV’s Choose or Lose election coverage (and puts the rest of the scraps on YouTube). This blog is where politics, technology, and new media collide from time to time.

But enough about me, you’re here for the carnival, right? Right.

On the Inside…

Here in the Bible Belt, it’s perhaps unsurprising that people are blogging about faith and other such spiritual introspection.

A local pastor over at Provocative Church is not surprised that in our community, as people navigate the “rat race…at nearly 120 miles per hour with their hair on fire,” the most common cry he hears is “I’m not connected!”

Over at Bebe’s Blog, she contemplates a much more peaceful path…toward martyrdom, and what that means to her Episcopalian faith in Baptismal Vows.

But if you overthink these things, you could fail to connect the dots; our hostess with the mostess Elementary HistoryTeacher explains how a little education can actually cloud issues over at Inspired Scripture on Got Bible?

And spirituality aside, you can find inner peace with some good old fashioned philanthropy, even if it takes a babe like Natalie Portman to catch your eye; Lain Shakespeare at the Wren’s Nest wants to know what else inspires you to give.

…On the Outside…

Maybe you’d rather just find respite in the great outdoors? This handy No Budget Travel blog points out that there are 13 parks in Georgia alone for which you can snag cheap or free passes.

Y’all Come Geocaching points out that they’ve got an outstanding award-winning scenic location in their Ellijay neck of the woods. Ha! Woods! Get it? Sigh.

If you don’t want to stop and enjoy the sights, you can try racing your way through some orienteering, though Felicia at Fluffy Flowers managed to snap some pics anyway.

Apparently you can learn a lot in the great outdoors, as the aptly named Learning in the Great Outdoors carnival tells us, courtesy of Alone on a Limb.

And remember, when you’re enjoying nature, take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints…and just recycle it — Patchwork Reflections reflects on our trash.

…to the Lighter Side…

Maybe all that outdoorsiness is too much effort and you’d rather just kick back with a book. John at Grasping for the Wind reviews Blood Ties by Pamela Freeman and finds a pretty good epic fantasy.

What, you don’t like reading? Well bless your little heart! Felicia of Fluffy Flowers walks us through that delightful Southern insult. But she’s not one to shun the written word, and keeps jotting down every stray creative idea with Dr. J and the idea notebook.

It’s important to practice your writing, too, lest you accidentally compare the well-organized state of Florida to the male genitalia in front of a classroom full of 10-year-olds; Alone on a Limb can only say, Whoops!

…and the Underside…

Ah, politics, the ugly underside of civilization, particularly around these parts.

On the really ugly side, mob rule overtook justice in 1915, and an historical marker has finally been erected to remember the lynching of Leo Frank, as Elementary HistoryTeacher recounts on My Mind is on Georgia. She continues the thread at History is Elementary with some thoughts on Sins of the Fathers.

Paw Paw Bill contemplates the bumpin’ ugly side of former Governor Spitzer, among other things, in Deceit, Lies and Politics, after speculating about Hillary’s potential comeback and the possible return of another would-have-been-president.

On the other side of the aisle, where the sex scandals are more interesting, The Other Athens bids Goodbye, Farewell and Amen to a very sex-scandal-free Mike Huckabee and falls in line behind John McCain. On the local level, James points out, “mainly to annoy the progressive types,” that Georgia is among the best managed states in the union, and then reminds us that there’s a whole mess of good upcoming speakers to address the UGA College Republicans.

One of those progressive types James likes to annoy is the terribly cute but fiercely determined nonprofit lobbyist, Sara, and he should feel really bad about his ilk banishing her ilk to the Sad Side of the Capitol. Apparently, as Ashes and Glass informs us, that is what some of the Repubs call the side of the building where there are not bluegrass bands and tasty spreads of lobbyist-bought food, just the underdogs fighting an uphill battle to protect our water, air, human rights, and other defenseless things.

But sometimes the fight doesn’t cross party lines. Inside the Democratic melee, Andre at Georgia Politics Unfiltered wonders what motivates an attack on Congressman John Lewis. Apparently Rep. Lewis switched his superdelegate vote too late.

Outside of such epic political battles is the mundane business of laying roads, ’cause somebody’s gotta do it — and it’s a lot more popular than light rail around here. The Georgia Road Geek does some sniffing around and thinks that US-411/GA-20 could become a freeway from Rome to I-75.

…and finally to my side

I’ll take a point of personal privilege to highlight some local posts that I’ve enjoyed reading lately.

Makin’ babies? If you are, Kate has compiled a random list of pointers from the first year of motherhood.

Too geeky for baby-makin’? You should’ve been at the Computation+Journalism Symposium! Mostly Media brings you some video highlights for indie media newsers.

Rusty at Radical Georgia Moderate brings some Yankee attention to a Georgia blog when his profanely-titled blog post got scooped up on the New York Times’ “related posts” feature, discussing the Florida / Michigan primary kerfuffle. Awesome use of Blogrunner!

Sara at Going Through the Motions discusses the media and political implications of bad eye makeup, and I was surprised to realize I never noticed such things. You women, so tough!

And to toot my own horn for slappin’ this together, I direct you to a video montage of protesters outside a recent visit by John McCain, demonstrating that McCain may succeed where Bush failed miserably at being a uniter, not a divider.

Tune in next time

The next episode will be hosted by Paw Paw Bill in two weeks. The last episode is over here, and the full archives are here and here. If you would like to try this hosting thing, get in touch with Elementary HistoryTeacher by emailing gamind -at- mail.com. And if you want to start submitting posts for next time, for the love of God, use the official form!