lowcountryblogs

Traffic court

Chip has some questions:

How, if no one argues the case against you to a judge that isn't present to hear the case in the first place, can you be found guilty? What brand of justice is this? Why are judges setting fines? How many other times has this happened? (Another thing- this is the 2nd time that I've had a court date where the judge was out of town- don't the judges make the schedules?)

Looking around

Well Jared, is it time to take it out of The Map Room and onto the stage?  American Idol will be here August 18th.  LinkCharleston has details.

Wondering where to fuel up on Biodiesel?  GoGreen knows where to get go.

Millions of peaches?  YDPC says:

The souffle right now is Carolina Peach with bourbon caramel. Did those peaches really come from SC or GA? Not sure. The purveyor ain't saying and this year, because of that freeze in April, I ain't being picky. GA/SC: same thing. Any other year, those would be fighting words.

Still, Margo has a recipe for peach cobbler to share.

JanetLee has her nose in a book, better make that several.

So, what is special about the Francis Beidler Forest?  Also, look for details on an upcoming photography contest.

Want to hear from an insider about working for Google?

Binding Ink has an article from Randy Gilbert: Adding Mystery to Your Life.

Sopranos of a different sort

Many Charleston residents have been focused on Spoleto, but a few bloggers have questions about last night's Sopranos finale.

Rev. BigDumbChimp had some predictions.  How accurate was he?

Cold Coffee and Facials
Agricola

Around the blogs

Need a kitten fix?  Head over to Margo's. 

JanetLee has an update on "the feud."

Have you slept in a wigwam lately? Ever?

Do you have an opinion on Google's Street View?  Is it an invasion of privacy?

Did you catch this spelling blunder?

Does anyone really believe Geoff has learned his lesson.  For you really sensitive types out there, I've found Blue Lizard Sunblock is amazing, but you have to request it from the pharmacist.

Saphyre Rose takes a stab at what passes for current fashion. 

Taylor is back from New England:

Oh, and also, you know how I don’t really think I have much of a Southern accent? Apparently I am totally wrong, because every time I opened my mouth and said “y’all”- which I say all the damn time- all the boys started snickering at me. And then I started drinking, and I just couldn’t stop the torrent of southernism. However, I should point out that some of them have accents that are so strong, they sound like a parody. So they can go screw themselves. They are all wicked retahdahd.

JET has a clip of Philip Wellman's ejection from Friday night's game.

Try to read this without cringing.  It involves both teeth and pain.

There is plenty more to come, I still have 130 posts in my feed reader!  Obviously I cannot link to all of them, but if I miss something you feel is important, please link in the comments.

Anne Coulter Makes the Round-Up

From Chip:

Second, will someone please shut Ann Coulter up? How such an obviously intelligent person manages to find the dumbest possible thing to say on a regular basis baffles me. I assume these remarks were prepared beforehand, so she knew what she was doing.

From Uncle Z:

When will this woman stopped? I'm against public stoning, usually, but the time has come to get her to shut her pie hole up! and, yes, I have no problem throwing the first stone.

Tayloropolis:

I hate and despise Ann Coulter. Just the sight of her name makes my skin crawl. If I ever go to hell (and lets, face it, I probably will) I fully expect this sack of broken glass, plagues, and screams of lost children woman to meet me at the gate.  She’s a shrieking succubus who deserves nothing more than our scorn and hostility.

JanetLee:

Anne Coulter calling John Edwards the "F" word is not a surprise. She is not a good person.

No, it was the conservative Christians in the audience who applauded who let the mask slip.

**7:00 Edit, adding Max's quote**

Democrats in the South:

This suggestion that John Edwards is gay is silly, although I'm sure the gay community would love to claim the handsome former senator. Once again, Ann Coulter is wrong on the facts. John Edwards is a happily married man who loves his wife more than himself.

Over at Spoletoblog: a Dottie sighting

Some of you may remember P&C arts reporter Dottie Ashley and her husband, pianist/playwright/director/drama instructor Franklin Ashley from our first blog party at Toucan Reef. Well, Dottie gets around to the parties that the rest of us don't, and she's filed an insider's report from Saturday's Spoleto Auction on Daniel Island.

It's the first post at Spoletoblog (The P&C's first blog) since the 2006 festival ended and the auction -- like the opening of spring training in Florida -- stands as an early sign that even these cold days are again growing longer. Festival season really isn't that far away...  something to bear in mind as the mercury drops and people start talking about snow in the forecast... 

For starters: My 'Shared' List

Hi y'all. Good to be back, and great to find out that Heather wrote us a round-up Monday.

If you ever get a chance to go out that way, Lawrence, Kansas, is a great little town, and I highly recommend it. I'm more stoked than ever about Ellington and Django and looking forward to getting things started around here.

Today's going to be a busy day, so I started it by reading through everything in my Google Reader queue, which is to say, everything that y'all have written since Friday afternoon...

The way I do things now is that I read y'all first thing in the morning, "star" posts I might want to include in a round-up, go to work, read anything else that pops up, and then work my way down my "starred" list as I write my subjective overview of what's on y'all's collective mind.

But since it's entirely possible that the day could get away from me once I walk into the office, I thought I'd try something different today. So I went back through my "starred" list and marked each item as "share."

Google Reader takes that "share" designation and creates a public Web page of items that I want to share with friends (or enemies, for that matter). I really like this feature, though it's no magic bullet... (by the way, if anyone knows of anything, in any field, that actually IS a magic bullet, please tell me about it)...

So, if you want to take a look at what caught my eye amidst a truly interesting array of local blog posts this a.m., click on this link to read XARK'S SHARED ITEMS for this morning (note to future readers: what you see when you click this link will reflect the current state of that shared list, not the way it looks to someone who clicked it in the past).

A milestone

OK, I've got good news and bad news. First, the good news:

Thursday's Your Lowcountry sections for North Charleston and Berkeley County included a lead story based on an original blog post by Margo of A Mixed Up Momma. Also good: We quoted Margo and credited her with finding the story.

Now, the bad news:

When we credited Margo, we didn't cite the actual name of her blog or her URL (mommamarg.blogspot.com). Instead, we described the original source as "a blog she wrote on www.blogger.com."

D'oh!

Also bad: You won't find this story at Charleston.net (it's a meta-data issue with Your Lowcountry, and we're working on that), so I've copied it after the jump for anyone who wants to read it.

Anyway, kudus to Margo for finding this story and to Jasiri Whipper and his editors for recognizing its value, crediting the blog author, and writing what Margo called "a wonderful article." And we'll work on making sure that the folks around here understand the difference between a blogging service and the actual address of a blog.

Wednesday

OK, did we just have "the cool spell in August" that the Lowcountry counts on? Was that it? Because if that was it, I'm disappointed.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION: The "Agricoli" (Ad Ingle and his wife) headed west for some Montana trout fishing, but Ad caught something else instead. The poor guy was laid up in the hospital in Bozeman for three days, at one point evaluating his pain level as 9.5 on a 10 point scale. Yikes. Anyway, he's back home and he's blogging steady and strong, but here's hoping he doesn't have any more vacations that involve hospitals.

Meanwhile, Joan is back, and her vacation pictures from Peru are excellent. The tourism bureau ought to pay her a commission... Geoff is still on vacation ("holiday"), although his commenters insist on pointing out that his entire life is a bit like holiday at the moment...

In less happy news, Peg's summer has been focused on leaving, and she's trying to acclimate herself to her next hometown by reading the blogs there in advance (there's an interesting photo-meme idea at the end of her post). And Lisa's stuck in limbo.

MISC. MOSH: Jason says his poetry is shoddy. Shows how much I know. I liked it... At Al Forno, a rant about a food cliche:

Is there to be found anywhere in this country a restaurant that serves a dish involving meat that came into close proximity to a hot flame without its being described it on the menu as "grilled to perfection"? Is it something that is mandated during some standardized "Menu Writing" course at America's cooking schools (oops, sorry, culinary institutes)? How come nothing is ever "steamed to perfection" or "fried to perfection" or "roasted to perfection"?

Speaking of foodie blogs, Helene of Tartlette aux USA wants your feedback on which design you like best for her site...

GOOD NEWS: The "Taj Mahal Shower" project is complete at Chuckography, and Chuck is a happy, happy man. Six heads. Count 'em.

A house down the block from Eugene just went on the market for 50 percent more than it sold for last year. Housing bubble? Not around here, apparently. "If it ends up getting sold for even remotely close to the asking price, then I suppose that will be a good thing for us when it's time to sell. Prices around here aren't just climbing...they're leaping."

BAD NEWS: Elsa writes about The Post and Courier's decision not to publish details of divorce documents filed against S.C. Rep. Wallace Scarborough, R-James Island. To put this in context, the P&C story on the Scarborough divorce came after The City Paper's Will Moredock filed a column and a story that said, among other things, that "Affidavits filed by Scarborough's estranged wife in divorce proceedings at Charleston County Courthouse show the District 115 representative to be having a long-term affair with Rep. Catherine C. Ceips of Beaufort."

Readers called Elsa to say the paper should have included that information in its follow-up. Here's Elsa's take:

The Post and Courier published a story clearing up questions about Scarborough's address and his eligibility to represent District 115. In the context of that story, the paper explained that he had moved because of his pending divorce. His new address is also in the district. The story offered no more information about the divorce because it was not pertinent to the issue.

Is she right? When is a public figure's personal life everybody's business? What mitigating or aggravating factors should journalists consider when making these decisions?

And speaking of media, here's The Newsless Courier's take on The Post and Courier's editorial page stance on slates of candidates in non-partisan local elections: "Showing its true colors, the editorial staff of the Newsless Courier blatantly revealed today that it would like to be in a blue state, or shall we say, a Democratic one."

WAR AND PEACE: Here's New Wars Mike on liberals and war:

Liberals no longer want America involved in "foreign wars", even if the enemy comes here. Personally, I don't see where the Party which lost Vietnam, almost lost us the Cold War, and did very little against terrorism in the 90's has any right to question Republicans on National Security.

PARTING SHOT: Uncle Zoloft wrote a couple of posts eulogizing a friend. We should all be so lucky to be remembered so fondly.

Tuesday: A big day on Planet Dan

GOOD NEWS: I've been cooling my jets for more than a week, waiting on a vendor to send me an important contract. It was waiting for me when I arrived this morning, and I've made more progress  in the past two hours than I'd made in the previous two weeks. No details to report just yet, but know that I'm working something a lot bigger than just this blog. Sorry about the tease...

SECOND, if you're at all interested in the future of the news media -- particularly, the relationship between you (The People Formerly Known As The Audience) and press coverage -- then read today's lengthy PressThink post by Jay Rosen: "Introducing NewAssignment.Net." Rosen gave me a sneak preview of his new endeavor (funded by the MacArthur Foundation and Craig's List visionary Craig Newmark) over the weekend, and I think it represents an important step in the development of 21st century media. Consider it a public-interest hybrid of citizen-based and professional media, and then imagine the possibilities...

NEW ADDITION: Today's new blog is Chronicles of a Bodyman, a Charleston blog written by Flakehead, an automobile body guy. Judging by his Blogger profile, it looks like Flakehead is also the husband of TBB member Sunniefaerie. Here's Chronicles of a Bodyman, self-described: "Cars, cars, cars" Views from an autobody technician." To which I say: Mustang, it looks like there's another blogger around to help keep you rolling. Anyway, welcome to Lowcountry Blogs, Flakehead.

You know, I'll bet that's the first time that particular sentence has ever been written in the history of the English language...

LIKE THAT PHOTO UP THERE? Our own Chuck took it on his recent visit to Chicago. Ain't it cool? I missed it on my rounds yesterday, but there's more like it at chuckography.

I've got some heavy lifting to do in advance of a meeting tomorrow, so there won't be time for a meaningful roundup today. Stay in touch with what your neighbors are writing over at Lowcountry Blogroll, and if you want to talk about stuff that you liked in today's blogosphere, feel free to leave us all a link to it here in comments...