Geaux Vols!

One of the highlights of being home this weekend was watching the UT game with McGuyver Dad just like we did when I lived in-state. What a game! After sitting through four overtime periods, I’m fairly certain that God is a Vol fan.  ATL here we come!

Now the difficult family rivalry emerges. GFTS is the black sheep of the family who opted to attend UT over LSU.  This is the ONLY time that Maven Mom takes a passing interest in football, and McGuyver Dad is faced with the difficult decision of which team to support. But as Maven Mom put it today, “The only thing UT got from your father and I was tuition money.”

I wish we could go to the game in Atlanta. I’d even sit in the LSU section. I’m betting the partying would be better there. There’d probably be jambalaya.

GEAUX VOLS!!!

Blog Makeover

If there was ever a blog in need of a makeover, it is this headerless thing. 

I’ve been working on a new one sporadically over the past few weeks. Since I’m a perfectionist without programming knowledge, it’s likely to be a perpetual work in progress. Thus, the official unveiling of Adrienne’s new home on the web.

girlfromthesouth.com

Enjoy!

I Heart NOLA

Oddly enough, it’s the 2nd anniversary of Katrina, and I watched  All the King’s Menlast night.

One thing is for sure, Huey P. Long was corrupt as hell, but he would have been a much better leader than Blanco through this diaster.

What’s left to say about Katrina? The post that I wrote two years ago still captures my shock.  New Orleans reflects decades centuries of corrupt leadership, briberies, and a growing reliance on the government. It’s amazing to see how parts of the Gulf with strong communities have rebuilt, but the Big Easy is still recovering.

My grandparents used to live near a levee in Metarie. One Thanksgiving, I remember my grandfather explaining the levee system to me. They were proud that it was based on an 18th century project and fervently believed that the levees could never break. They joked that the SuperDome was the only thing built above sea level in the city.

A few months after Katrina, we were having lunch with my grandmother, and she reminesced about Hurricane Camille. While they were similar hurricanes, the results weren’t comparable. Within a few weeks, New Orleans was back to normal. Communities banded together and sorted out the mess. They didn’t wait on the mayor, the governor or FEMA. Neighbors looked after each other, picked up trash, and rebuilt homes.

Katrina did have an interesting effect on news. It was one of the first times that blogs were used for primary news. Some of the brave bloggers who stayed in the city where the only ones relaying news to the outside world. They were much more helpful than Shepard Smith or Geraldo holding babies and crying over Bourbon Street.

A blog at Politico this week ran a story on Louisiana politics. Could we be lucky enough to get rid of the Landrieu family in politics?

Sociology Not Technology

If you read one blog today, click on Brian Solis. He nails it with his post on the sociology of social media.

Technology enables us to communicate, but the tools change constantly. People don’t change. People are relationship-based and communicate through networks in their lives. 

For the first time, the web allows us to mimic the way that people communicate in the real world. However, we spend more time studying the tools rather than the methods behind the tools.

From an academic perspective, most studies focus on the effect of a particular medium on people, especially with television. We aren’t focusing on how people communicate, but how they internalize the message that the medium forces on them through broadcast methods.

We’re always wondering what the next big thing is. What happens when the Facebook phenomenon ends? Will Twitter hit the mainstream? Is e-mail dead? If we understand the conversation and are participating, the tools are secondary. If true two-way communication exists, the right technology tools will be there. It’s all about that conversation:

Today, conversations are markets and markets are conversations. And the forums for these conversation cultivate an tight, unswerving and mostly unforgiving community and culture. Participation requires observation in order to understand the the sociological landscape and the dynamics that define each community. They are after all, populated by people, not audiences.

Read it.

Politicizing Modesty

After a decades of taking it off, is being modest now hip?

Ypulse, Boundless, and Carolyn McCully have mentioned the growing “Modesty Movement.”

Culturally, this makes sense. Islam is a growing force in the world, and Hollywood has proven the economic power of Evangelical Christians.  To varying degrees, both of these religions advocate women dressing modestly.

Personally, I’m a fan for several different reasons. While I attended Berean, my ultra-conservative Baptist high school, we had a strict dress code. It was nearly impossible to navigate, and almost everyone got in trouble at some point since the rules were open to the intrepretation of each teacher. A fashionable clothing line marketed as modest would have been a big help.

Secondly, I’m with Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear. You don’t have bear a ton of skin to dress attractivly. I’ve sat through too many professional meetings with a woman dressed inappropriately. That just makes everyone else uncomfortable, and as one of the Fug girls said last week, good manners exist to make others comfortable.

What do you think? Is this just a return to good manners and class or an attempt to push a political agenda through fashion?

Find Facebook PG? Try PlayboyU

Everyone is jumping on the social networking bandwagon, and Hugh Hefner never seems to miss a good party.

Playboy is getting into the social networking craze with PlayboyU.com, a new attempt to market to the student body in the language it is most comfortable with. It’s free to join, but enrollment is by invite only and limited to college students with .edu email address. Not unlike Facebook, it is all about letting your friends know how much of a party animal you are, allowing users to upload photos, videos and messages visible to only those within your group. Playboy says it will keep nudity off the site but not necessarily scantily clad women and will do its best to bar non-student campus personnel from joining. Social networking platform Ning, co-founded by Netscape’s Marc Andreessen, is powering PlayboyU.  (source: Cynopis).

I’m sure people will sign on just for the articles.

Are the targeted social networking sites going to work in the long-run? We have McCain Space, MyBarackObama, Nintendo Mii, LinkedIn, MySpace and now a proposed intelligence network. Are these going to survive?

Facebook works because you can draw from other networks. Instead of recreating the wheel, you can combine two, three or four other platforms. It’s far easier to draw from another pool of users than recruit your own. Unless it’s highly targeted and seperate like the intelligence world, it will be hard to maintain traffic. Once the social networking trend dies down and the next big thing comes along, will these sites stay active?
 

Intelligence 2.0

The Financial Times did a story yesterday on the intelligence community adapting social networking and 2.0 tools to help in their work, which Patrick Ruffini highlighted. Michael also picked it up from the security perspective.

This seems like a good idea. If we hope to win the war on terror, we need every possible innovation and tool. The intelligence field is woefully behind technology and needs to catch up. Is it a challenge? Absolutely. Huge parts of the communications field are wary of the control factor in web strategies. If people trained to publically disseminate information are struggling with this, I can’t imagine the level of resistance that the defense and intelligence fields will encounter.

A Woman’s Right to Choose…Homemaking

Apparently it’s anti-feminist week here at GFTS. The gals at Feministing, are up in arms because Southwestern Theological University now provides a 23-hour course in homemaking.

Finally. When are the homemakers of America going to organize and demand some respect for themselves? How is this a bad thing? If a woman chooses to pursue a career in homemaking rather than high-powered businesswoman, why is that offensive? She had the opportunity to go to a different college or major in something else. This is her choice, and she should be just as respected as any woman with a “real” job.

But homemaking is so 1950’s misogynistic! I mean, Desperate Housewives is so realistic!

This is my biggest gripe with feminism. You have the “right to choose” as long as you choose to agree with the prevailing thought of the movement. But then diversity of thought has never been the left’s strength.

From the description, this program looks to fill a void that is desperately needed. While they are defending family values and traditional church roles, this is an attempt to teach valuable life skills like sewing, cooking and nutrition. Show of hands—how many of you can sew on a button or whip up a 4-course meal aside from Maven Mom, Mrs. M and me?

It’s always a shock that women and men leave home without knowing basic skills like sewing, cooking and cleaning. These aren’t electives. At some point, everyone is going to need to sew on a button or clean a toilet, yet fewer and fewer people are learning these crucial skills for living.

I can’t count how many times I’ve taught a roommate how to sew on a button or iron a shirt. I’ve saved a lot of money by just knowing how to hem my own pants and skirts over the years.

The only downside is that the program is at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, so there won’t be any courses on making martinis.

Q&A: GFTS on Feminism and Being a ‘Token Conservative’

Lately, some of my loyal readers have poised a couple questions in my comments section. It’s a slow afternoon, so I’m finally getting a chance to answer them.

Toni asks, “what’s a “token conservative”…………just wondering??…t.”

Well Toni, a “token conservative” is a joke that orginated with my liberal blogging friends from grad school. Actually, most of my friends in DC are liberals with a few libertarians thrown in the mix. I’m not sure how it started, but one night over drinks I was called the “token conservative” of the bunch. Apparently, I’m the only social conservative around. It stuck, and I adopted as my tagline.

My friend Tanzaniajue asks:

Can I ask why you find the topic of gender inequality so boring? And can I ask what you define as a feminist? The history of feminism is so complex and cloudy…everyone’s interpretation of feminism is different. I know I’m veering off course with these questions, but I’m just curious to why you “abhor all things feminist” and what defined your terms of feminism (a course at school, etc.)

This is a huge question. Like Tanzaniajue explains, “The history of feminism is so complex and cloudy…everyone’s interpretation of feminism is different.” She’s exactly right and here are my own, personal views on feminism.

Dinosaurs Eating Yankees? The Perfect Roadtrip!

Earlier today, I was trying to explain to two co-workers that the Civil War is still being fought in the South. When you grow up near the location of three famous battles, you learn Civil War history through osmosis.

One summer I scooped ice cream for The Battles for Chattaooga* tourist trap, owned by my beloved Rock City. As a 16-year-0ld stuck behind a ice cream counter, I fielded some unusual Civil War questions from aficionados. The majority of them came dressed in Dixie Outfitters shirts and named their kids Lee and Stonewall.

Until today, I thought that Battles was the tackiest Civil War tourist trap that I’ve ever seen. Vol Abroad proves me wrong with Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge, Va.

A collection of dinosaurs eating Yankees? This is simply too good to pass up. I must see it. Roadtrip anyone?

*The Battles for Chattanooga is a really big paper mache map with tiny toy soldiers on it, marking every detail of the Battle of Missionary Ridge, The Battle of Chickamauga and the Battle of Lookout Mountain, which are collectively known as The Battle for Chattanooga. The map dates back to the 1940s and used to be called the Confederama before Rock City bought it, and changed it to something more PC. A really old guy dressed as a confederate soldier used to narrarate. My seventh grade Tennessee history class was dragged there in the mid-90s, so I got to experience this progressive history lesson.  Rock City moved the map near Point Park on Lookout Mountain and leverages some of the Civil War market. Once upon a time, the Confederama was in St. Elmo where the Blockbuster is today.

Does anyone still doubt that Chattanooga is a quirky town?