random facts, tidbits, articles and most importantly my thoughts about things that i find while aimlessly surfing the web...
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Architecture, College Football, Baseball, Hockey, March Madness, The Economy, Corporate Corruption, Incomptent Leadership, Tulane, Atlanta, Florida, etc.
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travacado's thoughts
or at least "others'" thoughts that I find interesting...
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Saturday, September 28, 2002
The president's real goal in Iraq
The official story on Iraq has never made sense. The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence.
The pieces just didn't fit. Something else had to be going on; something was missing.
In recent days, those missing pieces have finally begun to fall into place. As it turns out, this is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions.
This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were. (By Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal-Consitution) View the entire article
Blame FSU loss on foolish scheduling
Blame it on Monsoon Isidore, blame it on that wounded merganser thrown by Chris Rix in overtime, blame it on defensive breakdowns, but I blame Florida State's loss to Louisville Thursday night on Athletic Director Dave Hart's scheduling.
My question: Why is FSU, one of the elite programs in college football, playing a road game at Louisville? That's like U2 playing the Wewahitchka Watermelon Festival.
"We've got to give Florida State thanks for having the courtesy to even come here and play us," Louisville Coach John L. Smith said.
Being courteous may have cost FSU a chance at the national championship. The Seminoles don't need to be courteous in their scheduling; they need to be intelligent. It's one thing to go on the road to play Nebraska or Notre Dame, but what is there to gain by playing at Louisville?
And next week, the ESPNoles play their second consecutive Thursday night TV game. Who's making out this whacked-out schedule -- Dave Hart or Dave Barry? It's not just coincidence that two of the biggest upsets Bobby Bowden has suffered -- at Virginia and at Louisville -- have been on ESPN Thursday night games.
Since Florida went on the road and was pummeled by Mississippi State on Thursday night in 1992, UF Athletic Director Jeremy Foley has turned down all other ESPN Thursday night requests.
"I just think those Thursday games put your football team out of sync," Foley said. "ESPN is obviously great exposure, but we think we get our fair share of exposure at the University of Florida. The negatives far outweigh the positives."
FSU still schedules like it's a small-time exposure-starved program. Why, for instance, did the Seminoles agree to play the Kickoff Classic in Kansas City -- only three hours away from Iowa State's campus? The stands were packed with Iowa State fans, and the Seminoles nearly lost. Why? Because Hart said the Seminoles wanted "the exposure."
Exposure? The Seminoles don't need exposure anymore. They're one of the most high-profile programs in the country. It's time for FSU to start worrying more about national championships and less about national TV. (By Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel)
And for more trouble in Seminole Territory...
Seminoles' concerns begin with Rix's play
TALLAHASSEE -- If the Florida State Seminoles want reasons why they lost to unranked Louisville on Thursday night, they have plenty of options.
Heavy rains from Tropical Storm Isidore could have negated the Seminoles' speed advantage and disrupted their passing game. The 38,109 fans assembled in Papa John's Cardinal Stadium might have inspired the Cardinals to overachieve.
Or maybe the loss can be explained another way: a lack of capable players and coaches.
Florida State's days as a national college football powerhouse may be over. Done. Finished. Dating to the 2001 Orange Bowl, the Seminoles have lost six of their past 18 games.
"I'm wondering why we don't make more plays than we do," FSU Coach Bobby Bowden said Friday. (By Josh Robbins, The (South Florida) Sun-Sentinel) View the entire article
Please note that I would love to post the opinions of the local Tallahassee media on FSU's disgraceful performance Thursday night but Steve Ellis and no one else at the Tallahassee Democrat have posted an article on their website. May Bill McGrotha rest in peace...
TIDAL 6:46 PM
Friday, September 27, 2002
WHERE LESS IS MORE
Aging gracelessly
At 90, Fenway Park is antiquated, but new owners are looking for ways
to make improvements
BOSTON -- It is, like Wrigley Field, the last of a breed, a survivor
from the days of small, workaday ballparks when men in straw hats
would crowd into narrow seats, intent only on watching the dueling
nines before them. There were no skyboxes, no cupholders and no
massive electronic scoreboards.
Less is still more at Fenway Park, the major leagues' oldest and
smallest ballpark.
It remains, despite its lack of modern comforts and some maddening
functional problems, one of the best places in America to watch a
baseball game. Or maybe it's the other way around: Fenway works so
well precisely because it lacks the distracting features-the food
courts, the giant souvenir shops, the swimming pools-that are so much
a part of the latest stadiums.
So it's good news that the new owners of the Boston Red Sox seem
serious about saving little Fenway, which opened in 1912. But
precisely how to renovate and expand the 90-year-old ballpark, which
has a seating capacity of just fewer than 34,000, about 15,000 less
than some new parks, is the big question. The owners, a group headed
by financier John Henry that includes the New York Times, owners of
the Boston Globe, are expected to announce their plans before the
2003 season.
Their quandary is similar to the one the Cubs and their corporate
parent, Tribune Co., are pondering as they try to reach an agreement
with the Daley administration over the team's plan to expand Wrigley
Field to help it remain financially competitive: How do you put more
seats and more amenities in an old ballpark without destroying the
very intimacy that makes it special?
"More is not necessarily better," said Janet Marie Smith, the Red
Sox's design consultant and the guiding architectural force behind
10-year-old Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. "In the name of
progress, we've unwittingly made it so comfortable that you don't get
any energy in [some of] the new parks."
The challenge at Fenway, she said, is "how can we make it behave more
like the newer parks without losing the character?"
Fenway's character truly is unique, even when it is compared to
88-year-old Wrigley, the majors' second-oldest ballpark and the
National League's oldest.
Both are compact and urban, with a palpable aura of authenticity as
well as exposed steel columns that cause some seats to have
obstructed views. But Fenway-which was shaped by architect James
McLaughlin and Osborn Engineers, whose credits include Yankee
Stadium-is the only single-deck ballpark in the major leagues. It has
just a couple of thousand seats atop its roof.
The differences don't stop there. Wrigley's tall, stepped-back
exterior has a hint of grandeur, especially the big, red "camel hump"
sign at Clark and Addison Streets.
Fenway's brick-faced outside is far more modest, suggesting a
turn-of-the-century brick warehouse or, perhaps, the brick-faced
façade of old Comiskey Park.
Unlike Fenway, Wrigley has no massive electronic scoreboard and
almost no ads on the walls surrounding the field.
At Wrigley, the outfield walls curve as gently as the Iowa farm
fields in a Grant Wood painting and their harsh brick surface is
softened by the famous vines. At Fenway, the outfield walls are
sharply angled, epitomized by the 37-foot-tall Green Monster, which
rises like a cliff over left field.
"It always struck me that of the two, Fenway was very gutsy, gritty,
solid and strong," Smith said. "Wrigley has this grand dame aura
about her, much softer and more graceful."
But unlike Wrigley, Fenway is anything but a friendly
confines-perhaps because the previous owners of the Red Sox, the
Yawkey family, were gearing up to build a new ballpark across the
street from Fenway and seemed all too willing to let the park, which
is a few miles west of downtown, fall apart.
The below-the-stands concourses are dimly lit and uninviting. Fans
moving through cross aisles invariably block the views of those
sitting in the first few rows behind the aisles. The seats have hard
wooden backs, narrow steel arms and minimal legroom. In one section
along the right-field foul line, the seats face not toward the
infield but toward center, forcing fans to twist their bodies to see
the game.
Despite these faults and outrageously expensive tickets-a grandstand
seat costs $44 and an infield box goes for $60-Fenway continues to be
one of the top-drawing stadiums in the majors. If it's a dump, it's a
great dump-akin to the old Chicago Stadium, which was similarly short
on conveniences and long on intimacy, packed with fans who were there
to see nothing but the game.
How, then, to save this place? Smith has three principal strategies:
Add more seats within Fenway's existing borders.
Move team offices and other facilities outside the ballpark, freeing
up room within.
Put features that can't go into Fenway's cramped concourses onto the
streets around it.
Almost surely there will be more skyboxes; Fenway has just 44 of
them, the lowest number in the majors. The right-field-corner roof,
just above the displays of retired numbers of Red Sox greats like Ted
Williams, seems a strong contender for more seats. The team has hired
structural engineers to determine how many more seats Fenway's steel
columns and roof can carry.
Yet Smith worries about the impact that more upper-deck seats could
have on Fenway's exterior.
"We don't want to create a spaceship of an upper deck," she says.
"It's a very low building."
Despite her respect for tradition, she has floated another idea that
strikes many here as sacrilegious-put two to four rows of seats atop
the Green Monster, adding 500 or fewer seats. (The seats would be
supported by a separate structure behind the wall). Smith likes the
idea of having people on the Monster so fans would completely
surround the field. But to some tradition-minded New Englanders, the
proposal seems comparable to gussying up the austere Federal Style
townhouses on Beacon Hill.
The Red Sox got a better reception this month when they altered a
longtime feature of the Fenway experience-the urban bazaar on Yawkey
Way, one of the main streets outside Fenway.
There, a ragtag assortment of independent vendors had long hawked
everything from hot dogs and sausages to baseball souvenirs.
On Sept. 5, however, the team exiled those vendors to other streets
around the ballpark and replaced them with official Red Sox vendors
selling things like $10 crab cakes. Portable turnstiles were put in
place across the width of Yawkey Way, and only ticket-holders and
official vendors were allowed onto the street.
Team officials downplayed the additional revenue they will gain from
the switch, saying it is necessary to make Fenway more fan-friendly.
Yet the independent vendors are fighting the move in court, saying it
illegally turns over a public street to a private company.
Such battles are perhaps inevitable when a beloved urban landmark changes.
In the end, the most important thing is that the Red Sox have opened
the door to saving Fenway. In today's world of oversized everything,
from suburban McMansions to bloated ballparks, we need the occasional
reminder that less is more. (By Blair Kamin, Chicago Tribune architecture critic)
TIDAL 4:55 PM
Monday, September 23, 2002
9-11 pushed Graham into security spotlight
WASHINGTON -- His enemies called him Gov. Jell-O -- until he hit his stride and became one of the most popular politicians in Florida history.
During his first 15 years in Washington, he was something akin to Sen. Vanilla Pudding in a creme brulee town. No one questioned his intelligence or his quiet, bipartisan approach. They just wondered what he had been doing all those years.
But fate changed all that on Sept. 11, 2001. As chairman of the usually obscure Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham became a key leader in the nation's war on terror with the daunting task of finding out why U.S. spy agencies didn't see the attacks coming.
That is the question his committee, along with a House panel led by Florida Republican Rep. Porter Goss, began dissecting in public hearings last week. (By Tamara Lytle, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Grossman, Gators pour it on with play
When the rain stopped, fans started to leave. What's wrong with that picture?
Just about everything if you're a Tennessee fan.
You think that ESPN commercial cast UT in a bad light? You should have seen the last five minutes of the first half at Neyland Stadium Saturday afternoon.
Steve Spurrier never made the Vols look more inept. Even in 1996.
In 1996, the Gators scored 35 points in the first 20 minutes. Those Gators were downright lethargic compared to the bunch that piled on 24 points in the last 4:55 of the first half en route to a 30-13 victory.(By John Adams, The Knoxville News-Sentinel) View the entire article
And they did it in the rain.
TIDAL 12:37 PM
Friday, September 20, 2002
Gator fans are no longer in a teasing mood
Anybody who thinks Florida is going to beat Tennessee on Saturday, raise your hands.
When I asked that exact question Wednesday night, about one-fourth of the room timidly and dutifully hoisted a hand into the air.
And this was a meeting of the Volusia County Gator Club. These were people who were decked out in everything from orange-and-blue overalls to orange-and-blue underwear; people who drove to the meeting in cars waving orange-and-blue flags, rolling on tires wearing orange-and-blue hubcaps.
"I just hope we don't get blown out," one of them told me. (By Mike Bianchi, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Really want to impress fans, Dolphins? Put an end to this 'Jets curse' -- now
Here it comes, the worst four-letter word in the Dolphin dictionary:
J-E-T-S.
It'll make Miami fans curse, this curse, and Miami's players, too. As silent giant Tim Bowens memorably hissed after yet another loss to New York last season, ``We just kept getting bleeping punched in the mouth in the fourth quarter. We have those bleeping bleeps beaten every bleeping year and that same bleeping bleep happens. This is hell. I'm going to slap somebody. I don't know who the hell it is, but I'm going to find someone to slap.'' (By Dan Le Batard, The Miami Herald) View the entire article
Greed, turmoil, bad marketing: baseball in great shape
This past weekend, I was poking around in a Portland bookstore when I came across some old magazines, and one of them -- a 1958 issue of Look -- featured a cover with the question,
IS GREED KILLING BASEBALL?
The article, written by a fellow named C. Leo DeOrsey (identified as "Director, the Washington Senators") argued that, "Baseball today is being murdered by the big leagues, and only Congress can save its life. ... Otherwise, the greed and public-be-damned attitude of a few club owners and officials will destroy the national pastime as we know it today." (By Rob Neyer, ESPN.com) View the entire article
TIDAL 12:45 PM
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Enron's 'Crooked E' Up for Sale
The ultimate symbol of the bankrupt power trader -- one of the ubiquitous chrome signs dubbed "the Crooked E" for its distinctive slant and commentary on the company's questionable dealings -- is on the auction block, a company spokeswoman said. (By C. Bryson Hull, Reuters) View the entire article
TIDAL 2:21 PM
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Fans aren't apathetic about 0-1 Birds
Alas, even amid this global marketing nirvana, it's apparent Arthur Blank can't overcome every obstacle. Just when you would have thought the Falcons' owner had won everybody over, some pocket protector with ears at a Buckhead bookstore asks Mike Vick to leave Monday because, I presume, there's just no place for a charismatic star quarterback to say hi and shake hands when there's an important retrospective on "Green Eggs and Ham" going on in the kids section.
(Yikes. What if Chris Chandler were still here and Blank had sent him out to a Kroger? Chris! Mangoes at 12 o'clock! Duck!)
Fortunately for Blank, the Barnes & Noble incident is a blip. Here we are three days after the Falcons lost their season opener and less than 48 hours after the Braves clinched their 759th straight division title and you'd swear the fortunes of the two franchises were reversed.
Granted, interest in the Braves will pick up (presumably) when the playoffs come around, but Turner Field is so vacant these days, you'd swear the seats had "Wet Paint" signs on them. Has a town, even this one, ever been more blase about a winning franchise?
"Well, baseball is kind of blase," Falcons tackle Bob Whitfield said. "What we did Sunday [in Green Bay] was we showed some excitement, we showed some guts, and I think people appreciate that. Fans were just as heartbroken as we were. People came up to us [Monday] shaking their heads, saying, 'I can't believe we lost.' When they start saying we, you know they're with us."
Braves president Stan Kasten says the franchise will lose $20 million this season and that, combined with the declining attendance, will contribute to the decision to trim payroll. Don't whine. Under the circumstances, what did you expect?
Winning division titles isn't enough to draw flies anymore and hasn't been for a few years. Until October, the Braves are old news. Even in October, maybe. One way a franchise can hold on to and/or grow its fan base is by how it's perceived publicly. In that area, the Braves have sometimes lacked a high Q-rating. (For starters, we cite the original Turner Field no-water-bottles-for-the-parched policy.)
Whether they are ably performing their jobs or not, Braves management often exudes a certain arrogance (and not necessarily the George Steinbrenner-esque "fun" arrogance). In this fickle sports town, that makes a difference. In contrast, Blank is worth billions, give or take an annuity, but you can just as easily imagine him advising you on which hammer to buy for the doghouse you're building. Sometimes, reaching out to the community goes beyond delivering turkeys to the homeless and visiting a children's hospital.
The Falcons are 0-1. But their home opener Sunday against Chicago is sold out (which has been no small feat in the Georgia Dome). Yes, they lost in Green Bay, but as Whitfield said, "From a fan's standpoint, all the promotion and hype had to stand the test. We proved it wasn't just a lot of hot air."
Bookstores notwithstanding. (By Jeff Schultz, Atlanta Journal-Consitution)
Maybe instead of advertising "10 Years of Great Baseball", the Atlanta National League Baseball Club should WIN a 2nd World Championship...
TIDAL 1:07 PM
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
It's like deja vu all over again!
The irony is (of course) that I got my Florida driver's license yesterday which makes me an "official" resident. Thanks to the "mover voter" law I also registered to vote. I think...
Reno, McBride still waiting
Florida's Democratic gubernatorial candidates waited anxiously today as vote-counting resumed, even though one of them may not accept the results.
Former U.S. Attorney Janet Reno, trailing Bill McBride by two percentage points in her quest to become the party nominee, has indicated she may challenge the final tally because of voting foul-ups Tuesday. (By Dan Tracy, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Rush to fix old problems may have created new ones
Almost two years after the debacle of the 2000 presidential election and spending $32 million to overhaul the voting system, Florida on Tuesday proved once again that it still knows how to bungle elections.
Gov. Jeb Bush was forced to declare a state of emergency and order polls across the state to remain open an extra two hours after angry voters in South Florida complained when machines malfunctioned and workers were absent at some precincts. (By Maya Bell and David Damron, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Anger at Jeb Bush likely to grow after voting foul-ups
TAMPA -- Florida has fouled another pivotal election, and that should make the next vote a fiery one -- virtually ensuring that all the emotions swirling around the historic election of 2000 are replayed in November.
This formula for an uprising cannot be good for Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, with Democrats energized by a new nominee for governor resolving to turn out in strong numbers this fall and make their votes count once and for all.
"This absolutely rekindles everything," said Jim Krog, a lobbyist and seasoned campaign manager.
The 2000 debacle had Democrats geared up for revenge, next time around, particularly blacks who think their votes were denied. Their anger palpable, activists vowed to avenge the presidential election, in which Al Gore lost by 537 votes.
Then came Sept. 11, with American anger re-focusing on a foreign enemy more terrible than imaginable. Fervor for the fray of domestic politics subsided as patriotism demanded unity at home.
Now the anger is back, with breakdowns at polling places from Miami to Jacksonville in Tuesday's party primary elections certain to rekindle the passion that was suppressed by the tragedy of 9-11. (By Mark Silva, Orlando Sentinel) View the entire article
Why is this a surprise? Former Secretary of State Katherine Harris was too busy running for Congress that she herself violated election law by not resigning office before staging an "official" campaign for the U.S. House! Interim Secretary of State Jim Smith summed up Election Day best, "What have they been doing down there for two years?" refering to voting problems in the South Florida.
TIDAL 5:53 PM
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
The day before
Everyone remembers Sept. 11 — where they were that Tuesday, what they saw, how they felt. But who remembers the day before?
Sept. 10, 2001, was a day of unappreciated ironies and unexpectedly fateful decisions, a day when the important was often overlooked and the trivial often exaggerated. It was 12 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and 133 days since the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
For some, Sept. 10 was the last day of an era. For 3,031 people who would be at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on four hijacked airliners the next day, it was the last day of life. (By Rick Hampson, USA Today) View the entire article
A last day of quiet before storm of Sept. 11
The sun came up at 7:18 a.m. and it had to work hard to break through the haze of a late-summer Atlanta morning.
It was Sept. 10, a year ago today, and the world as we knew it was waking up.
Monday morning commuters crawled along the interstates. School kids readied for their fourth week of classes.
A fireman in Dunwoody painted fire hydrants. The Atlanta Falcons licked their wounds from the previous day's defeat.
The mayor-to-be staked out a busy intersection and waved at voters in their cars. A U.S. senator headed for the airport and on to Washington. The chief Arab-American advocate in Atlanta enjoyed his California vacation.
It was that humdrum, yet anticipatory time of year when the glow of summer had faded and the promise of fall seemed distant.
Newspapers featured stories of shark attacks and missing intern Chandra Levy. "Mideast violence rages" -- the headlines proclaimed -- but few Americans seemed to notice. Coke advertised that "life tastes good."
Sept. 10, 2001, seems a lifetime ago.
"In a way," said Deb Aldrich, a new Atlantan who saw in person the second World Trade Center tower explode, "it was the last day of innocence." (By Dan Chapman, Atlanta Journal-Consitution) View the entire article
TIDAL 1:03 PM
Monday, September 02, 2002
Pop, soda or coke? 29,000 Web votes define borders of passionate beverage debate
In the South it's called coke, even when it's Pepsi. Many in Boston say tonic. A precious few even order a fizzy drink.
But all those generic names for soft drink are linguistic undercards in the nation's carbonated war of words. The real battle: pop vs. soda.
Order a soda in Michigan or Minnesota and you're clearly an outsider. Ask for pop in New York City and you risk being ridiculed. Bert Vaux, a linguistics professor at Harvard, says many Americans are overly passionate about their beverage name.
"For reasons that are unclear to me people feel they have license to attack those who say pop as stupid or illogical," Vaux said. "I use coke because I grew up in Houston. They're not too fond of that around here. However, it's not as stigmatized as saying pop."
The pop-soda-coke divide has always created vague, and usually incorrect, assumptions about who says what where, Vaux said. But for the first time, Internet technology -- and 29,000 votes on a Web site -- has defined the debate's borders. (By Jason Straziuso, The Associated Press) View the entire article
And to place your CORRECT vote for COKE please visit the Pop vs. Soda survey
Aiming Some Chin Music at Major League Baseball Announcers
By now you know what happened. A strike was averted. So the baseball season goes on, along with the joy in watching much of it on TV.
What I would have missed most are those sweetheart telecasts of the Atlanta Braves on TBS. What I would have missed least are ESPN's bobble heads. Don't care much for some of the Great Vin's patter, either.
TBS is cable's idiot savant. It's freakish that Atlanta's Superstation would execute baseball telecasts so expertly, because the rest of its TV schedule is utterly mundane. For a true view into its rerun-laden soul, observe that vast library of violent, smash-'em-up, police-chase footage that it draws on incessantly to fill time during Braves rain delays.
Years of watching the Braves on TV, though, have made them my favorite, and the likable, refreshingly unslick TBS broadcast crew of Pete Van Wieren, Skip Carey, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson my favorite announcing team. These low-key mavens are not only smart, funny and chatty, but effortlessly so, with ex-major leaguers Sutton and Simpson notably astute about baseball's finer points without being repetitive or arcane.
They avoid irritating gimmicks and wear extremely well. They also call games fairly despite their acknowledged Braves bias and, as a wonderful bonus, never usurp play on the field. The purpose of a baseball telecast is baseball, right? On TBS, the game, not the announcing team, is star. (By Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times) View the entire article
TIDAL 9:39 AM
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