The Travis Web Journal

First of all, the NFL season is now underway, so it's time for the annual Jeff Saturday update. Unfortunately, Jeff torn his MCL in the last pre-season game, so he will probably be out 6-11 weeks, depending on whether he opts for surgery. You can read the details here.

In other news, Roland Martin validates my concern over Guiliani's condescension toward community organizers.

And, do these stadiums look alike to you?

Well, the one on the left is Wallace Wade Stadium at Duke, where a couple of skydivers delivered a game ball, and the one on the right is Kenan Stadium at UNC, where the same skydivers were supposed to deliver the game ball. Pretty funny stuff.

Here's the podcast of PTI, in which Wilbon and Kornheiser discuss the incident. If you don't have time to listen to the whole thing, right-click and save the target to your computer, then open the file and jump ahead to the 8 minute mark.

While I have to agree with their assessment of Wallace Wade, I can also understand how you could mess up if you were in a hurry (weather concerns) and if you were not familiar with the area (VA-based company).

Penn Jillette says maybe we need a dumb president instead. Interesting thought. This is slightly related to why I think we should never allow the same party to control Congress and the White House at the same time.

In other news, last night, Palin made a strong claim that Obama wanted to saddle Americans with huge tax raises. That confused me a little, because I was sure that Obama was advocating a tax cut for 95% of Americans (although, he admits that he would pay for this by raising taxes on the wealthiest 5%). So either Palin was concerned with the plight of the rich, or someone is fudging the numbers here.

I decided to take a look. I would summarize it like this: Obama's plan is as I described it above--cuts for 95% and raises for the other 5%--and McCain offers cuts across the board as long as you buy moderately-priced health insurance and have dependents, plus some additional cuts for the wealthy (who do pay most all of the taxes anyway). McCain's tax cuts would be bigger, but affect fewer people, while Obama's would directly help more people, but would also adversely affect some. Here are a couple links, both from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center:

tax-summary.pdf

side-by-side comparison

I enjoyed watching the Republican National Convention last night. I caught the tail end of Huckabee, all of Guiliani, and all of Palin. Brooklynne and I laughed about how Huckabee concluded with a story that we got in a chain email months ago. I always assumed those emails were mostly fabricated, but I hope Huckabee confirmed the story before he included a forwarded email in his speech.

Guiliani's speech was probably good from an overall GOP perspective, but to me, it came off as extremely condescending. We can all agree that being a community organizer alone does not qualify a person to be president, but don't make fun of or belittle community organizers!!! That is extremely insulting and I hope the GOP speech writers did not intend to imply that community organizers don't deserve the same respect and admiration we give to other community-level public servants such as teachers, doctors at free clinics, pro-bono attorneys, volunteer firemen, etc. I was highly involved with a large number of community organizers during my time as a School-Year Internship Coordinator for APPLES, and believe me, they have tough, often thankless jobs, that contribute greatly to the improvement of their cities/neighborhoods. I resent the condescending attitude of laughing at Obama's time as a community organizer.

Now that I got that off my chest, let's talk about Sarah Palin. I liked her (besides that she also poked fun of Obama's service as a community organizer). I haven't started her VP report card, and I suspect I'll have some major differences with her on the issues, but I thought she seemed warm, poised, and confident, intelligent, genuine, and tough, which gives her the qualities I want to see presented in a president. Brooklynne and I agreed that we would be glad for her to be a role model for Halleigh.

Plus her subtle upper-northwest twang was fun to listen for, don-cha-know? How bout that, eh?

Did anyone else watch last night? What did you think?

It has been a while, so please remember to respect the report card ground rules.

Joe Biden: regular guy or Washington insider?

Biden is supposed to be the friend of the every-day kind of guy, but he's also been in Washington for a long time. Personally I was hoping for a younger face who could carry the torch into the future. We'll have to see whether Biden affects the ticket based on his experience or his entrenchment. 

Conflicts with Obama on:

1. Drivers' licenses for undocumented persons (opposes)
2. Ban on partial-birth abortion (supports)

Potential scandals brewing:

1. Two previous instances of possible plagiarism (both have been determined to be careless errors)

Things you never knew about Joe

1. He was named one of Time magazine's 200 Faces for the Future... in 1974.
2. He is the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Delaware history.
3. In the 1980s, he underwent life-saving brain surgery.
4. He also ran for president in the 1988 election.
5. According to Wikipedia, he's considered one of the least wealthy members of the Senate (less than $400,000 net worth).
6. He once lobbied for a Kerry-McCain ticket in 2004.
7. He teaches constitutional law on the side.
8. He is still running for reelection to the Senate, despite accepting the VP nomination.

Bonus Points: Compelling story of personal resilience.

Minus Points: Possibly too old and too connected to the old school to help carry on the changes promised by an Obama administration.

The moblog should have worked, but for some reason, my cell will not send picture messages. So while the blog was ready to receive, unfortunately the camping trip went unblogged for the weekend. I’m going to Verizon today, so hopefully I’ll get a few pictures posted later. Also on tap for this week: VP report cards, two Halleigh Shows, and more random links.

This weekend, the whole Travis clan is going camping at the mountain land. The task for the trip will be to finish clearing all the trees and brush from inside the footprint of the cabin-to-be. However, we plan to divide the trip into one work day and one play day. So Saturday, we're planning another hike somewhere in the Mt. Rogers-to-Sparta regional area. Even though our camera is broken (again), we will try to get some pictures to post. I may even try out a moblog hack so I can post from my cell phone over the weekend. We'll see....

In honor of the weekend camping trip, here is a video from deep in the Travis family archives. It is a couple short clips from the first camping trip Brooklynne and I took together at Hylite Canyon, which is 30 minutes south of Bozeman. I think this was September 2001?

Last night we got crazy amounts of rain in Durham. Here's the streamflow data I saved from last night for the Eno River, where Brooklynne and I like to hike, fish, and swim. It looks like our max flow of 4,100 cubic feet per second shattered the previous record for this date (228cfs). The parcipitation meter for this location measured 7.5 inches of rain last night! Brad can correct me, but that seems extraordinary for a glancing hit from a dying hurricane.

Marshall tagged me on his blog, so here are a few pieces of Milorad trivia for your enjoyment. Because I'm terribly uncreative at times, I'm going to model my answers on those that Marshall gave.

1) I am occasionally tagged on these things, but I almost never tag other people. I'm the blackhole of tags.

2) I generally dislike (in order from least appealing up): graduations, award shows, openning and closing ceremonies, weddings, and funerals. Of course, there are some notable exceptions to each of these categories.

3) When I played basketball by myself in the yard, I always pretended to be Rodney Monroe.

4) I don't like having to mow the grass, but I honestly enjoy doing it. Every time. I like the physical exersion of pushing the mower, and I like the sense of accomplishment as I see rows of grass become neatly trimmed.

5) I used to think music taste was important, but sometime in college I realized it was too draining to keep up with "good" music and I think I've bought exactly 1 new CD for myself in the the past 10 years since then. The CD I bought: Mink Car by They Might Be Giants. Confession: lately, I've been thinking of buying another.

6) I am addicted to being liked by Marshall Benbow. I like being liked, but my liking of being liked by him is more than my average liking of being liked. (That sounds funny, but I'm serious.)

7) The first time I shaved my head was at a Model UN conference my senior year in high school (now you will know how nerdy I was). The conference was at George Mason University (go Patriots!) and Ryan Wade and I were representing the Russian Federation. We had been assigned the USA, but due to last minute cancellations, the organizers asked for volunteers to switch countries for a more balanced and realistic conference. Ryan and I switched to the Russian Fed., and that night in the hotel, shaved our heads into mohawks to intimidate the other delegates. We won an honorable mention "best delegation" award after we requested a point of personal privledge (I used to be very good at bending parlimentary procedure to my will) and gave a 2 minute impromptu speech defending the homeland and chiding another delegate for a negative comment about how "this isn't Siberia after all."

Aside: another funny event from that conference was when a guy in a gas station asked us why we were dressed up. We told him we were there for a Model UN conference and he said, "aren't you too short to be a model?"

My mom cried when I came home without hair.

The second time I shaved my head was with Marshall and Cory when UNC IVCF met our challenge to send 20 (I think?) students to Urbana 1996. Now I like having my head shaved too.

I'm not tagging people. I have to maintain my blackhole rep.

First, before we get started, let me point out this interesting story from the spring. If UNC can capture some of Palbo's fighting spirirt, maybe this year will be a good one.

Football season is upon us and I'm getting pretty excited, though this year may ultimately bring another 4 months of frustration. I've read up on the team and what the "experts" are saying, and it's mostly positive. Rivals has us ranked in the top 50 (47th) and said we could come in a close second to VaTech in our division. The ESPN guys both picked UNC to make a bowl, which would also likely mean a winning season.

However, I know our team better than those folks and I can see ominous signs. The problems at quarterback (18 interceptions) are not problems that often go away. Our defense lost a good coordinator and replaced him with the coordinator of last year's worst-ranked defense in the nation (Minnesota). On the positive side, our running game should be vastly improved which, along with the defense, is the key to our team this year. Greg Little could be our first 1,000-yard rusher since Jonathan Linton in 1997.

But really, you never know how the team's going to play until you see them on the field. So last year, I made my prediction based on the result of the openning game. This year, I think the second game of the season will be more telling. I'll post my Rutgers ruberic here, and then a game-by-game breakdown after the "continue reading" cut.

• If we shut out Rutgers, and score more than 21 points, watch out, because we could win 9 games this season.
• If we win vs. Rutgers in a low-scoring game (21 points or less), we will go 8-4.
• If we win definitively in a high-scoring game (more than 21 points), we will go 7-5.
• If we lose in a close, low-scoring game (< 8 pt. margin), we will go 7-5.
• If we aren't that close in a defensive struggle (> 7 pt. margin), we'll go 6-6.
• If we lose a close one in a shootout, we'll go 5-7.
• If we aren't close in a blowout, we'll go 4-8.
• Finally, subtract one win for every two turnovers we have in the game.