dan oshinsky dot com: A blog about journalism. And my mother.

Since April, I’ve been working on an experiment for my Twitter feed: I start each day with a bit of #AMinspiration, and I close each day with a #closingthought. A few weeks back, I expanded the latter, and started running #closingthought weeks. I had one inspired by Beatles songs. Another one featured overly-existential 90s pop (…)

Jorge Chávez International Airport is not a fun place to be, especially after midnight when you’re leaving Peru but your flight back to Houston has been delayed yet again. But my delay at Lima’s airport gave me a few minutes to reflect on my recent trip abroad, and especially on a few things that I (…)

Today is my birthday, and my annual reminder of how much I dislike the concept of time. Truth is, time is unfair. When I see someone wearing a watch, I don’t see someone with punctuality in mind. I see someone slowly counting down the seconds until the grave. What is a day, after all? It’s (…)

What follows is a brief thought about the nature of God. It is not a serious thought. I hope you do not find it blasphemous. — Dan I have recently begun to consider the idea that if there a God, he is probably not very good at multitasking. I’ll direct you to this recent study, (…)

Soon, I found myself keeping score. About to graduate, aimless, preparing for joblessness and possessing a degree worth about as much as the paper it was printed on, I realized — belatedly — that I wasn’t exactly a modern guarantee of potential. I started searching for something tangible, something worthwhile to get me through my (…)

There is a very good chance that my generation is totally screwed. Certain jobs are disappearing, and that’s a shame. It’s a shame that copy editors at newspapers are being fired. It’s a shame that accountants are being replaced by inexpensive computer software. It’s a shame that elevator operators are out of jobs (and have (…)

Of note: What follows is a work of original blog fiction. Only the business card printed at right is real. (Also: Chipotle does make quesadillas; they’re just on the secret menu.) My grandson is named Charlie. I love him very much. He is 22 years old. He has a degree in fine arts from SUNY-Schenectety, (…)

My parents weren’t big on idioms when I was a kid, and I’m probably happier off as a result. Idioms have a way of summing things up a bit too perfectly, of providing a universal answer to a singular context. Not ever wound demands a band-aid, I guess is what I’m saying. The other thing (…)

What could be the first of a regular segment on danoshinsky.com: three thoughts I heard this week that made me stop and think: 1. Make small stuff do big things. (via Professor Wade Adams, Director of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science & Technology at Rice University) 2. Some things aren’t rocket science; (…)