Author: Dan Oshinsky

There’s a New York Times story out today about the subconscious and its relationship with the Speedo warm up jackets that Michael Phelps wore in Beijing. It made me think of this Times piece about non-athletes wearing Under Armour to create a facade of athleticism. It’s incredible what the mind can trick us into doing and/or spending.

I know kids who played the Sarah Palin drinking game, where every time she made a statement backed by specific details tonight, they took a shot.

They ended up quite sober.

Here’s how quickly one of the campaigns has adapted to the Internet: the Obama campaign has released an app for the iPhone that not only delivers campaign information to your phone but also organizes your contact list by battleground state. Seeing a small margin in the latest polls out of New Hampshire? The app will remind you who you know in that state.

I’m not sure that this app will have any more impact than, say, the Call Your Bubbe movement among young Jewish voters, but it’s definitely a sign of how the Obama campaign is trying to pioneer new get-out-the-vote methods this fall.

Then there’s this, also from the Obama camp: here in Missouri, they’ve started phone banking the deaf. The explanation at that link definitely clears the previous sentence up.

I’m running on the treadmill at the Mizzou rec tonight, moving at a fairly high speed, when something momentous occurred: Middle Tennessee State completed a hail mary touchdown pass on the final play of the game to beat Florida Atlantic, 14-13.

And I, so shocked by this sudden development, nearly fell off the treadmill.

Had the game involved two slightly more notable teams or, you know, not been played on a Tuesday night, I might have completely lost control and ended up with a face full of rapidly rotating belt.

Before heading off to Rosh Hashanah services tonight, I was sitting around, deciding whether or not I really wanted to attend services and weighing one question in my mind: with so many problems in the world these days, why should I even believe in God?

Then I remembered one pretty good reason, and headed off to services.

Shana tova, everyone.

A quick plug for my weekly radio show, airing from noon to 2 p.m. (Central time) every Monday in Columbia, Mo., at KCOU 88.1 FM. It’s also available online via webcast at this link.

Newspapers are on the clock. 18 months and counting until advertisers start pulling out. Never been a better time to be graduating from a school of journalism.

I was reading a profile of Paul Feig today when I came across this line:

Feig’s voice-mail message says, “Please leave your name and number and I’ll, um, y’know, call you back.”

Reading it, I realized: that message is about to go extinct.

With cell phones now, I don’t need callers to leave their number. I’ll have a missed call from them when I go to check my voice mail. Soon enough, as more people move away from landlines, the “leave your name and number” message will be as dead as, well…. an actual machine that you keep in your office to record messages.

Walking around campus here in Columbia yesterday, I spotted a rare sight: a Kansas City Chiefs jersey. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Missourians are proud of their teams, and most years, garb from the Chiefs or the St. Louis Cardinals is everywhere on campus.

But with the Chiefs and the St. Louis Rams rating as two of the worst teams in the NFL this year, fans are a bit more reserved about showing their affection. In the month since I’ve returned to Mizzou, I’d yet to see a single Chiefs or Rams jersey on campus. Such is the state of football here in this state (unless, of course, you’re talking about the football played at the state university.)

The Nats lost their 100th game tonight, but here’s my thought: with the debate going head-to-head with the game, and Nats’ TV ratings already at unthinkably low levels, is there a chance that tonight’s game set a new record for the lowest rated baseball game in a local market? Who exactly in the D.C. area would have been watching?