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This New York Times profile of Joel Levinson — perennial viral video contest award-winner — features one astoundingly brilliant paragraph:

Mr. Levinson’s gregariousness is an asset in the user-generated content world, as many of these contests are determined by voting. Mr. Levinson has a Facebook group entitled “Yes, Joel, I’ll vote for your newest stupid contest” and he uses Twitter, blogs, e-mail and text messages, asking acquaintances to vote. He even calls 24-hour customer service lines at night, when he thinks the representatives are bored, and asks them to vote for him.

Telemarketing to those who make calls for a living? Genius.

Professors of photojournalism here at the University of Missouri do not encourage us to take photos of signs. Unless, of course, they’re this brilliant.

Newsweek said, uh, this week, that “our comedy has veered too close to our news.” For another example, take today’s Washington Post:

HERSHEY, Pa. — Sen. John McCain made a direct appeal to baseball lovers Tuesday morning while mocking his rival’s decision to buy 30 minutes of television time Wednesday night for an address to the nation.

“No one will delay the World Series with an infomercial when I’m President,” he said to the approval of a crowd of thousands at a stadium here

Which is followed by this paragraph:

McCain’s own convention speech this summer forced a change in the start time of the NFL’s season opener, which started an hour-and-a-half earlier to accommodate McCain’s speech.

Fact checking is a beautiful thing.

A week ago, Senator John McCain came to Columbia, Mo., ate barbecue in the south of town and left. The visit was announced three hours before he arrived, though even upon arrival, his spokesperson refused to confirm where the Senator would be going while in town. He stayed less than two hours, made no public remarks and — unless you happened to be stopped in traffic as his motorcade went by — was widely ignored by locals.

Then there’s the case of Senator Barack Obama, who announced Monday his big news: he’ll come to Columbia on Thursday, speaking in a prime time address — 9:30 p.m. local time — on the South Quad. I don’t know where they’ll put the stage, but it will be somewhere between the Tiger Fountain and Jesse Hall (see right).

No one has ever given this type of address before on the South Quad, so no one really knows how many people will squeeze in to see Obama. But I’d guess that between the quad and the various fields/streets behind it, somewhere north to 40,000 people will show up to hear him speak.

As a current University of Missouri student, I will also say this: if we don’t beat the crowd of 45,000 that was at Colorado State last weekend, I’ll be disappointed.

[photo by Dan Oshinsky]

Nobody riots these days like they do in Morgantown, or so I thought until I saw these images from Penn State Saturday night after the Fighting JoePa went to Columbus and beat Ohio State.

Of course, that got me thinking about the mother of all sports riots — on Route 1 in College Park, Md., just minutes after the Maryland Terrapins men’s basketball won the national championship in 2002. [Full disclosure: yes, I’m even biased toward the Terps when it relates to rioting.] This classic “Daily Show” segment from the day after sums up the mayhem nicely:

My two favorite polling sites these days are FiveThirtyEight and Pollster, but I do like how Real Clear Politics allows you to create your own path to electoral college victory. For fun, I set the map at “No Toss Up States” and then tried to see how John McCain might reach the elusive mark of 270 votes.

One path that sets him squarely at 270: swinging Nevada, New Mexico, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. McCain says he thinks he’ll win a week from Tuesday. All I can say: good luck, senator.

Mizzou defender Kat Tarr slides in to take the ball in the second half of a 2-1 loss today against Texas. To check out a few more images from today’s game, click here.

How exactly did Mizzou tight end Chase Coffman haul in this touchdown pass against Colorado? I still can’t believe he made the catch, but the proof is in this photo from the Columbia Tribune‘s Parker Eshelman. Impressive stuff.

Update: Coffman had one other photogenic moment on the night.

I’ll modify a quote from “Oceans Eleven” for these purposes: “On your network, you should know that someone’s always watching.”

Case in point: RAIN!!!!!!

In 2000, Al Gore lost the election. In 2006, he came out with “An Inconvenient Truth,” at which point the American people discovered that Gore’s advisers had muzzled him from speaking openly about the environment for fear of losing votes in industrial states like Michigan in Pennsylvania.

In less than two weeks, if current metrics can be believed, John McCain will lose this election. My question: when will McCain admit that — worn out from months on the trail — he relied too much on his advisers, strayed from his bipartisan message and allowed his campaign to make reckless choices in the quest for the Presidency?

There have been two excellent behind-the-scenes stories this week on the McCain campaign, including this from the New Yorker and another from the New York Times. Then, just this morning, comes news that makes me think that there’s even more behind-the-scenes chaos on the way:

Four Republicans close to [Sarah] Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.

“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

I do not know what “more rogue” could possibly mean. More mavericky, perhaps? Or, perhaps, will she push for independence in unlikely places? I’m not sure. But any backstory involving Sarah Palin, the guys who’ve been advising the current, wildly upopular president and the spokespersons who slimed McCain in 2000 must be incredible.