I’m Dan Oshinsky, and I run Inbox Collective, an email consultancy. I'm here to share what I've learned about doing great work and building amazing teams.
With the 15th pick in the NFL Draft, the Oakland Raiders selected a fairly anonymous player: Michael Mitchell, a safety from Ohio.
Perhaps anonymous is the wrong word. Here’s ESPN.com’s draft profile of Mitchell:
Official size and weight, says ESPN.com: 0’0”, 0 lbs.
I wonder what size shoulder pads he wears.
Mizzou junior outfielder Greg Folgia had an impressive game against Texas Tech, including a home run in the 2nd inning that extended his hitting streak to eight games. But after one late inning strike out, Folgia took out his frustration on his bat by actually screaming into it.
The bat was not available for comment after the game.
However: I did have my camera with me at Taylor Stadium today. Check out a few additional photos from today’s 9-5 Mizzou victory over at my Flickr page.
If you are like the majority of Americans — and I suspect that you are — you suffer from a severe condition that scientists typically refer to as “not being interesting.” I, myself, have more than two decades in the field, and after extensive research, I feel compelled to note that only a small percentage of Americans have anything useful to say.
A slightly larger percentage of these uninteresting Americans are, however, entertaining. But I should note: this condition is not the same as being interesting. This is the reason why people who become stars on YouTube are infrequently consulted when it comes to matters of national importance.
The problem is that we, as Americans, are quickly becoming less interesting. Naturally, I would like to blame Twitter for this decline.
Research shows that blaming Twitter for things is now the number one media pastime in America, just surpassing “baseball metaphors used in a political context” and “finding new excuses to subtly insult that woman on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for her looks.” We, the media, love to blame Twitter, because those articles will soon be Twittered by potentially millions of people, which, in turn, should exponentially increase the size of our Twitter followings. There is a good reason why the number one most re-tweeted article yesterday was about the rise of narcissism.
Now, I have been using Twitter since the fall 1. I liked my first tweet — “attempting brevity,” I wrote — and little else. I’ve surpassed 1,000 tweets. I have potentially read thousands more. I cannot say that my life has improved as a result.
However, I do feel comfortable saying that I am less interesting than ever. There is a good reason for this: Twitter is killing small talk.
No longer do I have those go-to questions to ask friends; instead, I’m finding out the answers in real time via Twitter. And we, as humans, are not interesting enough to maintain small talk if you take away our most inane questions. Now that I don’t need to ask the basics — “So, how are the roommates?” or “Did the test go well?” or “Was that you I saw passed out face down in a pool of nacho cheese on 9th Street Tuesday night?” — I’ve been left with the cold realization that I’m not that interesting 2.
And the Twitterati will say, “Shouldn’t you have more to talk about now that you have access to regular snippets of information about friends?” Hypothetically, yes. Sadly, few of my Twitter friends are tweeting about topics such as the search for absolute zero. And even if they were, their tweets would just get lost among the avatars on my screen. Imagine that a formula along the lines of “E=mc2” was discovered today. Sure, it’d get re-tweeted 3, but only if Lindsay Lohan wasn’t currently trending on the site.
Look, I understand why Twitter users are so fanatical about the service. Information delivered on-demand from whomever you want is a pretty good deal.
But may I remind you: we are a nation — to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld — built on nothing. Now that we’re microblogging our nothingness, we’re emptier than ever before.
1.) I use Twitter as a personal news ticker to monitor what’s happening right now (or what happened in the last 15 seconds). I don’t scroll down to see old tweets. Anything that’s far enough down the page has probably been written about in a space that’s measured in inches, not individual characters. >back to article
2.) Completely unrelated tangent: Ashton Kutcher has a million online followers (though, for the sake of this comparison, I’ll add these words: “per month”). The New York Times has 20 million monthly followers. So why does Kutcher get more publicity? Maybe if The New York Times had a “followers” or “articles published” counter on their homepage, people would take notice. >back to article
3.) “RT @aeinstein: OMG this is WAY bigger than relativity!” >back to article
UPDATE: Jason Kottke defends Twitter for its banality.
Girls hated it. Well, maybe “hate” is the wrong word. They didn’t understand it, really. The strange thing is, every time I’d explain my situation to a girl, no matter where she’d grown up or how popped her collar was, she always had the same look. I got used to it, eventually. It was a look somewhere between incredulity and confusion, the kind of look you’d get if you asked a class of third graders to dissect Dostoevsky. Girls just did not understand this complication of mine. In all their years, I was often the only one they’d ever met in such a situation.
I use the word “situation,” because that’s what it was to them. It was something I’d learned to deal with, I’d tell them jokingly. But truthfully? Life really was better without it.
They didn’t see it that way. They’d cast me that look — always that look — and try to find the right way to phrase their next question. Sometimes, they’d scan me over, searching for more overt signs of my madness. And when none were to be found, they’d part their lips just so, and a few words — always the same words — would slip out:
“If you don’t have text messaging on your phone, then….”
A pause, their minds turned into a personal T9 — the cell phone predictive text feature — trying to sort out the words and cues buzzing in their brains.
“Then…. how do you live?”
The question was never asked with a smile or a laugh; they were always serious. They’d hush, waiting for my answer. Sometimes, they’d even put down their phones, thumbs akimbo, desperately seeking justification.
But how to explain such a life choice? Voluntarily, some two years ago, I called up my cell phone provider and asked them to block all incoming text messages. No longer would I fear that brief whir, my phone spinning on the countertop, a ringtone jingle fading as quickly as it had arrived. No longer did I worry about flipping open my phone to find “R”s or “U”s masquerading as full words, punctuation lost in the rush to 160 characters. No longer would I awake from a mid-afternoon’s nap to see one simple letter — “K” — and wonder why I’d been stirred by a non-vocal affirmative.
Girls did not understand this. I would explain that, no, it wasn’t that hard to survive without texting. It wasn’t like I was depriving myself of human contact. I was still reachable via any of my three email addresses, plus instant messenger or Facebook.
Or — and this typically drew the most confused look of all — I could always be called on my cell phone. I only had about 500 minutes per month, I’d say, plus free nights and weekends. So I was always happy to actually talk via phone.
Sometimes I’d get a nod back, or at least a smile that showed that they didn’t think I was completely crazy. Oftentimes, I couldn’t even get that. I began to realize that I had a personal public relations disaster on my hands.
Last year, I caved and bought a text messaging plan: 200 texts for $5 a month. I’d finally accepted that there were two situations in which I liked texting: 1.) At sporting events, when the volume of cell phones in a single stadium sometimes makes calling impossible, and 2.) For brief, GPS-type purposes during those crowded or just-too-freaking-loud-to-hear occasions.
Initally, I didn’t even tell friends that I’d unblocked text messaging. I let them know slowly, my phone’s message inbox pinging infrequently at first. That was last fall. Some friends kept calling, which I liked; others decided that the sound of my voice — or the threat of entire minutes of small talk — wasn’t worth the bother. They started texting frequently. Lately, it’s only gotten worse.
College students don’t use texting like I do: as a last resort. As a demographic, we use it to make dinner plans or — increasingly — to pass along a random line from whatever Andy Samberg’s latest “SNL Digital Short” was. The two word message — like a stray status update directed, for whatever reason, only to me — is as popular as ever. “Just showered,” SMSed one friend last week. “You would,” said another. “What up” my phone reads, over and over again, the question mark lost in our digital drain.
Last month, I noticed that 200 texts had become an imminently reachable monthly milestone. That became even more evident when I went to AT&T’s website and discovered these words:
“AT&T bills for all messages whether sent or received, read or unread, solicited or unsolicited.”
All of those unwanted texts — every “k,” and especially every “i’m on a boat” or “when bruce willis died at the end of sixth sense'” — had pushed me far past my limit of 200. And each of those overflow texts started costing me, sometimes just a dime, or sometimes more. I didn’t ask my parents to send me a video message of the JumboTron shuffle game at that sporting event. But they did, and it cost me a quarter each time.
The obvious solution for me is to bump up to the next level of text messaging plans. On AT&T, that means going unlimited — and I’m just not prepared to make such a change in lifestyle.
The thing is, I still prefer actually speaking to people. Like yesterday, when a random-but-pertinent thought popped into my head, I gave my friend a ring. I heard him sigh over the phone. “You’re wasting my minutes,” he said. I found that strange. This friend pays for about 1,000 minutes per month and gets free nights/weekends. In the four years I’ve known him, I do not believe he has ever reached that 1,000 minute plateau — and I’m adding up all of the time he’s spent on the phone during those four years combined.
Meanwhile, I’m looking at my latest phone data right now. I have 366 anytime minutes remaining this month (I started 15 days ago with 500). I have 4,852 night and weekend minutes, and 1,748 rollover minutes. Hypothetically, I have enough minutes to talk for nearly five full days without incurring any extra charges. Logically, I expect to use approximately two percent of those remaining minutes.
I should note, though: when prompted, AT&T didn’t send me that update about my minutes via email or the postal service.
No, quite naturally, they sent it to me in a text.
(H/T on the photo above to user kiwanja, via Flickr.)
For the sake of this blog post, let us assume the following three premises are true:
1. The Internet is constantly evolving.
2. McCartney and Lennon were not lying when they suggested that things are getting so much better all the time.
3. I have an unbelievably large archive of photos of Beijing residents going crazy during the Olympics.
So, with that in mind, I tested out a newish multimedia collage program called VuVox tonight. The goal: to repackage a story I produced on Aug. 8, 2008, from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Above, find the new version, which really needs to be viewed in full screen to be fully appreciated (or wide screen, via this link).
Below, you can find the original version of the story: “Tiananmen Square During Open Ceremonies.”
In the north, they speak of this creature called Bigfoot. Perhaps you know him as the Sasquatch. He is a creature of great size, they say, often documented but rarely seen. To anthropologists, he is the Holy Grail of woolly beasts.
So you can imagine my surprise when, today, flicking through some old images on Facebook, I realized that I may be the Sasquatch.
Perhaps I should explain.
You see, I have an unusual habit of appearing in the backgrounds of images on television or in newspapers. Often, I appear out of focus, an amorphous blob, cloaked in earthy golds and blacks. I imagine that to the world, I am an enigma, an unknown. I am the bottom line on a DMV eye chart: a mere blur.
Perhaps, at least physically, it is too easy of a comparison. I am 6’5”. I wear a size 13 shoe. My hair swings from kempt to unkempt with the slightest breeze.
So to further explain, I’d like to present examples of the existence of this Dan Oshinsky… er…. Bigfoot (and, though this is not for the faint of heart, click on the images to see a larger version):
Here I am on January 16, 2006. I appear on the far left of the image, slightly pixelated, left hand gracing an uncouth beard.
CBS cameras caught me on March 4, 2007, in St. Louis, mouth ajar, as former Creighton basketball point guard Nate Funk stands statuesque at the front of the frame. Again, I appear to be sporting unruly facial hair.
Just weeks later, on April 7, 2007, I was spotted on ESPN, out of focus as I exchange greetings with a slightly more humanoid figure wearing gold.
Local photographers in Columbia, Mo., captured me more than a year later, on October 10, 2008, lankily striding in front of a black minivan, just paces behind Senator John McCain.
Finally, on March 26, 2009, I was spotted by several outlets in Phoenix. CBS cameras found me, again in gold, here:
And Sports Illustrated featured me, blurry as ever, here:
What can we learn from these images? For one: there is no definite proof that I am not Bigfoot. The physical similarities are remarkable. The dedication to such a tangled mess of facial hair is undeniable.
So to anthropologists, I say: perhaps one day, you will find me. Or, perhaps not. I am, after all, unmistakably blurry.
I remember the moment distinctly. I was sitting in a Baptist church on 9th Street in downtown Columbia, waiting for Rosh Hashanah services to end. We were sitting in a church because the synagogue had no other place to hold services; the congregation wasn’t large enough to actually own an entire building. The rabbi was new to Columbia. He had just moved from Curaçao to lead this congregation, and surely he’d begun to question why he’d left the Caribbean for mid-Missouri. The year was 2005.
On stage, with a cross hanging over her head in Damoclesian fashion, a member of the congregation’s board of directors was giving an especially strange speech. It had started out with an extended history of the life and times of Adolf Hitler, and I do not remember where it went from there. I do remember her conclusion, however.
“Look around us!” she called out. “We are the Jews of mid-Missouri.”
I looked around. There were about 70 people in the audience.
At this point, I realized that my Bubbe’s dream of me finding a nice Jewish girl at school was likely to go unfulfilled.
But every year since, I’ve enjoyed the strange little moments that come with being a Jew in Columbia, Mo. My favorite annual tradition happened today: the morning before Passover, when I go to the local Gerbes supermarket and attempt to buy matzah.
It’s a ritual unlike any other. It usually goes like this:
But today, in the tradition of the wise child, I must ask: why was this year different from all other years? Perhaps because today, I went out of my way to buy Kosher-for-Passover orange juice (though I should note: nowhere in the Torah does it mention Moses telling the Israelites that they had not the time for their juice to be squeezed). Or perhaps because when I passed through the wine aisle, looking for a bottle of Manischewitz, none was to be found.
So I circled the store twice, looking for matzah (and seeing as the search for the afikoman is part of the Passover seder, you’d think I’d be good at finding hidden loaves of unleavened bread by now). None was to be found. On my third lap of the store, a manager stopped me and asked me what I was looking for. I explained, politely, that I was looking for this seasonal product known as matzah.
“Ah, yes, matzah. Now, would that be in the dessert aisle?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s more of a cracker.”
The manager looked puzzled. She called over another manager: “Hey, where’s the matzah?”
The other manager just frowned. “Sorry,” he said. “No matzah this year.”
“No matzah?” I asked. “Did you decide not to order any?”
“No,” he said. “We ordered our usual supply from the distributor. You know, that’s how we get our food here.”
I smiled and nodded, confused at why he thought that I thought that Gerbes had some secret factory in the back cranking out Tropicana and low-grade pretzels and, of course, matzah at all hours of the day.
“But the distributor called us back a few days ago,” he continued. “He said: no matzah this year. But you can check over at the Broadway store. They might have some.”
So I did what I could: I thanked him for his troubles and walked away, wondering all along why it is that even Gerbes answers to a higher authority.
Hello, I’m Dan, and on behalf of your newsroom-based crew, I’d like to welcome you onboard Media Conglomerate Airlines. As we may continue to lose money rapidly during this flight, I would like to remind you of the safety features onboard.
There are two exits onboard this aircraft: buyouts and layoffs. Caution: the nearest layoffs may be directly behind you.
In case of emergency, newsprint will drop from the compartment above you. Though advertising will not be flowing smoothly through its pages, we’ll still continue to search for ways to inflate our revenues.
We have loaded overwhelming debts and rising printing costs onto this aircraft. Our pilot has also informed us that we may be experiencing some Google-related turbulence. So please: keep your seat belts fastened. Things will be getting bumpy.
We no longer serve bonuses or 401(k)s on this flight. However, peanuts are still available as a sign of gratitude for your years of service.
We remind you to please be careful when opening overhead bins. Your department may have been shifted to India during our flight.
So sit back and try to enjoy this Media Conglomerate flight. Even if we don’t crash, you’ll probably feel nauseous anyway.
Eight days ago, Connecticut Huskies forward Stanley Robinson scored 13 points, grabbed 6 rebounds and blocked 4 shots — in 34 minutes — while leading his team to an 82-75 victory in the West Regional final over Missouri.
Robinson’s an unusual story. The Boston Herald reports that he withdrew from the university last Spring and started working at a construction site. This year, he rejoined the team as a walk on. One 2010 mock NBA draft projects him as an early second round pick.
But today I’m reading something that makes me wonder whether or not Robinson should have been allowed on the court at all. From The Hartford Courant’s Jeff Jacobs:
[UConn forward Stanley Robinson] doesn’t have a grade since fall semester 2007. He reaffirmed Thursday that he withdrew from classes last spring. It never was made clear precisely what happened, with [coach] Jim Calhoun once calling it an “academic redshirt.” It was Calhoun who appealed to the dean on Robinson’s behalf to prevent him from failing out…
He’d post[ed] zero grades during a 16-month period in which he played more than 40 games. While it evidently would have broken no rules, it sure would have made the notion of student-athleticism a sad joke.
So let’s go to the NCAA rulebook, bylaw 12.01.1 (“Eligibility for Intercollegiate Athletics”), which states:
Only an amateur student-athlete is eligible for intercollegiate athletics participation in a particular sport.
Which sends me all the way to Bylaw 14.01:
14.01.1 (“Institutional responsibility”) An institution shall not permit a student-athlete to represent it in intercollegiate athletics competition unless the student-athlete meets all applicable eligibility requirements, and the institution has certified the student-athlete’s eligibility.
14.01.2 (“Academic Status”) To be eligible to represent an institution in intercollegiate athletics competition, a student-athlete shall be enrolled in at least a minimum full-time program of studies, be in good academic standing and maintain progress toward a baccalaureate or equivalent degree.
So a quick summary:
Only student-athletes may compete in NCAA events. And a student-athlete is defined as:
1.) Someone who participates in a university “full time” and “in good academic standing” as a student.
2.) Someone who participates in a university as an athlete.
So, assuming that Robinson fits only the second category, based on the reporting from the above Courant article, we’d move on to NCAA bylaw 14.1.8.2, which lists two different cases for students enrolled less than full time, each with its own penalty.
1.) Student Athlete (SA) competed while enrolled less than full-time due to a “timing” issue, or without the SA and/or the athletics department knowing SA was below full-time enrollment.
Under this ruling, there would be no fine or penalty. But based on what Robinson told The Courant, Calhoun and the school’s dean were both aware of the situation. And as Robinson had not been enrolled in any of the four semesters since (and including) fall 2007, it would appear difficult to argue that there was an issue with “timing.”
Which brings me to 14.1.8.2’s second situation:
2.) SA competed while enrolled less than full-time and athletics department and/or SA knew or should have known of SA’s enrollment status.
This seems like the more likely ruling, based on the evidence presented. According to the NCAA, the official fine for a team breaking this rule would be to “fine the institution $500 (for each contest and each ineligible SA) and require written notification to conference for a determination of forfeiture.“
There is no mention in the NCAA bylaws — nor anyway that Google turned up — with regards to what Calhoun called an “academic redshirt.” I cannot find any proof that the NCAA recognizes such a term, though others have suggested that it may refer to students studying with provisional status.
But here’s where it gets really interesting, especially if you’re a fan of any team that’s played the Huskies in any of the games in which Robinson would be deemed ineligible: the Huskies would likely be forced to vacate those games. Bylaw 32.2.2.3 (b), which deals specifically with violations committed during NCAA championship events, says:
Team Competition. The record of the team’s performance may be deleted, the team’s place in the final standings may be vacated, and the team’s trophy and the ineligible student’s award may be returned to the Association. (Revised: 4/26/01)
However: the NCAA Manual does not specify for basketball how those vacated games would affect the standings for UConn’s opponents. The NCAA only makes such a clarification for football. According to 30.9.2. (“Contest Status”):
When forfeiture of a regular-season football victory is required by the Committee on Infractions, a conference or self-imposed by an institution as a result of a violation of NCAA rules, neither of the competing institutions may count that contest in satisfying the definition of a “deserving winning team.” (Revised: 10/18/89, 10/12/93, 4/20/99, 12/15/06)
So this seems to be the most likely solution, if an NCAA investigation does reveal that Robinson is not an eligible student-athlete: UConn will be fined and forced to vacate games, but the NCAA would not award victories ex-post-facto to teams that played UConn. In short: 16 teams entered the 2009 West Regional, and history may show that no team officially emerged victorious. (Sorry, Mizzou fans.)
Of course, all of this is secondary to the matter of what happens to Robinson and his eligibility. My guess: he’ll save himself the trouble and just turn pro this year. His team’s already under enough scrutiny for other recruiting violations.
And as for that construction job he worked last year? It’s worth noting: the construction company was owned by a former UConn basketball player.
UPDATE: According to a Courant report last August, Robinson said that he was academically ineligible, but Calhoun denied that and said that Robinson was eligible to play, since Robinson was taking online classes. The real question here: will the NCAA even choose to investigate this matter?
I’m reading James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of the Crowds,” and this morning, I came across a passage that I think explains newspapers in 2009 pretty well.
Naturally, it’s a passage about ants1.:
In the early part of the twentieth century, the American naturalist William Beebe came upon a strange sight in the Guyana jungle. A group of army ants was moving in a huge circle. The circle was 1,200 feet in circumference, and it took each ant two and a half hours to complete the loop. The ants went around and around the circle for two days until most of them dropped dead.
What Beebe saw was what biologists call a “circular mill.” The mill is created when army ants find themselves separated from their colony. Once they’re lost, they obey a simple rule: follow the ant in front of you. The result is the mill, which usually only breaks up when a few ants straggle off by chance and the others follow them away.
The simple tools that make ants so successful are also responsible for the demise of the ants who get trapped in the circular mill. Every move an ant makes depends on what its fellow ants do, and an ant cannot act independently, which would help break the march to death.
That anecdote — especially the parts about the ants getting lost and moving in circles — meshed nicely with today’s David Carr column, in which he reminds readers:
Magazine and newspaper editors have canceled their annual conferences (good idea: let’s not talk to one another). But perhaps someone can blow a secret whistle and the publishers and editors could all meet at an undisclosed location.
My fantasy meeting goes something like this: a rump caucus could form where the newspaper industry would decide to hold hands and jump off the following cliffs together….
Now, here’s where we are in 2009: newspapers have happily followed the model of “free” for the last decade or so. Readership is up. Profits are way down. So newspapers are being asked to innovate, though newspapers have never been particularly good at innovation. A few lonely papers — as Carr notes, The Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports and The Arkansas Gazette are three — are actually charging for content and making some money. The rest are hemorrhaging cash.
So, as Carr has suggested, newspapers must band together in order to break the cycle and survive. Which brings me back to Surowiecki’s last sentence about the ants, which I’ll reprint from above:
Every move an ant makes depends on what its fellow ants do, and an ant cannot act independently, which would help break the march to death.
So elegant. So fragile. The media goliath has become the ant. Welcome to newspapers in 2009.
1.I was planning on pulling this text off my Kindle and onto the web, but then I found the exact passage I was looking for on the web. For the record, I found it on a website deriding Republicans for following President Bush on Iraq. Now I’m wondering: who has a higher approval rating? Bush, or the mainstream media?
