Unlikely Words » I didn’t know that

Will Smith is the Man

aaron cohen — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:39:32 +0000

My man love for Will Smith is even stronger since Kottke told me he can solve a Rubik's cube in 55 seconds. ###Possibly related posts:Barack Obama as Will Smith Shepard Smith Eats Pieces of Shit for Breakfast? HDNet Concert Series – Robert Smith is HUGE! ### Possibly related posts:

Munchausen in the Workplace

aaron cohen — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:25:46 +0000

At first, I thought this article about Munchausen at work was a joke, but as I continued to read, it occurred to me that these people are serious. And by 'these people, I mean GQ/Style, not the people who make up problems to solve them, though, I suppose they are serious, too.

If the 18th-century German cavalry officer Baron Karl Friedrich Hieronymus von Munchausen were around today, he'd probably be in a white-collar firm somewhere faking problems so that he could fix them—and he'd have plenty of company...First identified in 2007 by Nathan Bennett, a business-school professor at Georgia Tech, Munchausen at work leads employees to cook up phony office dramas that they themselves can solve to become heroes.

I actually think that this isn't something people are doing. People are usually able to solve problems they create, but not because they're creating the problems on purpose. Maybe I'm not giving people enough credit?

(Via my friend Ben in the picture)

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OLPC Give One, Get One – What Happens to the Given?

aaron cohen — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:46:13 +0000

One Laptop per Child is a neat, durable laptop built with the goal of getting as many children in third world countries learning how to use computers. The last couple years they have run a program called Give one, get one where the only way to buy one was to pay the double the price and buy two, one of which (or the cost, etc) was automatically donated to the mission of the project - getting laptops into the hands of children.

Portfolio recently pointed me to the blog for Laptop Magazine, which has been tracking the deployment of 30 OLPCs in Ouéléssébougou, Mali. Good stuff.

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Comprehensive Election Reactions Round Up – A Reference

aaron cohen — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:03:26 +0000

After the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, I didn’t quite know what to do to help myself take it all in. I found a message board called ‘Win it For’ that was started at some point before the World Series and was filled with stories from people who wanted the Red Sox to win the World Series for someone or other. I spent about 5 hours, reading it straight through, the morning after the World Series and it was the best way I could have celebrated the Red Sox winning.

On November 4, when Barack Obama was announced the winner of the 2008 Presidential Election I was searching for a similar sort of catharsis. Not so much because of Obama winning (which was nice) but because the election had been building as an event for almost 3 years – from the speculation of who would run, to the announcements, to the campaigns, to the primaries, to the general, and finally, November 4th came and went. I thought maybe I’ll collect a few thoughts from friends, or collect all the Facebook status messages, or collect a few links that helped tell the story. As I thought about it, I decided I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted without going overboard. And I won’t lie, despite my attempts at making this document impartial, there’s no way it could have been. And though I’ve tried to make its focus 11/4, Election Day, there were certain events from the campaign that creeped in.

I wanted to create something to look at a couple years from now to remember the election and hopefully present a good representation of what both sides of America were feeling on that day as evidenced by the response in the press and on the blogs. I didn’t capture everything, though I’ve certainly tried. I want to consume all of this information, have it put on a microchip in my brain. Until that’s possible, I just read a lot. I don’t know how many of these links will work in a year or 5 years, (when this doc might be helpful to show younger people who may not have ever remembered having a president who isn’t black), but here’s what I’ve got. At the bottom is a list of all the sites I used and the domains that helped.

This is a LONG post, when you get bored, bookmark it so you can come back later. There are several different sections. If you want to skip around, you can use the Contents Section below.

Celebrate! - A run down of the celebrations.
WINS! - A list of 38 sites and their winning posts.
Winners and Losers - 18 lists of election winners and losers.
Turnout, Voting, and Polling - Articles and stories about voting, polling, and turn out.
Reactions - Reactions from the world, pundits, and celebrities.
How Obama Won - Some thoughts on how Obama won.
Why McCain Lost - Some thoughts on why McCain lost and what next for the GOP.
Expectations and Advice - There are a lot of people with expectations and a lot of people with advice.
Race - Obviously electing the first black president is going to bring up comments on race.
Money and Business - What will the impact on your money and you business be?
The Media - Without the media, wherever would we be!?
Humor - Without the humor, wherever would we be!?
Miscellaneous - Without the miscellaneous, wherever would we be!?
Personal Stories from Friends - Just what it says.
273 Status Political Status Messages in 27 Hours - Just what it says.
Via - Here’s a list of all the sites I used in putting this together – the sources.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

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Prince Is Against Gay Marriage and He Can Play Basketball

aaron cohen — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:02:03 +0000

Wired has a pretty good run down of the controversy touched off by this article in the New Yorker where Prince apparently comes clean on his anti-gay marriage stance. Then a Prince insider leaked to Perez Hilton that Prince was upset about the article and had been misquoted, which the New Yorker denies, standing behind their story. Weirder still, Prince is a Jehovah's Witness and spends afternoons knocking on doors proselytizing.

Which all comes together quite nicely for me because, I don't know when it happened, but Comedy Central finally posted the Charlie Murphy story from The Chappelle Show where Murphy and his crew get bested by the Revolution. This is gold, even better than the Rick James stuff, and was analyzed incessantly by my friends and me when it first aired. I've missed it so. Unfortunately, there's a part missing at the end where Prince makes everyone pancakes at the end. Pancakes.

Chappelle's Show

Basketball with Prince

Charlie Murphy Clips
Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy
True Hollywood Stories

(Prince story via Sullivan)

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Round Up of a Weird Weekend

aaron cohen — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:30:30 +0000

I've been sick, so maybe this only amuses me, and if so, well, sorry. But this weekend, I came across news that spam was up, spam was down, spam was lucrative (enough), and divine intervention as evidenced by a seemingly unironic collocation of sentences from the AP.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday she would consider serving in the Senate if God gave her the opportunity and Alaskans wanted her to take the job. The state's senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens, fell behind as the count resumed in his re-election bid.

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Goonches? Giant Shark-like Catfish

aaron cohen — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:10:15 +0000

Apparently, giant catfish, or goonches, in India are eating teenagers. Mediafishermanwriter personality Jeremy Wade claims the presence of his quotations innews stories about the maneating catfish prove the stories, which is some sort of catfish fulfilling prophesy.

Via The Fear Beneath, which features a sensible comment on their post about the crazy catfish. From the comments of this link, "I’ve heard of catfish biting people, so if they were feeding dead people to them the best thing to do is not swim in that river". I mean, right? This is an entire blog about sharks and sharks attacks, people, AN ENTIRE BLOG! If there's not a law against shark blogs, there should be. Also on The Fear Beneath, thoughts on what would happen if Great Whites began replicating what some sharks in captivity have shown recently: virgin birth.

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Tom Brady Was a Catcher?

aaron cohen — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:52:57 +0000

Via Baseball Musings, we find that the Expo's drafted 3 catchers in 1995, 2 of whom, Brian Schneider and Michael Barrett have had pretty good careers. The third plays for the Patriots and hurt his knee 8 minutes into the first game of the season.

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Overacheiver!

aaron cohen — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:32 +0000

Eric Heiden won 5 Olympic medals for speed skating, became a world-class cyclist, then became a surgeon, what have you done today?

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The Waverly Inn’s Refrigerated Garbage

aaron cohen — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:05:42 +0000

Via Portfolio, we find that the The Waverly Inn, the restaurant owned by Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair stores the garbage overnight in a refrigerated room so that, as a courtesy to neighbors, it can be picked up at 10 AM instead of 2 AM. What a mensch.

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Gene Simmons Speaks Hebrew?

aaron cohen — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:10:43 +0000

From this long, though interesting profile of super fundraiser, Haim Saban, the man who brought America the Power Rangers: "At the appointed time, Saban, Arad, and Simmons sat down...Then Saban turned to Arad and, referring to Simmons, confided in Hebrew, “Now we gut him like a fish.” Without missing a beat, Simmons—who, unbeknownst to Saban, was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel—replied in Hebrew, 'You asshole. I’m one of you.'"

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