I hope not.

Rod counted 1,725 browser tabs closed in about a month, a number that scared Kottke who said he wouldn't bother counting for fear of knowing the answer. My solution? I've never closed any tabs ever. In ever, Jerry. Ever. Firefox hates me.

Following up on the transportation related post below, here's a write up on biking in New York City where 35% more people are biking this year as opposed to last year. (Via Kottke)

This video of dolphins, seals, sharks, AND birds feasting on a giant sardine school is insane. So amazing I don't even care that there are sharks in it.



(Via Kottke)

My man love for Will Smith is even stronger since Kottke told me he can solve a Rubik's cube in 55 seconds.

Via Kottke, Feltron Eight is out - I was just looking for it this weekend and here it is.

It was a good year on Unlikely Words. In case you missed some or all of it, I went through the year and pulled out a few links to my favorite posts. Favorite is loose here and applies to something either I wrote or really enjoyed on the internets. What did you like this year?

In no real order...

A horse statue was vandalized in Saratoga Springs, Billy Ripken and Ken Griffey reminded me of how I spent the second half of the eighties and one summer after Sophomore year of college and Guns n' Roses released an album leading to me telling 2 stories of my younger days.

I documented 12 cities that banned plastic bags, as well as the the 2008 Election and was PSYCHED this got linked by Kottke and Wonkette. Bill Simmons listed his favorite sports journalism and I found links to almost all of them as tons and tons of musicians told John McCain "Don’t Play My Song! and I compiled a list. I was hoping this would catch on, but, alas...

A seafood truck crashed in Worcester. Someone rented a refrigerated truck and the lobsters were sold all over town. Until they were discovered, seized and...dumped back into Boston Harbor, which seems like it could only happen in Worcester, the Paris of the Eighties.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks was my favorite book this year, Mad Men Season 1 my favorite TV show, and Eastern Promises my favorite movie. However, my favorite movie to talk about was the utterly horrible Unknown. It's not unwatchable, though.

"Dodgers touch Colon for run in fourth" was my favorite headline of the year, while seeing Sir Ben Kingsley as Ian MacKaye was my favorite video. The Barack Brains T Shirt (Bad Brains logo/Barack) tied the Cry Celtic Green T-Shirt for garment of the year. And I got an iPhone.

A hawk attacked a girl at Fenway Park and I introduced the world to cold cut flavored jelly beans, which surprisingly elicited a prompt reaction from the inventor of Jelly Belly (see the comments). I continued hating sharks while Pat Matheny continued to hate Kenny G's "Lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing.”

Eliot Spitzer banged a prostitute and I was there to flow chart it. I also created a recipe to make Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream at home, watched my street flood, enjoyed this article about getting stuck in an elevator, and found out BJ Upton's BJ stands for Bossman Junior, which is just awesome.

And finally, my favorite picture of the year:


Happy New Year everyone, thanks for reading and see you next year.

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.”

There are rumblings that Michael Lewis' book about using undervalued resources to your advantage is going to be made into a movie, possibly starring Brad Pitt. No word yet on whether he'll play Kevin Youkilis, Nick Swisher, Chad Bradford, Mark Teahen, or Billy Beane.

Incidentally, Nick Swisher, the 1st pick of the A's the year Michael Lewis spent in Oakland, at 16th, was picked one pick after Scott Kazmir and one pick before Cole Hamels, 2 picks ridiculed in the book. The picks were ridiculed because Kazmir and Hamels were high school pitchers, though, judging by this year's World Series, I'd say they worked out OK.

(Via kottke.org and Baseball Musings)

This post has changed in the 3 weeks since I started it. Right now, the way I'm blogging is writing posts in bulk a couple times per week and then roboposting them one post a day. This makes it easier for me to blog and makes the blog better, I think. I imagine that most of you don't care about any of this, but I feel an explanation is in order. So anyway, I started this post after it seemed like I was about to post a lot of stuff that had appeared on Kottke. Since then, 2 more things I would have posted were posted by him and, well, we got linked by him, somehow (which was about all I hoped to achieve on the internet in an ZOMG!!11!! kind of way). So although the title of this post is Unabashed Kottke Linking, as you can tell, I'm feeling quite bashed. I don't want Unlikelywords to be a sort of delayed version of the Kottke RSS, but that's how it's gonna have to go sometimes. Below is the original post.

Look, here's the thing. I read kottke.org and I assume most of you do, too. It's full of good stuff. Lately, though pretty much everything on the internet I have ready to post shows up on his site. If I'm lucky, I haven't gotten to it on my RSS feed yet and I don't feel guilty or derivative. If I'm unlucky, I agonize over whether I should still post it. Usually I do. I can't help it if I like Gladwell and Lewis and lists and Fenway Park and Manny (well, I don't like him, but you know what I mean) and Pollan. These are things I liked before I started reading Kottke (and boingboing, for that matter), and I'm going to have to link to them.

Anyway, here are the explanations for a few that will be showing up in the next couple weeks/days. Hopefully, "I saw it somewhere else first" is a good enough defense.

100 skills (I saw it somewhere else first).
Brad Pitt in Money Ball (My admiration for Michael Lewis is on record, and I would have blogged this after hearing about it anyway).
Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker (My admiration for Malcolm Gladwell is noted in the fact that I work for a company partly based on The Tipping Point, and I would have blogged this after hearing about it anyway).
Michael Pollan in the NYTimes (I write about him and Orleans, Gladwell, Pollan, Schlosser, Krakauer, etc)
Manny (Come on.)
Tiny picture of Fenway Park. (No excuses, this is just awesome and people send their awesome stuff to him first).

So those are the excuses for a while, I hope they suffice. And if in the future you notice a higher than acceptable proportion of Kottke-biting posts, know I am suffering internal turmoil.