Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer decides to become an inventor?

Inspired by the super-prolific Thomas Edison, Homer decides to beat the inventor at his own game, hanging up a poster that shows all of Edison's inventions and vowing to discover even more useful stuff like...the make-up gun and an electric hammer.

Anyway, Homer—and Thomas Edison—may have some competition in the inventions department from a very unlikely source: Ben Affleck. If you take The New York Times Magazine's word for it, the fluke Oscar winner and J-Lo multimedia side project is also an amazing innovator, responsible—or at least the inspiration—for two new 'ideas' chronicled in the magazine's annual "Year in Ideas" issues. Does the co-creator of Project Greenlight belong up there in the inventors pantheon with the creator of the light-bulb? Let's see.

Last year, writer Adam Sternbergh credited Affleck with inventing Flirting by Full-Page Ad: basically, hitting on his then-married co-star Jennifer Lopez in a Hollywood Reporter ad. "You have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty, in courage, great empathy, astonishing talent, real poise and true grace... It has been nothing but an honor and a pleasure to work with you," Affleck wrote in the March 2002 ad.

We all know what followed.

This year, Affleck pops up again in another Sternbergh entry entitled Body Language Reveals All. Writes Sternbergh:

In a typical issue of US this summer, Greg Cynaumon, a psychologist, analyzed a photo of Jennifer Lopez and her on-agan-off-again fiancŽ, Ben Affleck, and dissects the meaning of Lopez's miniskirt. ('She's saying: "Look at what you were thinking of giving up!"')

Who knew Ben was such an innovator? I guess that's how he'll so convincingly play an engineer in Paycheck later this month.