Links of the Week: NFL Thoughts, Brett Favre, and Behind the Scenes of a Tweet

Of all my bad habits, of which there are many, I would have to say finishing 70% of something and then starting something else while never finishing that original project would have to rank among my worst. Take my weekly Bears article.

You may ask, "Geez Brett, I didn't know you wrote a weekly Bears article!" Well, I do. Sort of. Since week one, I've written a recap/big-picture Bears article every week. Well, 70% of a Bears article anyway. It's a terrible habit and despite how many other things I have going on, I know I need to just stick my head down, finish a few extra paragraphs and knock it out.  While we're at it, some quick NFL thoughts:

  • Whatever Devin Aromashodu did to get off the Bears' active depth chart is not worth him being off the active depth chart. 
  • The Colts have been through this before, what with their bad defense and 3-2 start and all. If I remember correctly, they had one of the worst run defenses in the league in 2006 and wound up winning the Super Bowl. Fret not, Colts fans.
  • Kyle Orton is on pace to rack up one of the biggest offensive seasons for a quarterback in NFL history. I'm not sure if this is a sign of how good he is as a quarterback or if its a sign of how bad Ron Turner was as an offensive coordinator.
  • The Bears are 4-1 with an extremely easy schedule until after the Bills game, then a pretty brutal schedule down the stretch with 2 games against the Vikings, and then games against Miami, Philly, New England, the Jets, and the Packers. Is it bad that I already have a headache at the overreaction to their inevitable 4-4 finish to the season? They're a 10-6 team, which is really good in today's NFL.

Anyway, your Links of the Week:

Well, as you know, the whole ValpoLife/PortageLife concept is "no negative news". BUT, I feel like I have to pass along this link to the New York Times' recent profile of Sam Zell-- the guy who bought the Tribune company in order to bankrupt it and make some money (he's also the guy who sold the Chicago Cubs). If you're a fan of just poorly run companies with no morals, this article is for you! [New York Times via LongReads]

There's genius, and then there's genius. This, one of those genius ideas, is a train that taveles through a stadium and delivers beer to your seat. [NBC Out of Bounds]

Is the Magazine Publishers of America changing its name a sign of desperation? As an advertising major, one of the first moves of a major change required by a giant loss of profit and/or market share is re-branding. So I say yes. [Advertising Age]

I may be a week late, but people are saying that this photo of Tiger Woods at the Ryder Cup is one of the greatest sports photographs in history. It's great alright-- half for the shot of everyone focusing on one thing at the same time, but half because of cigar guy. Cigar guy is awesome. [Mail Online via TheBigLead]

Watch this viral Brett Favre video! (Note: it's not that Favre video.) [YouTube]

This article from WIRED Magazine, Love Google, Hate Facebook, reminded me how much I loved the movie, The Social Network. It was a semi-honest portrayal of how one of the world's largest companies, and how one of the internet giants came to be really less than five years ago. The story may take a mostly anti-Zuckerberg and anti-Sean Parker (creator of Napster, played by Justin Timberlake) stance, but in all honesty, you've never seen a movie like it before, and it will be a while before you can see another. Excellent movie. Anyway, this is a good read. [Wired.com]

Info-graphic time! A visual display of every type of Facebook profile picture. [Gizmodo]

If you're a parent, probably the best reason to spend the extra $10/month on unlimited texting: the average teen texted 3,000 texts per month. Read that stat, let it process, and then do the math. That's about 830 texts per week, which means about 119 texts per day, which means about 5 texts per hour. If the Darwinists are correct, then our future generations are going to have themselves some strong thumbs. Not sure if anything else good will come of this. [Mashable]

Last week, ESPN's Bill Simmons accidentally Tweeted "moss vikings" to his 1.2 million followers and accidentally broke the story of a Vikings-Patriots trade. This is the back story of how that happened and how old people shouldn't use technology. (Kidding!) [ESPN]

I've been mixed about Kanye West for many a year now. As a (good) hip-hop fan, I love a good beat and I love to hear music styles I haven't heard before. But these two Kanye West Saturday Night Live performances are insane. I dislike Kanye from what I know about him through the media (though I take many of the stories with a grain of salt), but these songs are insane. Watch your video of the week (his first performance), watch the second at the RollingStone link and tell me that he's not among the most talented individuals working in show business today. [Rollingstone]