Links of the Week: National Geographic, Manti Te’o, and the Presidential Inauguration

brett-favreI understand this makes me the Brett Favre of weekly link roundups on good news websites, but I’m coming back. I am un-retiring the Links of the Week blog once again.

I wrote about 60 of these in a row, followed by 8 months or so off, un-retired, wrote two more, the re-retired. So that makes this my un-re-retirement? Something like that.

For those of you new to this, my LOTW thing is basically a roundup of fun stuff happening on the internet each week. I try to stay away from anything racy, controversial, or negative, which unfortunately cuts out about 98% of the web. But hey, them’s the breaks.

So without further ado, LES GET DOWN TO BINISS! Here are your links of the week:

Grantland.com continues to improve since it’s semi-shaky 2011 launch. Recently, the site hired one of my favorite writers away from Sports Illustrated, Zach Lowe. Lowe’s weekly Tuesday column on the sports/pop-culture website has become a must-read for any NBA fan. This week's edition broke down the Indiana Pacers' awesome defense this season, among other NBA trends.  [Grantland]

manti-teo“Watch Every Presidential Inauguration Since Reagan in 36 Seconds” Sure, why not. [Mashable]

For those of you who HAVE read this before, you’d know the Big Picture from the Boston Globe is one of my favorite Twitter follows. Recently, National Geographic turned 125 years old, and TBP put together 23 of the coolest photos in the magazine, dating back to 1909. [Boston.com]

Thing That Won the Internet This Week was the Manti Te’o story that broke on Wednesday afternoon on Deadspin. Now I don’t want to get into the ins-and-outs of the story (mainly because my brain is still un-exploding), but I did want to link to a great interview with one of the contributing reporters on Poynter.org where he talked about how Deadspin out journalism’d traditional media outlets. [Poynter]

The “Top 10 Car Commercials in the Modern Era” has a surprisingly low number of cars zooming around the desert. [Fast Company]

I sprained my ankle jumping on the Jennifer Lawrence bandwagon. [Hulu via WarmingGlow]

led-zeppelinHere’s another interesting piece on Grantland all about Led Zeppelin’s place in Rock-n-Roll history, the first in a seven part series called “The Winners’ History of Rock and Roll". There’s a good hook in there called The Sound, and now you have to read. [Grantland]

Disney, in what appears to be an attempt at guerrilla marketing, turned a street in London into 8-bit for “Wreck-it Ralph”. (shrugs shoulders) [AdWeek]

And for your video of the week, please take the Bruno Mars Challenge: Listen to this song twice in any 24-hour period. If you don’t have it stuck in your head for the next 4 days, you get to keep your sanity.

Photos courtesy of qweff, HoosierGuy Jeff, wnick87 on Flickr.