Links of the Week: Baseball Fights, Quentin Tarantino, and the Ethics of Elderly Athletes Using PEDs

I think if there is one thing I learned from the Brett Favre "Will he or won't he" saga is that America craves decisiveness. I think that is why this whole situation got so out of hand.

In case you have been living under a rock this week (or you just don't care), Brett Favre has come out of retirement for the second consecutive year, this time to become the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings.  For some reason, everyone in the sports world (especially the people in Green Bay) seems to be flipping out because of this, acting like when Hulk Hogan turned into a bad guy and joined the nWo. The only person who should be angry about this is Sage Rosenfelds, who Minnesota traded for earlier in the so he could be their new starting quarterback. Honestly, I don't blame Favre's waffling as much as I blame the media for blowing this story up. Favre returning to the NFL got the same treatment as the OJ Car Chase, complete with television program interruptions and helicopter fly-overs. Really? All of this for a quarterback who has as many Super Bowl rings as Trent Dilfer?

The man is only 42 years old. I mean, what is he going to do for the next 40 years? In any other profession, if someone retires at age 40 and then wants to come back in a different city, is it ever that big of a deal?

So, on the idea of giving Favre the benefit of the doubt, I give to you the Links of the Week:

Okay, so this weekend Quentin Tarantino's newest movie, Inglorious Basterds, comes out. I'm a huge Tarantino fan, so here's a link to Newsweek's review of the movie. Oh, and here's Rolling Stone's. And Roger Ebert's. Needless to say, I'm excited.

I'm selling my Nintendo Wii and moving up the ladder to a PS3 or an Xbox 360. I have been debating this for months and everyone who owns an Xbox says "Go Xbox". Everyone who owns a Playstation says "Go PS3". Luckily, I found a winner!

I used to be one of the world's biggest Beatles fans. Bigger than Ned Flanders. I had the books, the Anthology DVD's, and I would even go to IAmTheBeatles.com and memorize why every song was made, which songs were on each CD, etc. I was a borderline Beatles nutjob. So, anytime something with the Beatles comes out (like Beatles Rock Band!!!), I get pretty excited. This week, Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone published an in-depth feature on the Beatles' breakup. My theory: if you look at how many singles and albums they produced (13 albums, including 30 #1 hits) in just under seven years, you can understand. I got frustrated working in group projects in school, and those were just for a couple weeks at time.

This link is reason number 4,978,023 why I want to be rich before I have kids.

Baseball has taken the most heat for the rampant use of peformace enhancing drugs, and how that effects the sport's record books. But what about the elderly athletes? They don't catch any heat for breaking records, despite taking medicines that often contain steriods and other performance enhancing drugs? This piece from the New York Times puts into focus the fine line between using PEDs for gain in athletics versus using PEDs where they are medically necessary. It's basically the grey area where using something like human growth hormones (HGH) can be considered medically necessary for some, and cheating for others. It is interesting to think where one sport, in this case running, does not "require" asterisks, but something like baseball does. Food for thought.

ESPN's new obudsman, Don Ohlmeyer, debuted this week, taking to task the issue of ESPN's coverage of the Ben Roethlisberger lawsuit. He surely did a great job of making sure he wrote a lot, but he left many important questions unanswered. Here are two of the leading sports blogs' rebuttals: Deadpsin and The Big Lead.

And, since it's timely and all, I'll leave you with an SNL bit, entitled Plaxico Burress' Tips for Gun Ownership.