Monday Links: May 26th, 2008

Happy Memorial Day to everyone. Monday Links are a little late today, but nobody is at work to read them anyway, so enjoy these on Tuesday Morning:

• In case you didn’t know, geeks rule. David Brooks offers definitive proof in an NY Times Op-Ed published on…wait for it…my birthday:

Among adults, the words “geek” and “nerd” exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked. [...]

So, in a relatively short period of time, the social structure has flipped. For as it is written, the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth.

• Via Grist and Ezra Klein, here’s an advertisement for wind power that won an award at Cannes. It’s brilliant:

• I really enjoyed a provocative post from Brazen Careerist on “10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace.” A few of these made me want to shout out an ‘amen,’ like: “We’ll Promote Based on Emotional Intelligence,” and “We’ll Hold Only Productive Meetings.”

• Here’s a gem of a story from Mental Floss: haunting, sad, curious, and beautiful. Coming across things like this makes me love the internet. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here’s a tease:

Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.

• Fenway Park installs solar panels. Red Sox remain the greatest baseball franchise in the history of civilization.

• One more video: this one, from TreeHugger, is a Greenpeace ad illustrating the ocean’s role in producing oxygen and absorbing CO2. Simple, effective, and beautifully edited. Watch it with sound but beware: the heavy breathing might be a bit awkward if you share an office.

• In “come on people…why!?” news this week: some crazy frenchman has decided that skydiving from 25 miles in the air is a good idea. Just for a bit of context, that’s 131,200 feet; transatlantic flights fly at about 42,000 feet. He’s expected to break the sound barrier during his dive. Good God.

Enjoy! Check back this week for more regular bloggin’ (thanks for your patience last week).