• Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury
  A scathing profile from the latest issue of Vanity Fair. It’s hard to believe that the author actually started his research on this with a prejudice in her favor.

• Building a Nation of Know-Nothings – NYTimes.com
  A great piece from Timothy Egan on the ignorance and misinformation that plague the Republican Party.

• How HDR Saved RC’s Star Wars Celebration
  As much as I dislike the recent plague of mediocre HDR photographs around the web, these are really phenomenal examples of "HDR Done Right".
• Remembering Katrina, five years ago – The Big Picture – Boston.com
  It's hard to believe that it's only been five years, and that so many people have already forgotten.

Jonas vs. “Dark Side of the Moon”:

Part of the network was down for a couple of hours today at work, so I had a little bit of free time on my hands. With that, I decided to try something that I haven’t done in a long, long time: I wrote a short story.

It’s been at 8 or 10 years since I’ve tried my hand at creative writing, but I’ve had a few ideas in my head recently for some short film projects. Combine that with a little bit of free time and an interesting new constraint, and I apparently have an itch to scratch.

Ficly is a site that I came across a few weeks ago, and I can best describe it as “Twitter for Short Stories”. The basic idea is that you have 1,024 characters (not words, but characters) to tell a story. Then, for a social twist, other members of the site are invited to rate your story, leave comments, or write their own sequels and prequels. The most interesting part to me is the length constraint, so I decided to sign up and hammer something out.

The result is something I called “Summer Camp”:

“Be Prepared.”

For as long as I could remember, that had been my motto.

Ten minutes ago, I adopted another: “Aim for the head.”

I used to joke that I learned everything I ever needed from The Boy Scout Handbook and The Zombie Survival Guide, but that’s not a joke anymore. I can hear them in the distance. One of them is trying to follow me.

I’m trying to stay downwind, but the breeze keeps shifting.

I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted to spend my summer teaching kids Archery, but now I’m raiding the storage sheds for weapons and ammo. Our shipment of shotgun shells never arrived, but I have plenty of arrows.

The dining hall is empty, for now, but I can’t stay there.

I can smell that they’re getting a bit too close.

The only access to the climbing tower is by ladder. The Guide says they can’t climb ladders, so that’s the plan. I can store a week’s worth of food and water up there, too. Will that be enough?

With any luck, they’ll get bored soon and shamble into town. I’ll cross my fingers.

I have a couple of other very loose, very rough ideas that I might try to knock out over the next few weeks, but I make no promises. Odds are this will be a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing.

• Copy Protection Makes Dozens of Blu-Ray Titles Unplayable
  Say it with me: DRM only inconveniences legitimate consumers. It does -nothing- to combat piracy.

• Marco.org – A smartphone retrospective
  Will the iPad do to netbooks what the iPhone did to smartphones?

While I undoubtedly value my university education, and all of the auxiliary knowledge that came with my degree in computer science, I have for years said that “college isn’t for everyone”. I have argued that going into tremendous amounts of debt for a degree that many young people never finish is a surefire way to screw over an entire generation.

Then, today, I saw this video from Mike Rowe:

Did you watch it? If not, scroll back up and watch it. Seriously. This is important.

If you still haven’t watched it, here’s the money quote:

We used to tell our kids that learning a trade was a great way to secure a worthwhile future. We don’t tell them that anymore. Today, we tell them if they want to get a really good job they are going to need a four-year degree. We’ve lumped the skilled trades into the ‘alternative education’ category and turned the entire field of study into some sort of vocational consolation prize.

Is it any wonder we have a shortage of qualified tradesmen today?

It’s sort of remarkable that Alabama is the first state to specifically address this issue, but I’m tremendously proud to see that we’re addressing it at all.

For more info, check out GoBuildAlabama.com.

• Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943
  Another incredible collection of photographs. This time, in color.
• From the Archive: American Cities Pre-1950
  An incredible collection of photographs, some dating back to the Civil War.

• Mobile Flash Fail: Weak Android Player Proves Jobs Right
  Yep, Flash still sucks. And it sucks even more on the latest, greatest Android phone. Is anyone really surprised by this?