Nimbus in the bathtub

We left some pool towels in the tub to dry and guess who I found there! In other news im going to play basketball tonight.  We are 0-4 and hoping for our first win.  Hopefully alfred can lend a hand!

The garden is on its last legs

We've had over a week of 110+ temps in PHX.  Its taking a toll on many of my plants but especially my garden.  Cucumbers and strawberries never stood a chance.

Typical scene....

Wife and cat in bed.

Going swimming!

Water should be great today Noemi coming too.

Nimbus

Big Week!

Well, today is the day I have been waiting for. I have my HR meeting at work to discuss the terms of my layoff. No need to worry, this is actually a good thing. In order to do the PhD program, I need to leave my job and this is the best way! Let's hope everything goes smoothly.

The weather is still nice here in the morning, so I can still enjoy my daily coffee on the patio (as long as I make it outside by about 7am. I'm afraid this will be changing soon, though. Once monsoon season comes and the humidity outside increases to about 30%, Phoenix turns into a muggy mess...day and night...ugh.

Does Klout Have Legs?

Interesting article in the NY Times about the rise of influence scoring by companies like Klout and Peer Index.

Basically, these sites give people grades based on how effective they are at influencing followers to act on their recommendations.  Klout, for the moment, only uses Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to compile its score.

Some in the article say that this is tantamount to creating a online social caste system.  I think this is stretching it a bit.  I'd guess that uncertainties about the scoring methodologies combined with the the fact that 95% of people will probably end up in the average score range, will not make this as intrusive to our daily lives as people anticipate.

The wifey!!!

World War II

So it's HOT today in Phoenix. Who am I kidding, it is going to be HOT here everyday until about October! Anyways, we're basically stuck here in the house today. Noemi is actually being productive and cooking some food for the week. As for me, I'm watching Netflix.

For the past couple of days I've been watching Ken Burns' documentary on WWII. Besides the story of the conflict itself, a couple of facts piqued my interest...

Could our government persuade it's citizens to ration in 2011? There always seems to be a lot of nostalgia for the 40s and 50s, but compared to today's political environment, that era seems like socialism run amok! Rationing, propaganda films, internment camps, war bond rallies, the draft! Pretty incredible if you really think about it. If push came to shove, would today's generation willingly give up these freedoms for a greater common goal? I guess that some would argue we actually have in the wake of 9/11, but the Patriot Act seems somewhat small in comparison doesn't it?

Also, why didn't massive government spending on defense result in an unsustainable bubble that burst after the war was over? Instead, it led to a massive economic expansion that made the US the world's wealthiest nation. I think that this is a question that today's advocates of government budget cutting should be prepared to answer.

Education

I've been noticing a lot of chatter recently about the real value of a college education. The latest example of this is David Leonhardt's op-ed in support of a college education, even for jobs that may not necessarily require it:

Since I'm leaving work to pursue a full-time PhD program this Fall, this is a debate which I think about often. Judging from the comments to the NY Times article, the majority of posters did not seem convinced by Leonhardt's argument.

In my opinion, the debate boils down to two issues:

1) ~50% of undergraduates do not belong in college at age 18. They are too immature/unprepared/entitled to really get anything out of higher education.

2) The costs of attending college. A liberal education was never intended to be a jobs program, but the rising costs of college have made people justify their degree solely in terms of return on investment. At a micro level, this is a rational individual response. However, at a macro level, I think it bodes ill for our society.

First Post!

OK, I got the idea to give blogging another try.  I'm not doing this because I think I have anything great to add to the public conversation, but because I'd like to keep some sort of daily diary for myself and my family.  Time passes so quickly that I think now is as good a time as any to record daily thoughts, events, etc so we can look back on them some years down the road.