Dreams
Well, for once, this one didn't have to do with unexpected exams, etc. Instead, it dealt with a doctoral graduation. And this one is sort of understandable in terms of my experience. Now first keep in mind there are different types of doctoral degrees, including professional ones. I hold a PhD. This is a degree that is appropriate for those who intend to pursue an academic career requiring teaching and original research/scholarship, hence the dissertation requirement. (I mentioned an earlier work colleague who had a DBA degree (not to be confused with database administration, my professional specialization): a DBA is a professional degree, basically a progression of the well-known MBA degree. I don't want to oversimplify here, because it probably differs by program, but your thesis requirement may be more like a case study than an empirical research study. My former colleague, for instance, was career Marine enlisted who did a project on military leadership styles, as I recall.)Now really, in a PhD program, you earn your PhD after you successfully defend your dissertation and get the signatures of your committee members. That's easier said than done because I almost lost one of my committee members over a kerfuffle (I won't publish his name here) during my data collection stage of the research. A number of people helped me out in terms of sponsoring my data collection efforts. One of my perks to thank those people would be to write up a special report on my research and sent it to my key contacts. The committee person in question had a smaller company executive contact, and so I negotiated a presentation at the company in person. Now companies that cooperated did it differently; I remember one that not only allowed me to be present while participating employees completed forms but they even brought the employees coffee and doughnuts. And sometimes I ran into issues; for example, the human subject protection committee required me to explicitly note the voluntary nature of the study in writing on the cover page, and one contact balked when he read that, saying that he wanted his employees to do the questionnaire (the notice stayed).
In the case of this small company via my committee person, the executive made a fairly unusual stipulation that I would be allowed a brief meeting to distribute the survey but I would also have to furnish stamped, addressed envelopes to return the questionnaires. I had a very modest teaching fellow stipend that barely covered my living expenses; I still recall celebrating my written and oral comps by going to a dollar cinema off Westheimer and buying a large popcorn. So I think this requirement probably cost me somewhere between $20-50. Not that much in the long run, considering the value of the degree, but for someone who couldn't afford to go to a regular restaurant, it made me wince.
The cost wasn't the issue, though. I instinctively knew that most people probably wouldn't go out of their way to return the questionnaires. And when he addressed the employees about my questionnaire, he went out of his way to let them know he didn't give a damn one way or the other whether they completed and returned the questionnaires. That was the proverbial kiss of death. Keep in mind the questionnaire cover sheet explicitly noted its voluntary nature. It wasn't what he said but how he said it. Now granted, he did me the favor of providing potential participants (it's not his fault if they had no interest in the project); I thought at least he might offer a few encouraging words for participation, for inviting me in the first place. I held my tongue during all this, because, of course, I was a guest.
I think I ended up getting ONE form back, and it wasn't usable for statistical reasons. (I think a second was received weeks after my deadline for submission and had completed my analyses.) I was pissed; I didn't think I should send the point of contact a copy of my special report. I don't think I directly confronted the committee person, but word got back to him, and he went ballistic, threatening to resign from my committee in protest, something I never saw coming. Now I suppose I could have recruited a replacement, but I was heading down the home stretch of the dissertation and didn't want to do it at this stage. So I profusely apologized, etc., and having Dr. Scamell, one of the nicest guys you've ever meet, as my chair probably helped. (Richard once told us if he hadn't become a professor, he would have probably been a minister.) The member accepted my apology.
So getting those signatures after the defense wasn't a formality. There was a rumor or two some antagonist might crash my defense; I've never lacked confidence (still don't), saying, "Make my day!" But the point is, once you have that signature page, you have the PhD. Formally, it was recognized a few weeks later at spring commencement.
That brings me up to the context of the dream. Now, of course, my folks and 6 younger siblings all attended the graduation; but of all things, everybody thought others were bringing cameras and none did (nobody thought of going to a drugstore and getting a disposable one) and the business school didn't have any official photographers there; to this day, I'm the only academic I know who doesn't have a photograph from his doctoral commencement. Of course, I still have my diploma, hood and gold tassel.
So in this dream I had, graduation was chaotic, sort of like a Beatles movie (but I haven't seen these in ages). All sorts of nasty madcap things, like university paperwork issues, a graduation eve dinner where a colleague locks my auto rental keys in the car (no dinner in real life), and then--no pomp and circumstance.
Political Potpourri
I'm looking at the latest RCP email, and things are looking bad for Trump. Today shows Biden 222 (firm), Trump 115, Toss-up 201. What this means is that Biden needs 48 electoral votes to clinch the election, roughly a quarter of the toss-ups. Among the toss-ups: FL, TX, NC, GA, WI, PA, and AZ (and even states like SC, IA, MI, IN, and OH are only leaning or toss-up). I think of the toss-ups Trump is narrowly leading in TX and trailing in AZ and NC. Biden has a number of ways to get 48.Now I never underrate the possibility of an incumbent's comeback; historically there's Truman's unlikely win in 1948. Dukakis had a huge lead in 1988 and melted down (it's hard to explain why; he never handled the Willie Horton release well (initially raised by Gore). he handled a speculative question about his wife badly, he had a goofy photo riding a tank, etc.) It's impossible to predict the way things can go south for Biden; he could alienate his progressive support, his VP choice may not go over well, he could stumble in the debates, the COVID-19 crisis might wane in the weeks before the election, the economy could show dramatic progress, with a falling unemployment rate, etc. Not to mention a wildcard event, like an unexpected terror attack where the nation closes rank behind the President. All of this is speculative and unlikely. Trump will point out as he has that people thought he was done in 2016, and Clinton had a big lead then, too. I will point out apples and oranges: Trump didn't have a record, Clinton had extremely high unfavorables and a demoralized split party; it was a change year election.
I am hardly a political guru. The only election I won was for lead altar boy back in south Texas, and that was probably because my middle brother supported me and he was, unlike me, popular. (I was actually the logical choice because I voluntarily served the 6 AM mass on base before leaving for high school.) Me, I thought these cartoonish gimmicks, like the border wall, would be scrapped once he got in the Oval Office. Where were those supporters going to go? To the Dems? I thought the guy would say something like, "Look, I can cut a deal with the Dems. I was in their party a decade ago." I thought he would stake out a centrist position and agenda and leave the Dems no option beyond a left-wing McGovern-like niche.
I never could figure out Trump's bizarre right-wing agenda. I thought maybe he was trying to get the PC police to overreact and use that to broaden his appeal. Then I thought surely after Trump lost the mid-terms and in particular the House of Representatives, he would see the writing on the wall and adapt a centrist agenda to carry him through the 2020 election. But no: it's like he felt without his base, he was done, so he doubled-down on his right-wing, nationalist agenda. Make no mistake: if he had not lost the House, no impeachment.
Is Scott Adams right? Is Trump a clown genius? I just don't know it yet. I'm not sure; I will point out, however, unlike most governors, Trump's approvals have dropped, not risen, in the crisis. The fact that 2 states he needs to hold (TX and FL) are getting hit hard by the virus is not helpful. More and more Republicans, including Hogan (below) and Romney, are openly critical.
Equally important, the Dems seem to have 214 firm seats for election, meaning they need just 4 tossups to retain control of the House. They have a weaker position in the Senate, needing to pick up 5 of 7 tossups. One thing I would expect Trump to argue is that his holding the veto power is a check against a Dem-controlled Congress.
Governor Hogan's Rant on Trump
I’d watched as the president downplayed the outbreak’s severity and as the White House failed to issue public warnings, draw up a 50-state strategy, or dispatch medical gear or lifesaving ventilators from the national stockpile to American hospitals.Hogan (R-MD) knew to control the pandemic in Maryland he needed diagnostic kits--not available functionally usable and in sufficient quantities--through the federal government (CDC/FDA) monopoly (something I still see as Trump's biggest misstep in the crisis):
The test used by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early on was fraught with inaccuracies, and onerous regulations hindered the nation’s private labs. The resulting disorganization would delay mass testing for almost two months and leave the nation largely in the dark as the epidemic spread.
As Hogan notes, Trump was in a state of denial about testing and passed the buck to governors by early April:
On April 6, he declared that testing wasn’t Washington’s responsibility after all. “States can do their own testing,” he said. “We’re the federal government. We’re not supposed to stand on street corners doing testing.”In fact, Hogan had stopped by NIH's office for help. He was told they only had capacity to do about 72 tests a day, not even enough to cover staff: the federal administrator wanted to know if Hogan could get nearby John Hopkins to help out.
In February, the National Governors conference met in Washington and the governors were briefed:
They [Fauci, agency managers, etc.] hit us with detailed presentations and the unfiltered truth, as well as it was known then. I remember hearing many dire claims: “This could be catastrophic. . . . The death toll could be significant. . . . Much more contagious than SARS. . . . Testing will be crucial. . . . You have to follow the science — that’s where the answers lie.”Trump was in his own fantasy world, speaking publicly:
Then he shifted from [stump rally speech] boasting to blame. “We inherited a very obsolete system” from the Obama administration, he claimed, conveniently ignoring the fact that his own CDC had designed the troubled U.S. testing system and that his own Food and Drug Administration had waited a full month before allowing U.S. hospital labs to develop their own tests On March 25, the president was back to bragging again. “We now are doing more testing than anybody by far,” including South Korea, whose widespread testing program was being praised around the world. This was true in absolute numbers, since we are a much bigger country, but we’d tested far fewer per capita than the Koreans had — 1,048 tests per million people vs. South Korea’s 6,764 per millionHogan explains in this column how he managed to procure 500,000 test kits from LabGenomics in South Korea, greatly facilitated by his Korean immigrant wife Yumi as he worked through Korean government channels. Not that Trump the Clown Diplomat was helpful: he was publicly bitching how the South Koreans were freeloading off the Pentagon. Hogan was concerned because the Trump Administration had stolen N95 surgical masks procured by Gov. Baker (R-MA). When Trump the Clown Prince learned of the purchase, he basically called Hogan a gullible mark who got taken advantage by Korean scam artists and that he could have gotten a much better deal working through VP Pence.
