Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
- Cases are up to 41.5K/daily. And variants BQ.1/1.1 are now the new plurality leader.
- Over 5.5M shots administered, the highest in weeks.
- WHO says related global deaths are down 90% since February.
- It looks like repeated infections can risk more serious health issues, like organ damage
- ."The United States will keep in place the public health emergency status of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing millions of Americans to still receive free tests, vaccines and treatments, two Biden administration officials said on Friday."
- Unvaccinated infants were hospitalized with Covid more this summer than most age groups.
- Word that China may be relaxing COVID-19 restrictions has led to a rebound in oil prices.
Other Notes
One of the better weeks over the past 6 months with one of those rare 100+ pageview days. The patterns are bewildering; only a minority of posts, especially daily posts, crack double-digits. It looks like someone, perhaps a Good Samaritan hacker, is either helping or deliberately annoying me by targeting posts on Halloween a couple of years back. I can understand maybe someone stumbles across an older post on Google, shares the link with some friends, etc. But usually it's a one-shot thing, not something that occurs daily for several days in a row. Some weird Halloween prank? Why would an old post get more views than my latest posts? I appreciate readers, but I'm scrupulously honest about data in research. If my posts aren't attracting readers because they suck, I need to face the facts.
On Twitter I had my first "viral tweet" (>1K impressions) in a few weeks. As usual, it was unexpected; I've not been fond of Trumpkin firebrand Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. This week's election in Colorado was unexpectedly close with her trailing closely for some time after results started trickling it. I don't think a tight election had been anticipated, and so I tweeted a relevant update, dryly observing Boebert was now the leftist poster girl for "every vote counts"; at last check, over 5K impressions. Overall, I got over 8K impressions Thursday vs maybe a few hundred on a good day.
I enjoy some seasonal coffee flavors, like pumpkin spice. I have a quirky taste, e.g., for New England Coffee's blueberry cobbler.which I've found at Walmart (and available at Amazon). My favorite supermarket Lidl has intrigued me by in including some intriguing flavors: including maple in addition to the usual pumpkin spice. They have some intriguing choices for the Christmas season, including gingerbread, peppermint and eggnog spice. I bought maple and eggnog spice to try, sampling the latter as I write.Not bad.
The one new Hallmark cable movie I like so far this season is "Christmas Bedtime Stories". Hallmark has a sub-genre of military/veteran themed Christmas movies. Three off the top of my head: a single Mom is raising a teen daughter who falls in love with a military man; the mom doesn't approve, the guy gets sent on a mission, and the heart-broken daughter hears his name announced as a casualty at her joint holiday performance. A second is a recently detached servicewoman who had been strongly attached to a military dog named Christmas; she gets into a snowy auto accident near a local judge's home and becomes a reluctant house guest as her car is repaired. A third is a military wife and her son who are moving into her mother's house, while they anxiously await her husband who has been injured overseas in an IED incident; they're hoping he's released by Christmas to recover at home. In the meanwhile, the mother's neighbor's mother has died, revealing her daughter has an unidentified older sibling given up for adoption. The military wife joins her neighbor in the search for the sibling with an interesting twist. All 3 mentioned movies are in the HMM rotation.
The new HMM movie focuses on another military wife and her young daughter; her husband has gone MIA, likely dead; her daughter wants bedtime stories about her beloved daddy, like how her parents met (I believe at a Christmas tree lighting).
An anecdotal note: I often complain Hallmark doesn't show some of my favorites. One of them, on the above theme, is the 2002 "A Christmas Visitor". A family is still grieving through the loss of their son if the first Gulf War. The surviving daughter has been diagnosed with cancer. They've stopped celebrating Christmas. The Dad has decided to restart the tradition, picks up a hitchhiking vet and invites him to stay over the holidays; he asks the vet to play along telling his wife and daughter he had met their son/brother to comfort them. The vet goes off script in subtle ways; who is this guy really? So one night I'm on HMM at 2 AM, and they play the movie
Last night I got a rare very late unexpected phone call (a good way of getting blocked); I don't get many calls, mostly unsolicited tech recruiters. I glanced at my phone: area code. 619. San Diego. How do I know? WWW's Rey Mysterio signature move is named after his hometown area code; when his opponent gets draped outside the ring ropes, Mysterio swivels his body horizontally through the ropes, knocking his opponent backwards onto the mat.
San Diego? Who the hell do I know in San Diego? Probably a misdialed number. Then it struck me I do know someone although we haven't been in touch for years. I screwed up a friendship, and maybe readers can learn from my mistake. I almost never mention actual names without their knowledge and consent, so I'll just call him Tom. Tom is, unlike me, a social liberal Irish American. I'll occasionally mention him in the blog, e.g., he would be happy to pay more for fast food so workers would get a "living wage". We had met on my first UH college retreat with Catholic Newman. Tom and I became part of the Newman inside crowd. He was a CPA working on his PhD--as I recall, he was researching stress in the accounring profession; initially I was working towards my MBA at night school. He graduated the same year as I did, by then a full-time PhD student and the MBA became an after-thought in the process of finishing up degree requirements.
Tom had accepted an assistant professor position at the University of San Diego, a Catholic college. I've thought many times of teaching at one, having earned my BA at OLLU. I remember Notre Dame had posted a position when I was first on the market, but they ignored my query. I did get 3 campus visits at Catholic schools (in CA, IL, and RI); they probably paid below-market, but I didn't really care. I just thought I would be a better fit--but none of them made an offer. (Visits are generally expenses-paid job interviews where you normally give a research presentation or guest lecture. Specifics differ by school, but often schools will narrow their choices to 3 choices or so. I have strong confidence I can close the sale if I get a foot in the door.But I probably more often didn't get an offer. You don't know your competition and you don't get feedback.
I've been in touch with Tom since he left for California; I had confided some really nasty things done to me at UWM. It's something where I had been victimized but you don't want to mention something that might set off a red warning to prospective employers. I had already decided to leave UWM just 1 semester into my 3-year contract, when a senior MIS professor, unhappy with my private criticisms of his student's dissertation proposal, literally threatened my tenure (usually you go up around your sixth year). Let's just say after that, certain people wanted me gone sooner than later, and I went through stuff I've never heard of another going through.
So, of all coincidences, the University of San Diego extended a campus visit offer near the end of my academic career. I was thrilled and told him; I think we got together the day before the visit; I don't think I saw him during the visit's events, interviews, etc. I thought it had gone well, but the college never made an offer. I don't recall the specifics but often you'll get something like "thank you for your visit, but we've decided on another candidate who better fits our needs..."
I'm fuzzy on the timing, but I don't think I had another offer, and I was looking at possibly the end of my beloved academic career. I needed to accept the reality of the situation: they made a decision, and I wasn't going to get a do-over. Still, you want to know what went wrong so you can learn from it. I remember when Providence College rejected me in favor of a more local candidate, I felt like saying, "Dude, you knew I wasn't local when you invited me!" You really don't know; maybe candidate A sold them, but their process requires 3 candidates.
So I wrote to Tom; I was really hoping he knew the inside story. I may have mentioned him in passing during the interview schedule. I mentioned in passing, "You didn't tell them anything I told you in confidence, did you?" In all the years I had known Tom, I had never seen him get angry. It wasn't an accusation; I hadn't gotten feedback from the school. Tom was livid, demanding an immediate apology. I didn't think I owed him one; I hadn't accused him of sabotaging me, and even if he told somebody, the other person is responsible for what they did with it, and/or they got the information from other sources.
I don't think he ever got past that. I haven't heard from him in years. I haven't seen him in over 20 years. I think I sent him something through faculty email, thinking maybe he moved in the interim.
In hindsight I should have apologized. I just know in his place I would have taken it differently, that I would have understood the frustration that comes from losing a job you waned. But people are different, and you have to accept them as they are.
Last night when I thought of writing this note.I went to the university website, not knowing if he was still there or had retired. He's probably older than me, and I've had younger siblings who have retired. In fact I know some academics who retired years earlier. You never know; my dissertation chair was still on the payroll at least through 2014 because somehow I stumbled across payroll data and he responded back to an email I wrote after Bruce Breeding died in 2019. (Bruce also wrote a dissertation under him.) So anyway, Bob is still there. I almost didn't recognize because now he has facial hair.
There was a sad development in his life; I don't recall if this happened before our "breakup". He had been dating a Latina, who got into an auto accident, crippling her for life. I think it left him in a position where if he got married, the state would have bled his assets dry before picking up her costs.
