Pre-dinner thoughts

• Must-Read o' the Day: Tish Durkin's piece on ambivalence in Iraq. She highlights the danger in just tossing blame for the war to the dark forces of the Bushies, in that it exculpates the rest of us from responsibility in the matter. As many on the left (including myself...) cheer on the implosion of a country, the historicizing of the Iraq war keeps trying to stuff it into clear-cut models, but as the Iraqi responses show, this war has been more complex than anyone bargained for.

• Other piece floating around, Balkinization's discovery that an emeritus professor at Princeton has been put on the no-fly because of anti-Bush comments. Pre-Bush, such a case would be inconceivable. Today, it seems like business as usual.
  

• Finally, this USAToday piece touches on something I've talked about for some time. That is, a college degree is more an indication of hereditary fiscal solvency than any bearing on intelligence. The piece of paper I get when I graduate is worth something not because of the classes I took or experiences I had in Bloomington. It's worth something because my parents (or someone else) was willing to foot the bill for me to spend four (or more) years doing nothing. ("D's Get Degrees", after all.) As colleges market themselves as a step towards a higher income bracket, the value of the degree as an educational tool keeps getting diluted. If I'm going to college to earn more money in the future, rather than expand my mind, then who cares what the hell I learn? If the college degree is worth more as a status symbol than an educational tool, then it's no surprise that prices keep skyrocketing and the college population keeps getting richer. I dunno.