Professor Bainbridge inquires:

Back during the anthrax scare, a lot of left-liberal commentators and bloggers rushed to the judgment that right-wing domestic terrorists with connections to the Bush administration were behind the anthrax attacks. I wonder what those same folks will say now that somebody has sent ricin to both the Republican President and the Republican Senate majority leader?

I think it’s a safe bet they’ll say the same, semi-mythical “right-wing domestic terrorists” are out to get both Bush and Frist because they’re not “right-wing” enough. Of course, then they’ll go right back to lumping Bush and Frist in with the Michigan Militia crowd.

Chris has already commented on Drezner's post about low retention rates at graduate school, but as a bona-fide grad-school dropout myself (ABD in philosophy, 1997, University of Rochester), I just have to put my two cents in.

I dropped because after five years my funding ran out, my dissertation on Kant's Theory of Substance was going nowhere, and the job market was looking awful. Why put myself through it anymore, when the newly-minted PhDs I saw were teaching multiple part-time gigs at Monroe Community College and St. John Fisher, and making less than I was making as a TA? So I ditched it all to become a computer geek, and seven years later, I’m doing better financially than I would have teaching. I’m making an upper middle-class income according to the Calpundit scale, and I’m living in a city that I like where there’s very little snow.

I’m not bitter, and I have no regrets except for not shooting higher in terms of what schools I applied to. I had the chance to study with a brilliant metaphysician, who was also an excellent teacher, and even got two footnotes in his book. (Even if, due to a typo, one of them reads “Sider (1997)” instead of “Sides (1997).” Grrrr.)

I could have spent 1992–1997 working some job I hated, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Grad school was a fun way to kill some time, and it’s better to drop out of grad school with very little debt than graduate from law school with a huge mountain of debt, only to discover you hate practicing law.

So go on and go to grad school. But don’t get your hopes up about a career in academia. Have a back up plan.

Lots of interesting stuff out there today. I’m too lazy to comment on it all, so here are some links:

• Tyler Cowen has some interesting thoughts on immigration. I’m looking forward to his followup.
  
• Bad news: the health benefits of drinking seem only to apply to smokers and ex-smokers.
• Snark of the week: Wonkette suggests some alternate titles for Senator Bill Frist’s family history, Good People Beget Good People.
  
• Clayton Cramer: he’s not just anti-gay, he’s anti-science.
  
• Via Gnostical Turpitude (what is it with all these University of Chicago blogs, anyway?), here's a board game based on one of my favorite novels, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose.
  
• Via Hit and Run, I learned that Marvel and DC are claiming a joint trademark on the term "Super-Hero".
• And Slate has a page with some 1971 Doonesbury strips featuring John Kerry.

Juan Non-Volokh is doing Sunday Lyric Blogging, and Michael at Countertop Chronicles has followed up with Monday Lyric Blogging. Far be it from me not to jump on the bandwagon, so I hereby stake my claim on Tuesday.

Apropos of something or other, here’s the first verse of David Bowie’s “Savior Machine,” off his album The Man Who Sold the World (1970):

President Joe once had a dream.
The world held his hand, gave their pledge
So he told them his scheme for a Saviour Machine.
They called it the Prayer, its answer was Law.
Its logic stopped war, gave them food,
How they adored till it cried in its boredom:
Please don’t believe in me, please disagree with me.
Life is too easy, a plague seems quite feasible now,
or maybe a war, or I may kill you all.

Somehow, Nickelback’s “Someday” seems oddly appropriate as a eulogy for Howard Dean’s campaign. Don’t believe me? Take a look-see at the lyrics:

How the hell’d we wind up like this
And why weren’t we able
To see the signs that we missed
And try to turn the tables
I wish you’d unclench your fists
And unpack your suitcase
Lately there’s been too much of this
But don’t think it’s too late

Nothing’s wrong
Just as long as you know that someday I will
Someday, somehow
I’m gonna make it alright
But not right now
I know you’re wondering when
You’re the only one who knows that
Someday somehow
I’m gonna make it alright
But not right now
I know you’re wondering when

See, it’s all so obvious when you look back…

I just ran into this annoyance while getting my groceries today at Wal-Mart. Grrr.