As a blogger and bartender, I strongly approve of these poll results. [Via TMN.]

My old flatmate Alex Kingsbury recently returned from his second stint of war reporting from Iraq. His first trip led to an affecting cover story for U.S. News, his second an appearance on “The Daily Show.” Congrats to Alex!

Chad links to an interesting article in the NYT about the relative decline in prestige and fulfillment accruing to law and medicine. A number of reasons for the growing dissatisfaction are given, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it misses an important one: doctors and lawyers are both heavily protected by professional associations and state licensing laws.

Licensing restricts entry into the professions and raises the returns on education for the people who practice them. But by putting up barriers to entry, they also allow the gatekeepers to subject aspirants to arduous training often disconnected from their true needs. For lawyers, this means an imposing law school entrance exam, three years of difficult, stressful, expensive study, tests that have little to do with lawyering, an even more difficult bar exam, and then, for many, years of tedious work as an associate. The med school education of doctors is probably more worthwhile, but it’s followed by extremely stressful and arguably dangerous (for patients) years of internship and residency in which lack of sleep is practically a form of hazing. Without the protection of licensing and groups like the ABA and AMA, I very much doubt that these forms of education would persist.

In other words, these professions still earn good money but are now largely composed of people who have self-selected as willing to put up with years of mandated drudgery. Is it any wonder that self-expressive work and entrepreneurship now hold so much more cachet?

This, anyway, is my uninformed outsider’s opinion. My many friends who have recently or will soon graduate law school are welcome to step up and defend the system.

Best news I’ve heard today: When Murdoch takes over the Wall Street Journal, it will likely become free online.

Coming soon to this blog, the war against smacking bans.

I wasn’t really following the story of six American University students who protested Karl Rove’s speech at the school until I noticed a name yesterday: one of the six is none other than my friend and old barista coworker Joel Gardner!

In what’s being called the “Moon Rover” incident, Joel passed by the scene and spontaneously mooned Karl Rove. Now he and five others have warrants out for their arrests for crossing a police line during the protest. I don’t know the details of the case, but Joel’s a super nice guy, so I hope he’s able to get out of this without serious consequences. (You might also remember Joel from the night David and I caused the coffee roasting disaster, but he bears no blame for that!)

His brother is writing about the case here and here, and posts this image in support:

Until the Times covered it today, I had no idea downtown Houston’s tunnel system was thriving with so many businesses or so extensive. It’s also almost entirely private:

It was not centrally planned; it just grew, inspired by Rockefeller Center in New York. But it is not connected to a transit network. And, befitting Texans’ distrust of government, most of it is private; each segment is controlled by the individual building owner who deigns to allow the public access during business hours — and then locks the doors on nights and weekends. Some parts, like those belonging to the former Enron buildings now leased by Chevron, are closed to outsiders altogether.