James Joyner of OTB notes that Matt Drudge is reporting that Howard Dean may have exaggerated a medical condition to avoid serving in Vietnam. Like James, I don’t expect it to have much impact on the election; however, if Dean wins the nomination, it will make it more difficult for relatively scrupulous Democrats to trot out the “Bush went AWOL” rumors.

In general, though, I don’t think people care all that much any more; witness the failure of both John F. “I Served in Vietnam” Kerry and Wes Clark to gain much traction with their military histories. Past military service (or the lack thereof) hasn’t really been a meaningful issue in a presidential contest since 1960.*

John Cole thinks the news is a hit piece orchestrated by Kerry and/or Clark; apparently, Drudge’s scoop is based on this New York Times piece by Rick Lyman and Christopher Drew.

Other reactions: Kevin at Wizbang! thinks it was planted by Kerry, while Steve at Tiny Little Lies thinks Dean is screwed regardless of who planted it (or if, in the immortal words of Andy Sipowicz, Dean’s camp launched “preemptive stink”). And Matt Stinson agrees with James and I that the attack probably won't work, while Poliblogger Steven Taylor makes the point that Dean is well-positioned even if the charge does stick with some voters:

[S]ince he is running as essentially the anti-war candidate, in some ways this simply adds to that position in its own kind of way. In other words, the hard-core Democrats who are currently gung-ho for Dean are hardly going to fault him for not wanting to go to Viet Nam, now are they?

Daniel Drezner, fresh off his 300-comment-inducing disagreement with blogosphere folk hero James Lileks, notes both progress and regress on the trade front by the administration, with regress apparently beating out progress quite handily.

Over at Crescat Sententia, Peter Northup has an excellent summary of a colloquium at NYU featuring Lawrence Lessig. The quote that struck me:

There was another interesting exchange concerning an alternate, “conservative” justification for intellectual property rights: the desire to protect the integrity of certain culturally significant works from debasement (this included the first of many references to Disney pornography, and set the stage for a most unexpected digression on Smallville slash, and the public’s interest, or lack thereof, in its production). If we’re willing to prevent someone from painting his historic townhouse chartreuse, can’t we say “no” to Mickey Mouse pornography?

Indeed, as Lessig reminded the audience, the Dr. Seuss estate made just this very argument in support of the Copyright Term Extension Act.

Meanwhile, the mostly negative reviews of the new movie version of The Cat in the Hat are piling on. A few choice quotes:

• “... one of the most repulsive kiddie movies ever made.” – David Edelstein in Slate
  
• “... the producers may as well have skipped the hassle of securing licensing rights and simply called this mess Mike Myers: Asshole in Fur.” – Gregory Weinkauf in the Dallas Observer
  
• “If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel’s body and hung it from a tree, they couldn’t have desecrated the man more.” – Ty Burr in the Boston Globe.
  
• “A vulgar, uninspired lump of poisoned eye candy.” – A. O. Scott in the New York Times
  

Artistic integrity, my ass.

Thanks to Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here) for pointing out that legalization of gay marriage might lead to a small increase in sham marriages for immigration purposes.

As an advocate of open immigration, I regard this as a positive benefit.

Megan McArdle writes on Howard Dean and his penchant for regulation in her latest piece at TechCentralStation. All I want to know is: when can I get on the VRWC gravy train?

Pejmanesque has more, including links to negative reactions to Dean’s remarks by Tyler Cowen and Stuart Buck.

One Fine Jay administers a brutal fisking to John C. Dvorak, professional crumudgeon/columnist, for his PC Magazine article predicting the demise of blogging.

Let me focus on Dvorak’s stats backing this up:

Let’s start with abandoned blogs. In a white paper released by Perseus Development Corp., the company reveals details of the blogging phenomenon that indicate its foothold in popular culture may already be slipping (www.perseus.com/blogsurvey). According to the survey of bloggers, over half of them are not updating any more. And more than 25 percent of all new blogs are what the researchers call “one-day wonders.” Meanwhile, the abandonment rate appears to be eating into well-established blogs: Over 132,000 blogs are abandoned after a year of constant updating.

Perseus thinks it had a statistical handle on over 4 million blogs, in a universe of perhaps 5 million. Luckily for the blogging community, there is still evidence that the growth rate is faster than the abandonment rate. But growth eventually stops.

The most obvious reason for abandonment is simple boredom. Writing is tiresome. Why anyone would do it voluntarily on a blog mystifies a lot of professional writers. This is compounded by a lack of feedback, positive or otherwise. Perseus thinks that most blogs have an audience of about 12 readers. Leaflets posted on the corkboard at Albertsons attract a larger readership than many blogs. Some people must feel the futility.

Now, there are plenty of reasons why people may be abandoning blogs. Some people may, in fact, be abandoning blogging altogether. Some have decided to take their thoughts private, so they move. Some may join group blogs. Many migrate from Blog*Spot to hosting providers. Many move from one Blog*Spot address to another—heck, Blogger even advocates the practice. Some bloggers have backup blogs hosted elsewhere. Some people—Matt Stinson, Dan Drezner—have done more than one of these. All of these “failure modes” are lumped together, because it’s simply too hard to track what’s going on.

Pronouncing blogging a failure on the basis of these weak statistics would be like noting that DirecTV loses 570,000 customers a year, and arguing this means satellite television is doomed. “Churn”—what business calls the continual cycle of losing customers—is a natural aspect of any phenomenon in which collective preferences are aggregated. Companies lose customers, but they also gain new ones. Citizens move in and out of the voting population. And some people decide blogging isn’t for them—but a lot of others do. If there are really 5 million blogs—that is, one blog for every thousand human beings alive today, and perhaps one for every hundred with Internet access—that’s a truly staggering statistic. But I guess Dvorak’s just the latest in the long line of media dinosaurs that doesn’t “get” that.

Perseus' blog has a response to my post (and, by extension, the Dvorak piece). They note that only 1.6% of abandoned blogs include any forwarding information, and go on to write:

Pronouncing blogging a failure on the basis of these weak statistics…

Better to say its a weak argument to declare blogging a failure in a study that showed the number of hosted blogs growing from 135,000 at the end of 2000 to over five million at the end of 2003.

Via Matthew Stinson.

Larry Sabato has his hokey “crystal ball” schtick, while Steven Taylor again consults his toaster. For what it’s worth, my microwave says Dean has the lead, but the floodlights on my house still think Gephardt and Clark have a chance.

In all seriousness, Steven gets the edge by far, since (a) he’s never injured anyone that got between him and a reporter and (b) he has adopted a metaphor that doesn’t reflect negatively on the discipline.

I’ve already said my piece on this blogospheric navel-gazing exercise in the comments at Dan’s place (in short, I think all the participants are talking past each other); however, Matt Stinson, Robert Garcia Tagorda, James Joyner, and Anticipatory Retaliation have the cream of the reactions—from my POV, at least.

Robert Prather also responds, noting that Salam Pax in particular owes his livelihood to the U.S. forces who liberated Iraq.

Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries notes the latest events in the bizarre Hong Kong Crocodile saga. In Florida, they send out a dude in a truck to wrangle the reptile in question (usually an alligator, mind you), and the problem is solved, at least until another one wanders into the neighborhood. They most certainly don’t dick around for two weeks in the process. Simply amazing.

How big is Ole Miss-LSU?

• Ole Miss SID Langston Rogers says it’s the biggest game since 1952, when Maryland came into Oxford ranked #3.
• At least a third of the GameDay crew wanted to be here. I blame Herbstreit, personally. (I mean, honestly, who in hell would want to freeze their butts off in Ann Arbor when they could be in Oxford? That place is only livable between Memorial Day and Labor Day…)
• LSU gets no R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Yet somehow they’re 6½ point favorites?
• The Matt Mauck NFL speculation has begun.
• There’s a preview at CollegeFootballNews.com too. And lots of stuff at the Clarion-Ledger, while the Shreveport Times has things covered from the LSU perspective.
• If it’s Thursday, it’s time for Steven Godfrey’s Tight End column in the Daily Mississippian.

But at least TigerEducated has his yellow and purple blinders on. Phew; I thought hell had frozen over…

In more game news: Ole Miss had the most pathetic pep rally I’ve ever seen tonight in the square. It lasted all of ten minutes. I’ve been to high school pep rallies that lasted longer. Still, you could have heard the Hotty Toddy that went up from Batesville. Oh, if you’re thinking of coming to Oxford on Saturday—we’re all full up. Sorry. (This is just my lame attempt to avoid having to get out of bed at o-dark-thirty to be able to park closer than my house.)

Elsewhere in college football, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles snuffed out TCU’s BCS hopes. I still think it’d be cool to have the in-state series with all three I-A programs; who knows, it might be a fun new-to-me rivalry. Maybe it’d even raise enough money to get Mississippi State a decent-looking stadium, instead of that butt-ugly monstrosity that makes the entire MSU campus look like a pit.