IT'S BEEN GOOD

Just two weeks shy of my two-year blogiversary, I've decided to lay this blog to rest. I have no intention of removing the archives from the web, as many a Googler seems to find something interesting here each and every day. But this will be my last post.

As some readers know, it's a move I've been considering for some time. At various times during this blog's history, I had decided to abandon it or put it on hold for reasons of personal frustration, broken laptops and site-specific ennui (the general form of which, ironically, this blog usually served to keep at bay).

This time my reasons are different, and it simply boils down to a rearrangement of priorities. I have never been at a loss for interesting things to do, and in fact the opposite is usually true — I have far less time to devote to my interests than I would like. As of today, I am publishing the regional sports news aggregator Oregon Sports Fan, preparing to publish a friend's first book, writing a recurring feature for the local blog DCist, and more. Meanwhile, I've been meaning to re-apply myself to freelance journalism, an endeavor in which I had one hit and failed to follow up. I once thought this blog would aid my freelancing, but that hasn't been the case. While I thought this would be a scratch pad of sorts, it has instead led me to draw conclusions and write about them before I had really done all my homework. After considering these facts for a couple months, I finally went ahead and did the only thing that made sense.

Let me note that this does not mean I am abandoning the blogosphere entirely. My non-political blog, the Washington Canard, will return from hiatus shortly after this valediction is posted. It is even highly probable that I will eventually return to political opinionating in a blog format, but I consider it somewhat unlikely that I'll continue to do so under this same moniker. Don't get me wrong — it's served me well. Everyone seems to like it. And while I occasionally point out that I neither own firearms (stupid DC gun ban) nor do I muck around with prophecy (no ESP here), there are other reasons.

Armed Prophet's raison d'etre was at the time of its inception was the invasion of Iraq (which I support as strongly today as I did then). The phrase comes from Machiavelli's The Prince: "All armed prophets succeed whereas unarmed ones fail." Well, actually I haven't read much Secretary Niccolo; I found it in Robert Kaplan's "Warrior Politics," which I was reading at the time and strongly recommend to anyone, but particularly to those unsure that we have the right to wage war pre-emptively. And such was the basis for my selection. As Uncle Junior once told Tony: "Come heavy, or not at all." Armed Prophet is a name appropriate to a warblogger, which I haven't been for some time.

But I've enjoyed the last two years with this blog. Armed Prophet provided a below-the-radar and mostly anonymous outlet for my observations while as I was getting my journalistic bearings in the District of Columbia, a place entirely unlike anywhere I've lived before. Armed Prophet is the closest thing to a diary that I've kept; when I go back through the archives, I remember where I was and what I was doing and thinking at the time — at least when it comes to politics. I started Armed Prophet less than a month after I moved here on a permanent basis. In its early days it was fairly scattershot, and it took me awhile to find my voice as a blogger. But find it I did, along with a small but reliable readership.

In those two years I covered a lot of great stories and arguments, including (but not limited to) the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Colin Powell's now-infamous U.N. presentation, WMD reports that didn't bear out, Bush's ultimatum to Saddam and announcement of war, the fall of Baghdad, car chases, historic snowstorms, minor hurricanes, a dog rescue bumping national politicians off the cable news, Tractor Man, a Japanese wrestler-politician, the California recall and early word that Arnold would win big, a marathon Senate session, the Democrats' pre-primary winnowing process, Howard Dean's yearbook quote, the hateable Wesley Clark,
the more hateable John Edwards, Kerry's Iowa comeback, a DNC nightclub fundraiser, the Post's incredibly biased Dana Milbank, Slate's contemptible Tim Noah and laughable Will Saletan, the "tyranny" of Instapundit, Dr. Seuss' politics, Drudge's excitability, CBS's Memogate, "Fahrenheit 9/11" as well as other films with political implications obvious and not-so-obvious, GOP and Dem comedy shows, anti-war and anti-freedom libertarians, the occasional blind item and separated-at-birth feature, bizarre orthographic systems, color changes and other adjustments to the layout, crashing computers, publicity from Joe Scarborough, the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ronald Reagan in the Capitol Rotunda, my trip to the Republican National Convention in New York City, what I did with my 2004 ballot, a lengthy, semi-definitive post-election summary, and a brief history of the Internet.

If and when I resume making "arguments, contemplations, musings and ruminations on politics and media from inside the Beltway" in blog format at another location, I'll amend this post and show you the way.

THE FERMATA

Well, folks. Looks like Armed Prophet is going to call it a year. In 48 hours time I'll be headed back to the West Coast to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with family and friends. Between haunting old haunts, catching up with old friends, watching one of them marry himself off, and fighting with wrapping paper (more wrapping than unwrapping, these days), the chances of me getting around to post anything are fairly low. So, the best to you and yours, and I'll see you in 2005.

THE PERFECT WORD

According to Donnie Darko — apparently via Tolkien — the most beautiful phrase in the English language is "cellar door." I don't know if I buy such a notion, but I bet there is such thing as a "perfect word" (maybe something like perfect numbers, but I don't know enough to say. Via Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, I think I've found such a one in the French borrowing, "recherche":

recherche \ruh-sher-SHAY\, adjective:
1. Uncommon; exotic; rare.
2. Exquisite; choice.
3. Excessively refined; affected.
4. Pretentious; overblown.

Recherche is indeed uncommon, exotic and rare. I hold a bachelor's degree in English, yet I don't know that I've ever seen this word before. It is certainly exquisite. It is a word one would only use in an affected, overly refined manner. That's because it's French. And because it's so obviously French, it is almostnecessarily pretentious. The word is precisely what it describes. If anybody knows of any other such "perfect words," send them this way.

P.S. — But my favorite word is still "Zing!"

GOOGLEZON, OR: HOW I WASTED MY EVENING

We don't really surf anymore, not like in the mid-to-late 1990s when we had time to simply explore the Internet (at least for those of us who didn't sign on until 1997). I remember a classroom debate with the proprietor of the panoply of peculiarities at laurabush.info about whether this Internet thing would "catch on." That debate, of course, isn't over &mdash as I'll get to shortly.

So, here's the result of some deliberate surfing of Google, technology news sites and web-head blogs -- not to mention taking up some recommendations via instant messenger:

1] I haven't said so before, but I really like these "Listed on NASDAQ" commercials. I first remember seeing them almost exactly on September 11, 2001. At a time when I needed something that celebrated the American ideals of forward-thinking, enterprise and originality, there it was. And it features an iconic symbol of New York, too boot. A good deal of this appreciation owes to the score: an inspiring, compellingly tempoed composition that complements well the theme of visionaries and their innovative companies. Appreciation for the other half is mostly deserved, though I certainly have my complaints about all of them. They're not as good now as the earliest ones — I presume "Starbucks! Dell! Microsoft!" was the first — but I'm glad they're still around.

2] Mahir Cagri, Hamster Dance, All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Jib Jab, We Like The Moon and countless others¹ have passed by link-of-email and glimpse-of-television (and even word-of-mouth) since the Internet showed up, and now here's something I found on an English-language Scandanavian blog: a history of the Internet from the future in the form of a Flash movie. I haven't seen it linked to on the popular blogs (assuming we assume those are the same blogs) but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. It leads with the somewhat misleading teaser: "In the year 2014, The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What has happened to the news? And What is EPIC?"

Not mentioned in there is the central conceit — Google and Amazon merge, they use exensive search technology to create personalized news and information (the term not used, but apt is "narrowcasting") — at first seems like a commercial for Google (and other companies) but then clearly reveals itself to be a message to the company itself: it would be really awesome if you did THIS.

In fact, at times it sounds an awful lot like those NASDAQ ads, mentioning Amazon, Google, Blogger, Friendster, Microsoft, Sony, Philips, and others in quick succession. The first prognostication is that Google, "awash in cash" after going public, buys TiVo. Then they team up with Amazon and create something approximating what Adam Smith described as "perfect information." Eventually it renders human-written news organizations irrelevant, as everyone receives news and information personalized. The climax is when the NYT takes their case to the Supreme Court, and loses.

Not mentioned is what really becomes of the Times afterward. I suppose it becomes a second-tier media source, only read by an aging demographic. It also doesn't say what happens to newspapers' opinion sections, which in the face of all this Whigish futurism I must say could surely not be created by algorithms … or is at least unlikely by 2014. It is implied that their influence wanes — and if you read the Times' opinion columns, you'd probably guess that it would. And of course Blogger is a big part of the story — everyone who wants to be is a creator of information. And in according to this vision, they get paid for it, too (where's Soulseek and BitTorrent in all this?).

Plus, as regular readers of this blog know, I think Google News needs a lot of work. And in this context, so does Amazon's recommendation scheme. For its current uses I don't have much complaint, but if it's supposed to do all that's predicted, it needs a lot of work.

And if we're going to talk about the collective wisdom of the Internet, we still have to realize that organized interests not everybody agrees with will continue to leverage influence beyond what critics of the mainstream media thinks will be alleviated by the freer flow of information. Citing the most benign example I can think of, do all three "Lord of The Rings" movies really belong in the top ten all-tim movies, as the members of the IMDb would have it?

It's clearly written by someone(s) with libertarian leanings — two California journalists, it turns out — who probably have Virginia Postrel's "The Future And Its Enemies" on their bookshelves². At Poynter, one apparently describes his education as having "majored in economics and minored in Nintendo." If he hasn't read any Neal Stephenson, he probably should.

As for the dubious identities of the writers/editors of the movie, this blog post (get some permalinks, it's the 2000s already!) identifies the video's director/producer, "Evan Emerson." as a collective pseudonym:

[T]wo California-based journalists, Robin Sloan (Sacramento Bee) and Matt Thompson (INdTV) did the piece. INdTV is the San Francisco based start up network headed by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. The Evan Emerson piece talks about the obsolescence of news, but INdTV has strong connections to and is funded by people and groups including Rob Glaser of Real Networks, Steve Jobs of Apple, and the Googleoids. They're planning to ride the media obsolescence tsunami, not get swept under by it.

If the "they" of the final sentence refers to Sloan and Thompson, I certainly agree. If they mean Glaser, Jobs and myriad "Googleoids," I think I'd like some evidence before making the assumption that this is their brainchild.

That said, "GoogleZon" and its combination logo is pretty funny. So is "Newsbotster." And the anti-NYT humor is dry (if intended) and snicker-worthy. It does sort of forget about Microsoft at the end (also probably intended). Having already mentioned originality, I must add that I like the EPIC logo, the shadow of which reads E[PI]C³. And this blog post is probably correct about the more-realistic impact of such technologies (though it does the "GoogleZon" joke wrong). It also links to some real-life projects that point in the same direction. (Speaking of future technologies, here are a couple WMVs (what else?) showcasing Microsoft's long-awaited "Longhorn" project. Based on what I saw elsewhere (thanks to Google, of course), it seems to be a big improvement on XP, but I hope you can turn off the jiggling windows.)

Also not mentioned: Skynet! When this thing becomes self-aware, it might make computers at the Pentagon launch our nukes on the Russkies! (Or in the future where this takes place, maybe North Korea or Iran!)

3] God, this thing is weird. At the very least someone should get Toxic the Machine AKA Bob Barker to do album covers.

As a testament to the aforementioned media revolution — which anyway doesn't appear to be televised — I copied, pasted and translated the introductory text from the German-language message board I found it on:

zur abwechslung mal widder was sinnloses, wobei misch die Musik langsam gefällt

Or, as Babelfish attempts:

to the alternation times more widder which senseless, whereby mix the music slowly pleases

Which doesn't make literal sense but actually is a much better summary than I could write. Thanks, algorithms!

4] As I started to pound out the first draft of this post, I was watching two of General Electric's top news personalities conduct an interview — Tom Brokaw asking Tim Russert a lot of questions about "Big Russ." If you follow Washington-based news, you've certainly heard about "Big Russ" — viz., Russert's putatively insightful, good-natured and beloved father. Frankly, either one of these two could interview the other. Sort of like James Spader and Rob Lowe trading parts before shooting "Bad Influence."

5] If you ask me, Boobah Zone is the trippiest website on the whole World Wide Web. It's not like being on acid; it's like what you were always told acid would be like.

Hey, that was fun!
_____
¹Speaking of countless others, here is the hypnotic "We Love The Chocolate." Honest to God, the first time I looked at this, I let it run. In fact, as of this late evening posting time, it's still playing in the background.

² Among said others, Reason Magazine.

³ Am I wrong or is there no special character for the symbol representing 3.14159265…?

STEEEEERIKE!

I'm too upset to write about politics right now. I explain why here. Oh, and I'm busy writing something else. But for the real reason, you'll have to follow that link.

FOOLISH ELECTORS

Yesterday I wrote: "The electoral college meets today to cast their votes for president." On that I was correct. But the immediate next line turns out to be wrong: " We all know what's going to happen..." Oops. The Star Tribune reports:

Defeated Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry likely is going to get one less electoral vote nationally than he should have -- 251 instead of 252 -- because of an apparent mistake Monday by one of Minnesota's 10 DFL electors.

One of the 10 handwritten ballots cast for president carried the name of vice presidential candidate John Edwards (actually spelled "Ewards" on the ballot) rather than Kerry.

Ha! And they say the Republicans are stupid?

THE SPOT

Memo to Jim Geraghty: I like what you write at your blog and all, but isn't it already past time to consider a title change?

WHAT UNCLE NOAM WANTS


When Master Chomsky he steals his lady from her father's chateau in the stormy night, brings her down to the horse stable and ravishes her — without so much as a word passing between them — is that what he means by "manufacturing consent"?

Via BlameBush!, another concept blog that I've been enjoying a lot.

ARE WE THERE YET?

The electoral college meets today to cast their votes for president. We all know what's going to happen, but in Ohio a number of groups — one calling itself "We Do Not Concede" — are still contesting the outcome. Democrats have even fallen in line behind a recount sponsored by the Libertarian and Green parties. How embarrassing. This, even though Bush won Ohio by at least 119,000 votes. Meanwhile, Kerry won Pennsylvania by almost the exact same margin, yet mysteriously there is no clamor for a recount there. I'm all for finding out exactly how the votes went down, but what's good for the Buckeye is good for the Keystone, right? (Meanwhile in the Evergreen State, it's starting to dawn on them that manual hand recounts aren't always the best.)

The plaintiffs in Ohio fear, or claim to fear, that the Republican party stole the election just as they surely did in 2000. Jesse Jackson has even taken to using his Chicago Sun-Times column as a platform from which to slander libel Ohio Attorney General Ken Blackwell, a conservative rising star in the Republican party, who just happens to be black. Jackson has nothing but a litany of imagined or irrelevant grievances that had gone stale weeks before Election Day (e.g. Diebold rigged all their machines). Don't forget that 16 percent of Ohio's African-Americans voted for Bush; that's not a lot in absolutes, but it's almost double the black vote Bush got in the state last time and well above the national average. Jackson is being dinosaured, and he knows it. (Speaking of PA, both it and Ohio could conceivably have black Republican governors in two year's time.)

Anyway, amid all this fuss about whether the GOP is stealing elections or not, I find it very amusing that one of the county Democratic chairmen in next door Indiana has — get this — just been arrested for vote fraud. If this was a Republican, you can be sure the chattering classes of Washington would be all over it. Liberal columnists would be raising their eyebrows and Chris Matthews would be lining up guests. Then again, that doesn't sound too different from what's been happening already.

P.S. — I should also mention this terrific USA Today article on race and the Bush White House. Bush is the first president to nominate a Hispanic to one of the top four Cabinet positions, and he is the first president to have women and minorities (and in Condi, both at once) among his closest advisers. Not that you've heard much about it, though:

One reason it has gotten little attention is because Bush himself rarely talks about it. At a convention of minority journalists in August, Bush declared, "If you look at my administration, it's diverse, and I'm proud of that." But he doesn't cite numbers. Bartlett and other Bush aides sounded surprised when told that Bush's record on diversity in top jobs matched that of Clinton, who was praised for expanding opportunities for women, blacks and Hispanics.

If Clinton was the first black president, then surely Bush is the second.

Update, 5:42 p.m. — I wrote the first draft of this almost 12 hours ago, in a pre-caffeinated state. The many, many grammatical errors have now been fixed. Even if you don't care, I do.

DAZED AND CONFUSED, ALL RIGHT

"Dazed and Confused" actor (and blogger) Wiley Wiggins has a comment on the suit against Universal Pictures and Richard Linklater two posts down that's worth expanding on:

These guys are really wrapped up in believing that the characters in the movie are "them", and not that Rick just used a couple of last names that stuck in his head from childhood. Seems like they're actually kind of secretly thrilled by the idea.

I was really dismayed about that quote of mine that they used. I didn't "tell" the Daily Texan anything. They scraped my blog for a story. When the Washington Post uses a college newspaper that is using Google to get info for a story, it's time to write the whole thing off. I just hope these lunatics don't try to subpoena me for making fun of them.

Obviously Wiggins isn't a disinterested party, but his take sounds very plausible. I'm sure Slater, Wooderson and "Pink" Floyd are having a great time with the attention they're getting. In that Post article, their thrill doesn't sound all that secretive.

He's also right on the second point -- about UT-Austin's Daily Texan misrepresenting his communication with them -- and it relates to a point I recently made about journalistic laziness. But it's worse than that. I found the original Daily Texan article, which claims the quotes from Wiggins were in an "e-mail" to them. But all the quotes attributed to him are to be found right here on his blog. Way to go Daily Texan, and way to go Andrew Tran, writer of the story in question. One can forgive the Washington Post's Peter Carlson for not digging deeper, but Tran should know the difference between a "blog" and an "e-mail."

You know, this is how Jayson Blair started. I look forward to Mr. Tran's future misrepresentations.

P.S. -- Via Wiggins' blog, this is one of the most inspired concept blogs I've ever seen. I think it's worth a bookmark.

THE MIRACLE WORKER

Charles Krauthammer, in this morning's Post:

For almost a decade before Sept. 11, we did absolutely nothing about Afghanistan. A few cruise missiles hurled into empty tents, followed by expressions of satisfaction about the "message" we had sent. It was, in fact, a message of utter passivity and unseriousness.

Then comes our Pearl Harbor, and the sleeping giant awakens. Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as the legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This in Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just hostile but untouchable. What do liberals have to say about this singular achievement by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.

Indeed. I'm just starting in on Robert Kaplan's "Soldiers of God," mostly written during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. Karzai himself puts in a brief appearance as the "most moderate and Westernized of the mujahidin," and he cuts a slim but interesting — and promising — figure as a son of privilege who came around late to responsibility and political leadership. Hmmm, why does that sound familiar?