Rain, rain, go away.

It is raining in DC.  There is a hurricane or something.  So to bring some laughter to your doorstep, here's some humor:

Alden doesn't have much to say this morning (afternoon?) so he will read Thucydides all day and hope the sprit moves him later.  So he will just leave you with a couple of YouTube classics.

Also, if you haven't seen the Jim Henson exhibit at the Smithsonian yet, it is amazing, and very much worth a visit. 

And in the "I want that boat category," just incase you were wondering what else Alden would like for Festivus:

It is clear that Alden just learned how to embed video in Blogger and it is still quite novel for him...  We promise to return to insightful geopolitical-economic-sociological observations soon.  But weekends are for some fun, no?

I want that boat!

Wow, so Alden woke up this morning from a healthy ten hour slumber and soon found himself with a deep, deep desire.  To borrow a favorite line from Napoleon Dynamite:  "I want that boat!"

(H/T: Noah at Danger Room)

Alden didn't intend to re-start Whiskey Tango Farley like this... but come ON, that video is just awesome.  The original idea for today's post was to raise awareness of a dangerous and very annoying trend that has gained considerable popularity in recent times: Astroturfing.

Alden learned of this practice during Prof. Visser's Political Psychology class in the autumn of 2004.  "Astroturfing" is the creation of a fake grassroots movement that attempts to legitimize the agenda of a political or corporate interest by making it seem way more popular than it might actually be.  It is a facet of a public relations campaign that can often (brilliantly) influence and persuade voters, consumers, or policy maker in supporting the cause or product being sold by the Astroturfing entity.

But for Alden, the fear of someone attempting to Astroturf him (attempting to manipulate his views and values through covert means) just makes him ignore the various NGO-looking things that advertise on TV or in the magazines that he reads.  Alden already hates commercials, and he usually mutes them or ignores them unless they are selling beer or cars.

So with the recent political (and rather astroturfing-looking) campaigns, such as one.org or wecansolveit.org, Alden chooses Rational Ignorance:  don't care about it because doing so is a waste of time because the knowledge will not benefit him at all, probably.

So in this political season, Alden politely asks you all to be especially wary of advertisements.  Who knows who is backing them?  A political or corporate entity? A well-meaning group of politically minded citizens?  Or does it even matter?  Perhaps these boundaries are so blurred that we should just ignore everything politically oriented and try and find out how much Alden can get for one of his kidneys, and is it enough for a dolphin boat?

You stay classy, San Diego.

PS:  The Onion also had a great little piece on the Astroturfing plague.

And we're back!

Dear loyal Whiskey Tango Farley readers:

We're back.  Alden is back in the District of Columbia, and he is back in school.  And Whiskey Tango Farley is back!  

The original impetus for this website was that Alden would be traveling in a pretty wild part of the world and the mass-group-email thing didn't really appeal to him.  And most of his friends use Google Reader or some other RSS feeder, so Whiskey Tango Farley would be just as effective as group emails, but less in your face blah-blah-look-at-me-I'm-traveling.  Also, the Syrian government reads everyone's emails, so Alden felt that maybe more candid (and funny) observations could be shared via a quasi-anonymous blog with less chance of finding himself chatting with the mukhabarat.  Given his propensity for drunk and disorderly conduct while in foreign countries, the less he ran into the police, the better.

So now Alden is back in DC.  The School for Advanced International Studies is back in session, and one of Alden's favorite things about all his recent book learnin' is that he has further fine-tuned his Bull Shit Filter.

So prepare yourself: Whiskey Tango Farley will attempt to be a regularly updated source of Alden's patient rants regarding economics, politics, society, and anything else he feels ought to be of general interest.  We will travel together through expansive fields of rent-seeking and creative destruction towards a glorious escape from autarky.  (Does that even make sense?) There will be laughter; there will be tears. But what we are working towards are insightful little posts that make the reader go, "Huh. That's cool. But Alden must have too much time on his hands to have thought of that; has he started any of his term papers yet?"

Alden also got a shout-out at P$'s awesome blog today because he has a dangerous curiosity of private military contractors.  The shout-out made him feel warm and fuzzy.

So coming soon, to an RSS feeder near you, will be Whiskey Tango Farley with a slightly new focus.  Get excited.

Side Note:  Alden's enjoyed writing in the third person, but he isn't wedded to it.  If you feel strongly one way or the other, he will accept votes for the next 72 hours.