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Amid all the continuing hype that continues to surround the internets, one thing continues to amaze me--the sheer number of ways that we can connect to each other, if we so choose. I, myself, have at least a half-dozen e-mail addresses--some, naturally, get checked more often than others. I am an active member of a few bulletin boards/web forums. There's this blog of course, along with the comments I leave on other blogs. There's my Flickr photostream and my last.fm profile. Oh, yeah, and the myriad social networking websites, too. If you need me in a hurry you could IM me--I've got accounts on at least three major IM networks--or even call me up on the phone: land line, office, or mobile.

In previous generations, personal communications was, well, personal--one would have to speak to people directly, or at the very least, one would have to write to them in one's own hand. Of course, if one happened to be a large corporate entity--a government, say--there was a large spectrum of possible contacts and levels of communication: technical-level talks among low-level representatives, embassies, foreign ministers, heads of government, summit talks, and so on.

In 1962, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. faced off in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev engaged in an elaborate kabuki of signal and counter-signal: public declarations, secret telegrams, statements read over shortwave radio.

This complex web of signals--of contacts across different media--is the bread and butter of diplomatic relations. A skilled diplomat will be able to use these varying levels of contact to keep lines of communication open almost constantly. Richard Nixon's trip to the Peoples' Republic of China only became possible because of the success of his earlier, informal, Ping-pong diplomacy Meanwhile, on the other side of the Taiwan Straits, the Taiwanese government maintains quasi-diplomatic ties with the rest of the world through a network of "trade offices." Messages can be passed through third parties. Multilateral organizations become "back channels" of communication, even among enemies.

The Internet has given me--and everyone on it--the same back-channel communications abilities that were previously the realm of foreign ministries. We can be, as it were, in diplomatic contact with each other over the Internet--passing messages and receiving signals over any number of channels, public or private. Every new account I open, every profile I post, every forum or newsgroup or listserv, I am saying to the world "I can be reached here."

It's liberating, in a way. I can now be in contact--if only diffidently--with people with whom I would otherwise not be in contact. But, on the other hand, personal diplomacy brings with it the same ambiguities as real diplomatic relations do--I can never really be sure whether my message is getting out, or what channel to use to get it out.

Finally someone has decided to do the hard econometric number-crunching on whether getting a hybrid car saves you money.

The conclusion, surprisingly, is not really:

it is painfully obvious that existing hybrids lack the ability to make up for their steep prices with gas savings. While a hybrid would present significant savings over something like a new Ford Super Duty, you would always save more with any of a number of economy cars.

Don't take that as a fatwa enjoining you to buy Buicks, though, folks. The author of the study has not included government incentives in his calculations. The omission is understandable, since the type of incentive varies greatly from one locality to the next. But it bears stressing that the incentives are not negligible here in Virginia: the exemption on the annual car tax, as well as the ability to use HOV lanes as a single-occupant vehicle are two things worth taking into consideration. I believe similar tax advantages now exist in the District and Maryland.

The masses have boundless creative power. They can organize themselves and concentrate on places and branches of work where they can give full play to their energy; they can concentrate on production in breadth and depth and create more and more undertakings for their own well-being.

-Mao Zedong, Introductory note to "Surplus Labour Has Found a Way Out" (1955), The Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, Chinese ed., Vol. II.

In the parlance of Niccolo Machiavelli:
"Thus things proceed in their circle";
And thus the empire is maintained.--
- Ezra Pound, "Moeurs Contemporaines"

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many words is a table worth?

Am I being cheeky if I append the relevant clauses of a treaty I spend one-third of my essay dissecting?

Am I being coherent at all?