Recently at Brown University, Thomas Friedman took the stage to give a speech on the environment for Earth Day. A few seconds into its beginning, two people from Greenwash Guerrillas stormed the stage and threw pies at him. The source of the group’s disgruntlement was written on a flyer:

“Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face because of his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism’s conquest of the planet, for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand…”

For a guy who’s baffling famous for a nonsensical metaphor (The World is Flat), he actually recovered pretty quickly.

Sociologically speaking, manners are the unenforced codes of conduct that show a person to be cultured, refined, kind, and polite. They are much like laws, but, and this is a very unfortunate but for The Diplomat, they can actually be ignored, transgressed, violated even, without recompense. Gasp, I know. But it’s a cruel world out there folks. The following are a list of common manner misdemeanors that irk us to no end:

• Talking whilst eating. Listen to me: no one wants to hear a word come out of your mouth, much less see food particles fall from it, while you are eating your lunch. What’s even more tacky is when people tuck what they’re chewing away in their cheek in order to say something. That is just gross. Chew your food with your mouth closed, then speak. It’s also advisable to check your teeth/floss post meal but it is never advisable to remove food from your teeth with your tongue. Nothing more diplomatic than a clean smile.
• Adjusting privates in public. I had a boss once whose husband’s nervous tick was apparently the constant rearranging of his junk whilst talking to you. Yes … I had a boss once whose husband’s nervous tick was apparently the constant rearranging of his junk whilst talking to you.
• Nextel-walkie-talkies-push-to-talk option on cell phones. Please just call the person you are talking to. No one wants to hear your private conversations on the street, trust me. You’ve already revealed the fact that you’re cheap. Plus, it makes my dog bark, a very undiplomatic thing at 3am.

That’s all for now, but more to come. In the meantime, what irks you?

Let’s face it, nothing says international peace and conflict resolution like a cup of coffee. As a vital social lubricant the world over, it’s played a crucial role in the signing of many a peace treaties. God bless Ethiopia, even if they should perhaps drink a bit more jo themselves and solve that ongoing border dispute with Eritrea.

Coffee was originally used for spiritual reasons. After landing across the Red Sea in what is now modern day Yemen, Muslim monks cultivated the fermented coffee berries to make wine, another one of The Diplomat’s sincere loves. Others have Asian palm civets eat the beans, digest them, and pass them along to you for roughly $100 a cup. (That’s even more expensive than a soccer mom’s triple-tall-decaf-white-chocolate-mocha from Starbucks, a truly undiplomatic drink mind you. Incidentally, for a true, pure cup of local coffee, the best I’ve found in my current post (Brooklyn) is Gorilla Coffee).

I’m not saying coffee solves the world’s problems, I’m just saying it’s fun drinking a beverage that Mitt Romney can’t.

Commuters behaving badly: watch your backs, or … your manners. Japan has recently created an “etiquette police force” to monitor its public transportation system with the goal of making your commute more peaceful and polite. For fear that etiquette is quickly sliding out of their country’s bloodline, this task force will, among other things, keep travelers’ ipod’s on civilized volumes, silence yappy cell phone loud talkers, and give seats back to those who really need them, democrats the elderly and immobile.

The NYC Subway System should take note from Japan’s manner lesson. The Diplomat has traveled the world’s public transportation systems and has never been so pushed, prodded, and knocked down (once by a self-entitled angry Caribbean woman) as he has been on New York City trains. Chickens on the bus in Morocco are more cordial.

Just imagine if Bloomberg got a burly Bronx squad together to, not check your bags, but check your attitude? Your commute would maybe look something like this:

(1) A row of seated older folks on the right and a row of pregnant women on the left. Instead of the heavy guy taking up three seats and three seats worth of standing room while the pregnant woman has to lean over his legs to hold the bar and smell his onion sandwich.

(2) Quietness. Instead of distorted buzzing from your neighbor’s ipod playing a rave tune on repeat while the loud talker guy behind you waxing options trading doesn’t actually get off at Wall Street as you had hoped.

(3) Single file loading and unloading of passengers during rush hour. Instead of disembarking the train to an audience of 50 people walking straight at you as soon as the doors open and giving you icy looks and telling you to “say excuse me” when you are the one following subway society rules. And I’d like to say something to those people: nothing makes The Diplomat’s eye twitch more than those who turn their own missteps into victimhood.

It makes espionage taste better.