“May I bring you a drink to go with those warm nuts, Mr. Sedaris?” the woman looking after me asked—this as the people in coach were still boarding. The looks they gave me as they passed were the looks I give when the door of a limousine opens. You always expect to see a movie star, or, at the very least, someone better dressed than you, but time and time again it’s just a sloppy nobody. Thus the look, which translates to “Fuck you, Sloppy Nobody, for making me turn my head.”

I feel exactly that way whether I’m in coach (most of the time) or business (the occasional upgrade). Walking to my coach seat I’m always thinking about how much more comfortable these slobs in business are going to be for the next 12 hours or so, damn them. Likewise, I feel a vague sense of guilt if I’m sitting in my business class seat. I’m thinking “this trip is going to suck *so much more* for all of you.” Certainly it doesn’t help that I epitomize the sloppy nobody as I sit there in my fleece listening to an iPod while other business travelers whisper importantly into their Blackberrys.

For my part, I had never (to my knowledge) met someone that couldn’t identify major countries on a map; I thought it would be interesting, in a slowing-down-to-look-at-a-car-wreck kind of way, to speak with someone so fantastically stupid. In some way, I expected such a person to consider their ignorance an aspect of their personality: “I’m Sam, and I play the guitar, and I can’t find the United Kingdom on a map or describe the importance of the first amendment.”

Sadly, stupid people don’t often self-identify with their stupidity, and I never got the chance to meet my representative moron. Turns out I didn’t need to, as the election of George W. Bush and the political rise of evangelical Christianity has put a good number of them on the world stage, free to be gawked at. The election also ushered in a new cycle of intellectual hand-wringing, which has risen in pitch as the gang of Idiots seek to ensure the country is well and truly ruined before they leave office and go back to their homes and their churches.

The latest furlow: last week Susan Jacoby’s “Age of American Unreason” was released. If the review at Salon is any indication (I’ve yet to read it myself), I will probably think it’s a great book, because I’ll strongly agree with it:

The chief manifestations of this newly virulent irrationality are the rise of fundamentalist religion and the flourishing of junk science and other forms of what Jacoby calls “junk thought.” The mentally enfeebled American public can now be easily manipulated by flimsy symbolism, whether it’s George W. Bush’s bumbling, accented speaking style (labeling him as a “regular guy” despite his highly privileged background) or the successful campaign by right-wing ideologues to smear liberals as snooty “elites.”

Unable to grasp even the basic principles of statistics or the scientific method, Americans gullibly buy into a cornucopia of bogus notions, from recovered memory syndrome to intelligent design to the anti-vaccination movement.

Ms. Jacoby also has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post:

It is almost impossible to talk about the manner in which public ignorance contributes to grave national problems without being labeled an “elitist,” one of the most powerful pejoratives that can be applied to anyone aspiring to high office. Instead, our politicians repeatedly assure Americans that they are just “folks,” a patronizing term that you will search for in vain in important presidential speeches before 1980.

Truth be told, I’ve myself accepted “elitist” as a pejorative, one that I use almost unconsciously in a self-deprecating way. The main culprit, according to Jacoby, is the rise of video culture and correlated decline of reading

First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story. The drop-off is most pronounced among the young, but it continues to accelerate and afflict Americans of all ages and education levels.

Not that Jacoby’s effort matters. As Laura Miller describes in her Salon review, she is only preaching to the choir. I’ll buy her book (I’ll even read it), but it’s really an exercise in narcissism in the sense that I know the book will just reinforce my own opionions. Just think: I’ll be even more elitist.

It’s impossible to really understand how incredible this technology is by reading about it. Take a look at the demo for yourself, and visit the Photosynth site.

What really caught my attention, beyond the technology itself, is the social networking implications for Photosynth. It’s enables one to look at an object (say, Notre Dame, as in the TED demo) through the eyes of thousands of people simultaneously; it potentially represents our collective view of the world. Amazing.

Take comfort. There’s always pictures through which you can live vicariously. Like this one, taken from my hotel window this morning. Ah, Ireland in January!

Anyway, I’m out of town and won’t be able to participate in the Junto, but it made me think. What would I write? What, exactly, do I “believe?” It’s a deceptively difficult question, at least for me. Certainly there are things that I think are true, but I find it difficult to boil these ideas down into one that captures me. Something that I can point to and say, “this is what I’m about.”

The trouble is that the things I believe are either trite (I believe my employer should provide me with all the free Diet Coke I can drink) or are pretentious (who the hell cares what I believe politically or religiously or whatever). Then there’s the temptation to write about things I “believe” that are really about trying to establish myself as a good person.  “I believe in treating people equally and with kindness” is abstractly true, but the true-truth is I’m often a grumpy asshole for no good reason. And don’t get judgmental about that, mother fucker, because you can be an asshole sometimes too.

I imagine this all has to do with the depth of thought one puts into things. That is, the depth of one’s thinking about an issue is proportional to the importance one places on the issue. It’s disconcerting to be faced with one’s shallowness.

This reminded me of one of my favorites concepts; the notion of the tyranny of choice. For some people, living as a privileged person in a place with plenty of everything is psychologically damaging. Having options can make you unhappy.

At the core of this is the observation that people can be measured by the extent to which they are “maximizers;” that is, to the extent to which they carefully analyze their decisions in an effort to find the very best option. When making a decision, maximizers weigh every option carefully, taking time to consider the very best possible choice.

The trouble with being a maximizer, it turns out, is that the “best possible choice” does not exist independent of a person’s mind. There is no car that is innately “best,” just as there is no “best” entree, shoes, vacation spot, or anything else. In the end, the best choice is the one that makes you feel the best having chosen it. And there’s the rub.

When you choose to go in a particular direction, you are simultaneously choosing against going in another direction. More to the point, you are choosing against many different directions. Having carefully studied those options, the maximizer is intimately familiar with all of the wonderful qualities he just rejected. This creates a two-fold burden for the poor maximizer: the pain of losing all the options now rejected, and the quickly diminishing joy found in the choice actually made.

Consider the person obsessed with buying a new car. Once chosen and bought, the new car quickly loses its patina. It become mundane and hum-drum with familiarity. In the meantime, all the various lost features offered by the dozen cars rejected float in the (now depressed) maximizer’s mind. Compounding this pain is the amount of energy put into the choosing process; after pouring energy into finding just the right option, it doesn’t feel very good.

The situation isn’t just anecdotal or an interesting thought experiment, there’s lots of evidence that too many options cause real suffering. From the sciam article linked to above:

Assessments of well-being by various social scientists–among them, David G. Myers of Hope College and Robert E. Lane of Yale University–reveal that increased choice and increased affluence have, in fact, been accompanied by decreased well-being in the U.S. and most other affluent societies.

Opposite the maximizer is the satisficer (a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice), someone that chooses the option offered that’s good enough, without obsessing about whether the choice is the best possible. This doesn’t mean that satisficers settle for low quality, nor does it mean that they don’t care. It means they don’t obsess — and often, when considering the cost of an obsessive decision-making process, a satisficing choice is near-best anyway in terms of overall cost.

The moral? Pay attention to your decision making process and notice if you tend to struggle or obsess. If you do, force yourself to say “Screw it, I’ll take the middle one” (or whatever other method that quickly identifies the good-enough option). You’ll be happy that you did. And never spend more than five minutes searching for a movie in a blockbuster.

It’s my first experience working from home. I entered into it with great optimism about how taking control of the lion’s share of my time would create opportunities that I otherwise would not have. I could, for example, opt to take my son to a swimming lesson on Tuesdays at 11am without disrupting my work schedule at all. As long as I got the job done, there was no one looking over my shoulder telling me that I needed to work within a specific window of time. I can move the window (or break it up) any way that I wished).

On paper it sounds great, and I’m still optimistic that it will be great. But it’s been much harder than I thought it would be. Look at this blog, for example — I provided an update near daily for months before starting the new gig, and have made perhaps three pathetic updates since.

Routine is really important for productivity. At least is is for *my* productivity. Unless I structure my day into specific blocks of time, each allocated to one specific goal or the other, I find that I get almost nothing done. I like to tell myself that this is indicative of an extremely curious mind (e.g. there’s always something interesting to think about, read, or work on). That’s mostly crap. It’s really indicative of my tendency toward disorganization and procrastination, against which I fight a constant battle.

So I’m developing a routine, and am finally getting the details of my home office worked out. The results will speak for themselves in the coming weeks. If I begin the next post with “man, it’s been awhile,” you can be assured that I was less successful that I had hoped.

I do have an excuse: I’ve started a new job. It’s a good excuse, because it’s a high stress event. Here’s proof:

Divorce, death of a loved one, job loss—it’s not surprising to find life events like these on the high-stress list. But marriage? A new house? A personal achievement [such as a new job]? Sure enough, these “good” events are stressful, too.

“Your body reacts to stress in the same way regardless of the cause,” says cardiologist Gerald Pytlewski, D.O., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “The level of stress hormones goes up, and if the stress continues over time, it elevates your cholesterol, blood pressure and heart disease risk.”

See? And note that the fact that this is some random quote from the internet that happens to support my premise doesn’t for a moment dilute it’s truthfulness. I mean, it’s not divorce or death, but it’s up there.

Anyway, I’ve started a new job. It’s not my first new job, either — I’ve done this a couple times, and I’ve learned something about new jobs over the years, and since it’s on my mind I thought I’d jot them down.

Start before your first day
For much of my career, I didn’t think about my new job until the moment I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar area surrounded with unfamiliar people. It’s much easier if you prepare for the first day by talking with everyone you can. Talk with the person you are replacing. Talk with people on your team, and teams with which you are going to be working. I usually make a list of the half dozen or so people that are likely to be most important in my new role, then I write an email asking to set up a quick phone call to introduce myself and talk about the role. This doesn’t have to be a big production, and it can be kept fairly informal, but it gives you a chance to form some initial relationships and get a “feel” for the important issues facing the company in general and you in particular.

Talk with everyone
People are most productive when they have working relationships — when they are part of the corporate “family.” There’s no magic bullet toward making this happen — it takes time. You can jump start the process, however, by making it a point to introduce yourself and say hello to absolutely everyone you see. Schedule in person meetings with the half dozen people you spoke about on the phone. Don’t wait for people to come to you; make yourself easy to meet and easy to talk to. Ask about the company, the products, the customers, the competitors, anything and everything you can think of.

Be conservative
Be careful how you express yourself, however. When you’re the new guy, there is a strong temptation to prove your value (your amazing intelligence, the formidable breadth and depth of your knowledge, your heroic past deeds). Resist this temptation. Everyone you meet will assume that they are the expert because, as the new guy, you know nothing. Frankly, they are probably right. Even if they are wrong, pretend otherwise. Give them the opportunity to have a forum in which they can teach; it’ll win you friends.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should avoid potentially controversial or contentious subjects such as religion or politics. Laugh at jokes, but avoid the temptation to prove that you are funny (or cool, or worldly) as well. Avoid expressing strong opinions about work-related matters. Collect as much information as possible, ask as many questions as possible, but don’t pass judgement. Even if you are right — the website might actually be pretty awful, the collateral poorly written, the business plan short sighted, the accounting sloppy, but talking about it probably won’t win you any friends and is likely to earn you some enemies. The company got along just fine before you arrived, and it’s amazingly easy to say or do something that causes people to wonder who the hell you think you are.

Read everything
You’re pretty stupid going it, and it’s important to become less stupid as quickly as possible. Read everything you can about your company, your products, your competitors, your technology. Everything. Then read it again. The faster you become fluent in your particular “language” the easier it is going to be.

Find an easy, early win
If you’re talking with everyone, reading everything, and making friends, some opportunities to contribute should become pretty clear. Unless you’re in a position in which your boss is laying out things he/she specifically wants you to accomplish, you need to identify some accomplishments yourself. It almost doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it is possible to achieve within a couple months (at most) and is accepted as a legitimate accomplishment that moves the business forward in some small way. At all costs, avoid the situation in which someone says that you are “off to a slow start” in any context (e.g. if something says “he’s smart, engaged, wonderful, and, though he’s off to a bit of a slow start, I think he’ll really be an asset” really means “he certainly seems capable, but he hasn’t accomplished anything yet.”

Oh, yeah, and a sixth bonus tip:

Give yourself a break
Starting a new job really is a difficult, stressful thing to do. You know no one. You know nothing. Every detail, down to the nearest rest room and how to file an expense report, is new. You aren’t going to swoop in and change the world, so don’t beat yourself up as you ascend the learning curve.

Babies with baggies are particularly unwelcome.

It’s been an amazing experience, not least because the trip has occasioned my first experience driving on the “wrong” side of the road. I’ve been nervous about it for some time; I imagined that I’d arrive in Ireland and my jet-lagged mind would turn the wrong way at the first intersection I encountered.

Well, so far so good. I rented my car, got lots of insurance, pushed and shoved my (modest) suitcase into the smallest car I’ve ever seen, much less driven, and started driving around on the left side of the road.

It’s an odd experience for two reasons. First, I’m not used to *thinking* about driving. It’s something for which I usually rely on muscle memory, saving all other cognitive processes for grumpily judging other drivers.

Second, the muscle memory is still very much there. I’m experiencing a kind of dual-mind in which I’m intellectually telling myself “stay left,” but every unconscious process I have is simultaneously pulling me the other direction. This duality really freaked me out when I was driving down a road and someone pulled onto the road from an intersection ahead of me. The other car turned to travel toward me, and my intellectual mind said “they are turning into the right lane,” but my body erupted in alarms “YOU’RE IN THE WRONG LANE! GET OVER!” My little car began swerving slightly to and fro as I fought with myself, but I made it through without driving off the road into the trees.

Only four more days to go, then I have to try and switch back to driving the “right” way. Ugh.