You’re probably wondering about the title. I chose it because (1) I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be taken already, and (2) it evokes what I’ve come to see as the defining problem of my life.

A couple years ago, when I was still at Berkeley, some fellow grad students and I were discussing who we would have been had we lived 700 years ago. Would we have been farmers and bricklayers, like pretty much everyone else? Or kings and duchesses, as the people who go to Renaissance Fairs all apparently were? More interestingly, would we have found some way to capitalize on our bizarre “gifts” — say, by developing a new field-ploughing algorithm that was provably within a 1+ε factor of optimal? (That we would still have our nerdy gifts wasn’t open to question — for if we didn’t, then we would no longer be ourselves.)

“I would’ve been the chief rabbi of my shtetl,” I said. “All day long, I’d debate questions like how much restitution you’d have to pay if your ox gored your neighbor’s sheep. And for this, I’d get an arranged marriage with the most beautiful girl in town.”

Someone interjected that I shouldn’t sentimentalize too much: “After all, Scott, you wouldn’t have had any complexity theory! Or quantum computing!”

“That’s true,” I confessed. “So, you know — you win some, you lose some.”

Complexity and quantum computing will indeed play a role on Shtetl-Optimized, as will politics, economics, history, free will, global warming, The Simpsons — the whole megillah, or at least the sections I’ve skimmed. But the overarching theme will be “how to survive as a penguin in the desert, or a camel in Antarctica, or a caveman in — well, anyway, as someone who feels himself exquisitely adapted to an environment utterly unlike the one into which he was born.” If you’ve ever felt that way– or even if you’d just enjoy the spectacle of someone groping his way out of the nebbish-bin of history — I hope you find it enlightening.