It’s been a tumultuous week for me, personally. Ever-increasing anxiety until election day, elation the day of, depression for the two days following, and, finally, time for reflection. I’d imagine many California (and Florida, Arkansas and Arizona) voters went through the same emotional roller coaster.

First, having Barack Obama elected to be our 44th president is a milestone that all of us should be cherishing, for a number of reasons. The fact that he is both African-American, and the product of a mixed-race marriage (illegal until just a couple of generations ago in many parts of the country), is testament to how far we’ve come as a nation. The fact that he is the grandson of a Muslim, grew up abroad for a time, and has a non-Western European name are milestones unto themselves. They defy many of the unfortunate stereotypes that grew about the United States in the previous eight-year absence of good news.

But in a few underreported ways, Obama’s ascension to the presidency points to triumphs of a different sort. First, the era of divisive, identity politics has, at the very least, taken a hiatus. The religious right’s strangehold on electoral success and its influence on domestic legislation and foreign policy stance have also taken a backseat to a more broad coalition of groups interested in greater inclusiveness, cooperation and dialogue. The electorate is now more likely to give the president-elect reign to take a different approach with respect to health care, financial sector regulation, foreign relations, and other matters, when trying a different approach was previously considered anathema (”appeasement”, “socialism”, etc).

In two important ways, though, Obama crossed the Rubicon. First, he was able to raise a majority of his campaign contributions from 3 million contributors across the country. We’re talking small, $25, $50, amounts. What this means is that the largest “lobbyist group” he is beholden to are, effectively, the American people, who will be holding him responsible to his entire platform, not just a set of pet interests. If he doesn’t deliver? The largest, by far, source of reelection revenue will dry up.

Second, Obama is going to draw on the strong wellspring of support that was granted him from the very start, domestically and abroad. The perception of our country, by its own citizens, and former critics outside the country, was turn on its head after almost a decade of having almost every negative stereotype of Americans confirmed by the actions of an irresponsible government. Sure, with high expectations, there is bound to be disappointment, as unrealistic expectations are confronted with realpolitik. But I firmly believe that Obama’s judiciousness and his surprisingly consistent message and refrain from hyperbole on the campaign trail will suit him well as he sets out to make tremendous changes in the way our government does things.

The fact that he will be working with strong Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress won’t hurt, either.

Moving to a more specific struggle, that of marriage equality, in the midst of a streak of bad news in four states, there is an ember of optimism. Despite the continual passage of anti-equality legislation, each subsequent election and poll shows the gap narrowing. With even Republicans and evangelicals saying that gay couples deserve equal protection under the law, with only the institution of marriage itself something they are defending for heterosexual use only, the debate has taken on a different tenor than it had when gay people were routinely described as perverts, deviants, and sick, by those opposing the granting of equal rights. If the predominant debate is one of nomenclature, then we have also come a long way on the sexual orientation civil rights front.

Finally, in the aftermath of an unusually long campaign that involved record numbers of (especially young) people, one wonders if the momentum of political engagement will continue and spread into both local and international awareness and involvement. Should be an interesting couple of years (you do know that the 2010 elections are just 24 months away?).

The New Yorker got a lot of heat last week when it featured a cover that lampooned enduring myths about Barack Obama, that had heretofore only been circulated via anonymous emails. The caricature showed Barack in “muslim garb”, fist-bumping his wife, who, with an Angela Davis afro and machine-gun on her back, smiles as an American flag burns in the fireplace and a picture of Osama bin Laden graces the walls.

Was the cover offensive? I don’t think so. As a subscriber to the New Yorker, I understand their taste for satire. Last week’s cover was certainly not denigrating Obama or impugning his or his wife’s patriotism - it is making fun of people who parrot those bigoted memes and believe them to be true. Seeing all of the ultra right-wing fantasies parodied on the same page was, well, really funny.

Not to be outdone by its rival, Vanity Fair published its cover (which it thought was) capturing the same satirical spirit and aesthetic inspiration, but applied this time to McCain. He’s shown with a walker, his wife carrying pill bottles, the Constitution is burning and George W Bush accenting the wall above the mantle. Also funny, but perhaps not quite as aggressive in its caricature - otherwise, Cindy might be lying on the floor with a black eye.

The fact is, though, that McCain doesn’t suffer from anywhere close to the same degree of fabricated rumors as does Barack, having his religion, patriotism and allegiances impugned by political operatives. So, the Vanity Fair cover falls a little flat. I mean, he is old, he does admire Bush, and his wife does have a certain way with pill bottles. The only image that condemns is his burning of the Constitution.

So why did both the Obama and McCain campaigns condemn the Obama cover? It’s clear that too many people don’t understand satire, and will misread the cartoon as a representation of the truth (they might even think it’s a photograph!). Innocent Harry Potter suffered at the hands of a lasting email meme that J.K. Rowling was encouraging satanism among children (it was screamingly funny satire by The Onion, who, in a rare move, took the article off its site).

Good satire should give thinking people something to laugh and reflect about. It can expose and challenge the absurdities that we give thoughtless acceptance to. But not everyone exposed to such images will understand their intent; the danger appears when people accept them at face value. And, in an election where candidates spend hundreds of millions of dollars for mindshare, a satirical image is just bad PR.

I had the honor to participate in Mashable’s author series, and recently received Ori and Rom Brafman’s Sway. Within about 3 days I finished the book (a relatively rare feat for me), and have this to say: this is a great book. It’s a fascinating book. And it’s an important book.

Much like Freakonomics, The Tipping Point and Blink, Sway makes heady academic subjects - in this case, behavioral economics, social psychology and organizational behavior - accessible and relevant to a lay audience, illustrated through real-world examples of otherwise rational people acting irrationally. Why do humans often make irrational decisions? The book is replete with examples, and explanations of the cause or mechanism when known, that illustrate each of these phenomena:

1. loss aversion - we are more sensitive to the loss of something than we are elated by an equal gain
2. commitment - we repeat a pattern that has worked in the past even though it is obvious it no longer works
3. value attribution - we impart worth based on the perceived value of something, not objectively-measured criteria
4. diagnosis bias - it’s difficult to shake a first impression of something
5. the “chameleon effect” (the Pygmalion Effect and Golem Effect) - people tend to rise to the level of expectations set for them (even subconsciously)
6. procedural justice and fairness - we can make decisions against our own economic benefit if we feel fairness has been violated
7. rewards vs intrinsic motivation (altruism) - we find it difficult to be motivated by both financial gain and altruism at the same time
8. group dynamics and social pressure - an expression of a correct dissenting opinion can be blocked if there is perceived unanimity

The book includes many compelling examples to corroborate these, but let me share three of them:

• a Harvard MBA professor has a game in which students bid in $1 increments how much they’d pay for a $20 bill. The catch is that the runner-up also has to pay their final bid, even though they don’t win. Students will routinely bid well past $20 (in one case to $204), because neither wants to pay money for nothing, even though each bid after $20 is already a losing proposition. [an illustration of loss aversion and commitment]
• Swiss towns were asked to store the country’s nuclear waste. Their agreement dropped drastically when a financial incentive was introduced. [an illustration of rewards vs altruism]
• Israeli soldiers in a commander training program were completely randomly assigned a score that officers were told was an assessment of their commander potential (it was not shared with the soldiers). After the training period, soldiers who were assigned a bogus high commander potential score at the outset performed significantly better on exit exams than those randomly assigned low commander potential scores at the beginning [an illustration of the chameleon effect]

The reason this book is so important is that we’re all guilty of irrational behavior. The book demonstrates that the brightest, best-trained and most competent of us can fall into these traps that are often part of our neurological design. The book’s prescription? Awareness. Simple consciousness of an irrational drive can allow our rational mind to put in an override.

And, with that in mind, I’d like to play the devil’s advocate myself, with respect to three conclusions drawn from examples in the book. I have not investigated the original studies (although the Brafmans provide sources in the end notes), but based on what I’ve read, my skeptical mind wonders:

• in chapter 1, it’s suggested we choose flat rates instead of a la carte (pay-per-use) plans, like for cell phones and rental cars, because we’re trying to avoid a disastrously large bill. I have to disagree here. The reason I feel better about a flat rate, and I tend to choose them, is that I do not want the mental burden of having to weigh the value of making or accepting a call against its cost each and every time. The extra I end up paying for a flat-rate plan is worth it for the brain energy it saves me. [Update: research supports this!]
• in chapter 4, an NBA’s draft selection order was determined to have a pronounced effect on the amount of their game play. It’s suggested that the draft order is meaningless once the player has joined his team, with the other measured characteristics - scoring, toughness and quickness - being the only metrics that should matter. Now, I’m no basketball expert, but isn’t it possible that there are other unvoiced, latent talents that a team manager might measure subconsciously but might not be aware of enough to know to measure it? Like leadership, or dynamic with other players on the court? My sense is there might be something else to a team manager’s decision that goes beyond an individual player’s scoring potential that might make him an asset to have out on the court.
• in chapter 5, elderly people who had used negative and external descriptors of themselves showed more signed of degenerative aging than those who had used positive and internal words to describe themselves. I wonder if those who were describing themselves negatively, or focusing on their external appearance, did so because they sensed they were suffering from a medical problem or simple lack of wellness that hadn’t been isolated as part of the experimental protocol. I guess I’m wondering if the supposed cause of their aging wasn’t in fact an effect, instead.

These are not challenges to the relevant studies or to the book; they’re simply questions that came to my mind as I read each example. I had recently read two other fascinating books, Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, that demonstrate that widely-accepted notions and even research can fail under closer scrutiny.

This book warns against falling into the trap of value attribution, too, so I’m fairly sure Ori and Rom Brafman can appreciate my doubts.

The Mashable Author Series will include a live chat later today with Ori Brafman, and has had two posts (an introduction, and on VC irrationality) guest-written by Ori.

The New Yorker had a fantastic piece on the Keith Olbermann phenomenon, one that Olbermann himself agrees wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for its diametrically-opposed counterpart, the O’Reilly phenomenon.

Olbermann’s success, like O’Reilly’s, is evidence of viewer cocooning—the inclination to seek out programming that reinforces one’s own firmly held political views. “People want to identify,” [MSNBC Vice President Phil] Griffin says. “They want the shortcut. ‘Wow, that guy’s smart. I get him.’ In this crazy world of so much information, you look for places where you identify, or you see where you fit into the spectrum, because you get all this information all day long.”

It’s an interesting development, and one that dovetails with the viewership march from the mainstream media to the blogosphere to get news. Is this a reaction to information overload? When confronted with an overwhelming onslaught of news items from an increasing number of global sources, do we turn to someone to follow the news, digest it and parse it for us in a form more easy to assimilate?

I know that Timothy Ferriss, the Four-Hour Workweek guy, says that he doesn’t follow politics at all, and just asks a friend or two that he trusts to tell him whom to vote for each election cycle. He’s an incredibly busy guy, he has his own dreams to follow, and doesn’t feel that following each detail of the lengthy political process gives him any more necessary perspective than his friends’ advice give him when it matters.

The Information Age has given those of us with access to the internet’s resources freedom to go both broad and deep on data as never before. But, at a certain point, each of us has to make some choices as to what to limit our exposure to - we don’t have the time or mental energy to dig through everything and still have time to get work done. Might it be fair for matters of politics to turn to our favorite partisan blogger or “news analyst” to both inform us on what’s important and also shape our opinion?

I’m not so sure. I personally find myself turning daily to the Drudge Report, a right-leaning news page, even though I’m left-of-center myself. Why? My other purviews into the world of politics are decidedly mired in a Democratic/left political ethos, and I wonder what else I’m missing out there. And although Drudge doesn’t provide any of his own commentary besides the shaping of his headlines’ titles, he does exert an editorial bias on which stories he publishes (and how long he keeps them up).

I feel it’s important to keep a pulse on the sentiments of people who you might not necessarily agree with, but whose line of thinking you can at least consider rational enough to respect. But this is just one man’s opinion. In today’s politically-polarized atmosphere, maybe true neutrality is something that’s too much to ask for.

Debuting a documentary about Malawi, the home of her recently-adopted son, David, at the Tribeca Film Festival a couple of months ago, which she narrated and her former gardener directed, Madonna took issue with America’s aid efforts, saying, “I don’t know what our government does period, instead of getting us in more debt and blowing up countries.” When asked later if the US government should do more, she replied, “It’s our own job to change that and I think it’s a fool’s errand to rely on the government to change things.”

Whatever you think of Madonna’s sense of humor or her knowledge of the US’s activities, she might be somewhat on the mark when it comes to American aid. The fact is that the US government is a miser when it comes to charity, but individual American citizens more than make up for it with their own largesse.

Two interesting, and highly contrastive figures:

• Among the 22 OECD development assistance committee countries, the United States is second-to-last in terms of generosity (only Greece was more miserly). This measures governmental aid. The Scandinavian countries, led by Norway, were the most generous. The US government gave 0.16% of GDP.
• The United States is the most generous of all countries, as a percentage of GDP, when counting total aid (see infographic to the right, courtesy of Fast Company). The US gives 1.7% of its GDP (Britain, Madonna’s new home, gives 0.73%, less than half that)

The difference? Private giving. Americans rely less on the government to do the job, and rather donate to non-governmental agencies, private and public, to do the job. A third go to religious organizations, and three-quarters from individuals (only a paltry 4.3% from corporations), but it’s clear that the American people, as Madonna calls it, will be the ones that people in need will have to rely on when they seek help.

What is missing from these statistics is how much of giving is destined for overseas. This, brings up some interesting questions (all of which would make for terrific dyalogue topics):

• Should individuals help less-fortunate people overseas, or “take care of their own” first?
• Is aid to former colonies (typical among European former colonial powers) as altruistic as aid to countries without a historical connection to your own?
• Is there a reasonable charitable giving target, or is any number arbitrary?
• Do celebrities owe a responsibility to the poor?
• What is the ideal government:private aid ratio?

Dyalogues is about getting people to talk - deeply and meaningfully. Not poking, not pinging, not IMing - we’re talking about a rich and expressive conversation, the sort of communication that is common in the offline world, but can be difficult to find online, oddly.

A couple of things I read this past week suggested we were on the same wavelength with a couple of provocative, insightful folks:

• someone I talked to said that he teased Robert Scoble for occasionally publishing blog posts with deliberately provocative titles; the Scobleizer responded, “it gets people talking”
• in a recent blog post, Scoble wrote that “The real thing I’ve been doing for more than eight years now is to try to arrange my life so that I have an interesting conversation every day with someone interesting.”
• I read a review of Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama bin Laden? in The Economist. It had a great quote: “For Mr Spurlock, conversation is the opposite of war while people refusing to communicate is something to fear.”
• In an interview with Screen Goblin, Spurlock states, “[Filming the movie] really hit home on a different level for me sitting down and talking to people face-to-face, rather than seeing people yell about it on TV. When you’re there - you’re sitting down, or you’re at a table, or you’re in someone’s house and they’re telling you face-to-face and you can’t change the channel, you can’t go into the other room - it gives you a completely new perspective.”

We couldn’t agree more.