Since I spoke ill of long comment threads on the podcast the other night -- bemoaning their tendency to slide off into repetition and somebody being called a Nazi -- I must recommend this post over at Marginal Revolution, where Tyler's readers show how to do a long thread right. (Okay, some of them are getting a little testy towards the end, but you get to read plenty of great stuff along the way.)

It's a really fun topic, too: how to survive if suddenly transported back in time to Europe of 1000 years ago. Not to be a pessimist or anything, but I think those who predict that one would be dead in a matter of days or weeks are probably on the right track. My advice would be learn how to cross yourself properly. Even if your smattering of high school French / German / Latin gets you nowhere, and you aren't able to persuade anyone that you're a foreigner or a displaced noble, and nobody wants to watch as you charade your way through building a steam engine or introducing effective sanitation techniques, outward signs of piety might help you avoid being immediately hanged, burned, or drowned as a witch.

From there, having avoided being killed right off the bat, I tend to agree with those who argue that your best bet is to hook up either with the nobility or the Church. Get hip with the language as quickly as possible, and basically make your living as a source of entertainment. Just start telling the tales of the Fabulous Kingdom in the East from which you came. Maybe make yourself out to be Prestor John's nephew or bastard son -- although this might be a little early for PJ. (Say, maybe that's where the stories originally came from: a time traveler from a 1000 years ahead describes his homeland and it is misunderstood to be a magical kingdom in the east.)

The question originated with a marketing professor. I'm no professor, merely a a practitioner, but I tend to think that once non-demon, non-witch, non-heretic cred is established, the quickest way forward is shameless self promotion. Everybody is going to want a piece of the Amazing Visitor from the East. And you've got lots of great stories to tell them -- US history rewritten as medieval pageant, appropriately altered versions of the Sopranos or Lost or Battlestar Galactica, tales of the Bat Man -- you don't have to worry about copyright infringement! You can "invent" King Arthur or Robin Hood.

I say start with that stuff, then move on to sanitation, mathematics, assembly line production, distilled spirits, etc. There is quite a bit of talk over there about introducing advanced financial institutions or using a better understanding of probability than the locals have to make a fortune from gambling. I wouldn't recommend trying either of those (the latter on ethical as well as practical grounds) unless you do it through a patron who has plenty of troops.