I don’t place a premium on blowing sunshine up people’s hindparts.

At my high school, a math/science magnet, you came strong or not at all, an intellectual style that suits me, but generally pisses most people off. Even some circles at Yale felt the dismissive, condescending tone that my skewering of poorly-considered arguments generally took was inappropriate for the cashmere-sweater and pearl-necklace set. Whatevs. I was trained in a school of thought that assumes we’re all intelligent people, and none of us are going to cry to our mommies if someone rips our moronic ideas a new orifice. Au contraire: we’ll become stronger people for having endured the thrashing. (Cue Nietzsche.)

This is not an approach that lubricates one’s path to a corner office at a large corporation. (Cue Kafka.)

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