Search Results for: "hillary clinton"

I know someone who works at Pixar. He is a reliable source of confident lectures on the moral superiority of Democrats, Californians, liberals, immigrants, bigger government. He is also a reliable source of confident denunciations of Republicans as sexist, racist, and stupid. Donald Trump, needless to say, is an affront to everything that is righteous by Bay Area standards.

“How Pixar’s Open Sexism Ruined My Dream Job” (Variety) thus caught my eye:

At Pixar, my female-ness was an undeniable impediment to my value, professional mobility, and sense of security within the company. The stress of working amidst such a blatantly sexist atmosphere took its toll, and was a major factor in forcing me out of the industry.

It was devastating to learn, right from the start, that women were open targets for disrespect and harassment –– even at a world-renowned workplace in the most liberal-leaning city in the country. I was likewise told to steer clear of a particularly chauvinistic male lead in my department. Much like John, this man’s female targets had been reporting his vulgar, unprofessional behaviors for years, but his position and demeanor remained much the same.

I had my first uncomfortable encounter with this department head in a company kitchen, just two weeks into my internship. He cornered me with sexual comments while openly leering at my body.

Cassandra Smolcic is a freelance graphic designer, photographer, and writer. She worked at Pixar from 2009 to 2014.

Maybe correct-thinkers in “the most liberal-leaning city in the country” do actually treat women in the workplace better? That’s because women are treated so much worse in states that voted for Trump? But how would folks in the Bay Area know since they never visit such places?

I emailed my source within Pixar to find out how it was possible for people at the company to have been simultaneously sanctimonious about Trump voters and running a workplace that was hostile to women. His response was that Pixar was recently woke. Things would be different and better going forward and, in fact, had already improved.

 

But that leaves us with things being pretty bad still in 2016, when Pixar employees joined with the rest of the Bay Area in jeering at Deplorables.

So… how can Bay Area folks talk about how much progress they’ve made in enabling women to work in their offices, something that became common nationwide roughly 100 years ago during World War I, while also sanctimoniously strutting about how much better their political philosophy is for the “vulnerable,” such as women? Where is their evidence that women in Deplorable-run enterprises faced more hostility than women at virtuously managed Pixar? Or than women interviewing for roles with Hillary Clinton-supporter Harvey Weinstein?

The Los Angeles Times is committed to the righteous path of social justice. From “Hillary Clinton would make a sober, smart and pragmatic president. Donald Trump would be a catastrophe.” (by the full Editorial Board):

The election of Hillary Clinton as the first female president of the United States would surely be as exhilarating as it is long overdue, a watershed moment in American history after centuries of discrimination against women.

From April 14, 2018, “A welcome assault on the gender wage gap” (by the full Editorial Board):

Year after year, study after study has come to the same depressing conclusion: Women are paid less than men in most every occupation, from accounting to teaching to sales to nursing. In the 55 years since the federal Equal Pay Act was passed, the gap has shrunk a bit, but it’s still far too wide. … it is unfair and dispiriting … prehistoric attitudes about the value of women’s work persist and are reflected in their collective pay.

These gender equity warriors are now leaving the newsroom for the courtroom, but not on the side that you might expect… “LA Times Union Preparing Class-Action Lawsuit Over ‘Illegal Pay Disparities’: Last week, an analysis of the newsroom’s pay structure revealed wide discrepancies along racial and gender lines.” (Huffington Post)

Readers: Explain this apparent paradox!

As recently as 2016, it was possible to get paid more for having sex on camera than for working at Starbucks. CNBC shows that porn industry compensation was $300-1500 per “scene”. (The article notes that there is a gender pay gap; actors identifying as “men” get paid less than those identifying as “women”. Where is Hillary Clinton to demand an end to this injustice?)

Given that a lot of folks who work at Starbucks for $12 per hour do meet the minimum qualifications for selling sex it seems reasonable to infer that the higher compensation is due to Americans preferring to have “worked at Starbucks” on their resumes than “worked as porn actor/actress”.

Our most respected media, however, is now promoting careers in porn to young people (a refreshing change from English majors promoting STEM careers!) by valorizing Stormy Daniels. One example is “Stormy Daniels, Porn Star Suing Trump, Is Known for Her Ambition: ‘She’s the Boss’” (nytimes):

To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. … for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon. With an instinct for self-promotion, she evolved from “kindergarten circuit” stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s.

“She’s the boss, and everyone knew it,” Nina Hartley, one of the longest-working performers in the industry, said about Ms. Clifford.

“She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career,” said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the R-rated comedies “Knocked Up” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” “She is not someone to be underestimated.”

She has a daughter, a third husband and an expensive hobby: equestrian shows. “She blends right in,” said Packy McGaughan, a trainer on the competition circuit. “A pretty girl riding a horse.”

Pre-Trump, the same media outlets took the position that women who took cash in exchange for sex, outside of a family court context, were being exploited. The assumption seemed to be that women would not willingly sell their bodies, regardless of the price, and therefore a man had to be coercing them into a transaction.

Now it seems that Americans who sell sex, on-screen or off-screen, can be celebrated for their heroic bravery. They are powerful independent actors, not passive victims.

If having sex with rich people off-camera and/or having sex with middle-class people on-camera are laurels to be worn proudly, will that increase the supply of Americans who want to work in this sector of the economy? If so, with an increase in supply do we expect prices to fall?

[Some perspectives from Facebook:

Just saw Stormy Daniels interviewed and I can tell she is twice as smart as Donald trump. At least. I think the best way to get back at trump for the fucking hell hes put us through is by electing Stormy Daniels the next president. I’m officially offering to work for the Stormy Daniels campaign in any capacity –

…promiscuous, dumb, narcissistic, attention whores. Stormy should have been smarter in her choice of partners.

]

From my middle-aged perspective it seems that American mores have shifted rapidly. Ten years ago, for example, I don’t think that someone who exchanged sex for cash could be expected to talk about it on national TV. The vendor of the sex wouldn’t have wanted to be identified and the TV network wouldn’t have wanted to devote airtime to a debrief on the business transaction. In a country where there is no shame in selling one’s body, why does someone get paid $1,500 to have sex for 20 minutes?

Related:

• Stormy Daniels, prostitution, cell phone video, and the snowflake gynecologists

 

Pravda tells us that a righteous Democrat has won an election in a Pennsylvania district that Hillary Clinton lost by 20 points. Can we infer from this that voters were rejecting Hillary (spouse of former leader, recipient of $billions in foreign cash via her family-controlled foundation) rather than rejecting the Democrats’ promise of a planned economy (fair wages for all races and gender IDs determined by a central bureaucracy, fair (means-tested) prices for housing, food, and health care, experts allocating appropriate levels of resources to the health care industry, etc.)? Therefore if the Democrats simply nominate someone in 2020 who didn’t get rich via involvement in politics and who didn’t succeed in politics through marriage or family connections, Trump is in serious trouble? And if Trump is in serious trouble will it be time to go short the U.S. markets?

A Facebook friend posted “Words fail me … #Trumpanitcs” on top of “Trump Pushes Republicans in Congress to Oppose Funding Hudson Rail Tunnel” (nytimes):

President Trump is pressing congressional Republicans to oppose funding for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, using the power of his office to block a key priority for the region and his Democratic rivals, according to several people with knowledge of his actions.

Mr. Trump urged Speaker Paul D. Ryan this week not to support funding for the $30 billion project, two people familiar with the conversation said.

$30 billion for a short tunnel? The world’s longest and deepest tunnel, opened in 2016, cost roughly $10 billion (Wikipedia). I accepted the assumption that the president of a country that is $21 trillion in debt wouldn’t oppose this purely on the grounds of efficiency and a theory that, if $30 billion must be borrowed, it could be better spent elsewhere. The same friend, when professing his love for Hillary Clinton and/or hatred for Donald Trump, tirelessly beats the inequality drum. So I asked

If you’re concerned about inequality, why would you want the Federal government to subsidize this $30 billion project anyway? Wouldn’t it make inequality in the U.S. more extreme if low- and middle-income taxpayers in the Midwest or South have to pay for a train tunnel to be used by high-income residents of the NY/NJ region? If it actually does make sense to spend $30 billion, why not have NY/NJ fund this themselves?

The consensus response among the virtuous Trump-haters on the thread:

The mid-west has not pulled its own weight in federal taxes in 40 years

Pull their weight means those states get more in Federal funding than they pay

ÇA subsidizes about 5-7 of those states if you count the state budgets as well, and more like 10 if you only count federal tax xfer

In fact if these states were to pay back the coastal Blue states over the next 30 years and balance their own budgets, they would have to triple their state taxes on average

if “we are concerned about inequality,” should’t we be asking states that aren’t solvent and can’t afford the price of admission to politely exit through the rear door?

These folks don’t have any problem with individual Americans being on welfare for decades and, in fact, consistently vote to expand government handouts (free housing, free healthcare, free food, free smartphones, etc.) to individuals. But they don’t like Americans collected into a state not “pulling their weight”? [Note that the assumption that a river of cash is flowing from correct-thinkers to Deplorables may be incorrect: “Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident.”]

Taxpayers in KY and AL don’t even fully fund the projects they receive. They fund NOTHING out of state

we give them HUGE subsidies, and yet they believe they get none.

if they are going to vote to cut the benefits they receive, let’s accommodate them

I asked why it mattered what “they” believed (assuming any of these virtuous coastal dwellers actually have personal contact with Deplorables in the Midwestern and Southern states). Would it make sense to deny state assistance to people who don’t believe the same things as the elites? Someone living in means-tested public housing has to leave and pay market rents because he or she has incorrect beliefs? They want to reduce inequality, but only among those who believe the same things that they believe?

On the subjecting of voting, I pointed out that fully one third of folks in West Virginia virtuously voted for Hillary Clinton. Why punish them because of the incorrect political beliefs of their neighbors? Aren’t they already suffering sufficiently in having to live near Trump supporters?

Maybe some of those low income states need to be depopulated?

It’s painful, but if a state’s economy for example grew around coal and coal is no longer in demand (or auto manufacturing, steel production, etc) how can one possibly fix that other than by the most artificial means?

I responded by pointing out that schoolteachers in West Virginia are on strike right now and say that they get paid less than teachers in other states. Why not give them the $30 billion so that this inequality is rectified? None of the inequality-obsessed coastal dwellers wanted to do that.

Why is it obviously fair, though, for someone in Kentucky to pay for a tunnel for use by the Wall Street folks who trashed the economy in 2008? Suppose that it were true that Kentucky has been collecting federal welfare for decades. If there is still inequality, with people in Kentucky being less wealthy than people in New Jersey and New York, wouldn’t it make sense to increase the federal welfare flow to Kentucky rather than trying to pull the money in reverse for this new tunnel?

In short, if the answer for a low-income individual is “more welfare” (not to be confused with “more cowbell”) why is the answer for a low-income state “less welfare”?

[We can’t say that the U.S. has historically run this way, can we? During the Great Depression, for example, the Tennessee Valley Authority was created to build infrastructure in a comparatively poor region of the U.S. They didn’t have a “let’s make the rich states even richer” spending plan back then, did they?]

Related:

• “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth” (nytimes) on how New Yorkers will pay themselves $400/hour when they do get hold of tax dollars harvested in Alabama and Kentucky
• Oresund Bridge (5-mile suspension bridge and 2.5-mile tunnel connecting Sweden and Denmark, built essentially without taxpayer funds for roughly 1/10th the cost of this proposed NJ/NY link (a 2.5-mile tunnel))

Stellar evolution:

1. protostar
2. main sequence
3. red giant
4. white dwarf

I’m wondering if it would be fair to say that cosmologist Lawrence Krauss is transitioning from red giant to white dwarf.

Human energy output these days can be measured by Twitter. Let’s have a look at Professor Krauss’s feed:

May 10, 2014: I will echo Michelle Obama: Bring back our girls! And add: bring back our girls everywhere from the shackles of religious tyranny.

Aug 30, 2014: To Progressive Atheists in Melbourne and Radical Women. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of your protest event.

October 2, 2014: Texas continues its attack on Women.. especially poor women. Will it never end?

Nov 1, 2016: Here goes fuel for the hate mongers. I am pleased to support Hillary Clinton for President. She is very capable & will be a fine President. [i.e., the state government employee supports the candidate who promises to expand government]

Nov 1, 2016: Women’s rights, and climate change. Two reasons Trump needs to lose, and hopefully Democrats gain senate majority.

April 14, 2017: Trump proves that beyond grabbing them, he doesn’t care about women’s health and welfare. No big surprise.

May 28, 2017: Even without the pussy grabbing one look at this and you know this is the kind of creep you would want your daughter to stay away from.

June 1, 2017: All bad. Not content to attack the environment, the administration joins religious fanatics to attack women’s rights

As he was a media darling during the above output, I think it is fair to say that this was the professor’s red giant phase. What about after a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and can no longer support itself against the weight of its outer shell? Then it will collapse catastrophically, a victim of its own brilliance.

“He Became A Celebrity For Putting Science Before God. Now Lawrence Krauss Faces Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct.” suggests that is it now white dwarf stage:

Lawrence Krauss is a famous atheist and liberal crusader — and, in certain whisper networks, a well-known problem. With women coming forward alleging sexual harassment, will his “skeptic” fanbase believe the evidence?

“I didn’t care if he flirted with me, I just wanted to be around somebody important, and I also wanted to get a job in this field,” [Melody] Hensley told BuzzFeed News. “I thought I could handle myself.”

he asked her to come up to his room while he wrapped up some work …

When he pulled out a condom, Hensley said, she got out from under him, said “I have to go,” and rushed out of the room.

Krauss offers the scientific method — constantly questioning, testing hypotheses, demanding evidence — as the basis of morality and the answer to societal injustices. Last year, at a Q&A event to promote his latest book, the conversation came around to the dearth of women and minorities in science. “Science itself overcomes misogyny and prejudice and bias,” Krauss said. “It’s built in.”

How does the scientific method work when it comes to evaluating private sexual activity?

Krauss’s reputation took a hit in April 2011, after he publicly defended Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier who was convicted of soliciting prostitution from an underage girl and spent 13 months in a Florida jail.

Epstein was one of the Origins Project’s major donors. But Krauss told the Daily Beast his support of the financier was based purely on the facts: “As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I’ve never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people.”

Some scientists do not respect Hawaiian culture:

In April 2016, an Origins staffer angrily posted on Facebook about how Krauss “suggested that I should dress up like a hula girl while advertising for an event.”

Skeptics have become skeptical of skepticism:

“I’ve just become so disappointed and disillusioned with a group of people who I thought at one point were exemplars of clear thinking, of openness to new evidence, and maybe most importantly, being curious,” philosopher Phil Torres told BuzzFeed News. “This movement has tragically failed to live up to its own very high moral and epistemic standards.”

Certainly this is an astrophysics lesson for our time!

[Update:  “Lawrence Krauss banned from Arizona State University campus following misconduct allegations”, which notes “ASU stated that the university had not received any complaints from ASU students, faculty or staff about Krauss.”]

Before New Yorker discovered a surefire path to profitability in continuously reminding readers how much smarter they are than Republicans, the magazine had space for some interesting articles. Back in 1988, for example, they published a series of long articles by John McPhee titled “The Control of Nature”. Given the latest fires then flooding/mudslides in California, a good place to start is “Los Angeles against the Mountains-I”. Here’s an excerpt explaining how the fire blocks subsequent rain from being absorbed:

In the course of a conflagration, chaparral soil, which is not much for soaking up water in the first place, experiences a chemical change and, a little below its surface, becomes waterproof.

In the slow progression of normal decay, chaparral litter seems to give up to the soil what have been vaguely described as “waxlike complexes of long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons.” These waxy substances are what make unburned chaparral soil somewhat resistant to water, or “slightly nonwettable,” as Wells and his colleagues are wont to describe it. When the wildfires burn, and temperatures at the surface of the ground are six or seven hundred centigrade degrees, the soil is so effective as an insulator that the temperature one centimetre below the surface may not be hot enough to boil water. The heavy waxlike substances vaporize at the surface and recondense in the cooler temperatures below. Acting like oil, they coat soil particles and establish the hydrophobic layer—one to six centimetres down.

In the first rains after a fire, water quickly saturates the thin permeable layer, and liquefied soil drips downhill like runs of excess paint. These miniature debris flows stripe the mountainsides with miniature streambeds—countless scarlike rills that are soon the predominant characteristic of the burned terrain. As more rain comes, each rill is going to deliver a little more debris to the accumulating load in the canyon below. But, more to the point, each rill—its natural levees framing its impermeable bed—will increase the speed of the surface water. As rain sheds off a mountainside like water off a tin roof, the rill network, as it is called, may actually cube the speed, and therefore the power, of the runoff. The transport capacity of the watershed—how much bulk it can move—may increase a thousandfold. The rill network is prepared to deliver water with enough force and volume to mobilize the deposits lying in the canyons below.

More:

• the complete Control of Nature series
• book version of the same material

[Let’s compare this 1988 piece, just as interesting 30 years later, to what they’ve  published lately:

• an article on Oprah Winfrey maybe running for President
• “What the Salvadorans Being Kicked Out by Trump Face Back Home”: “Trump’s revocation of temporary protected status threatens to send two hundred thousand people back to one of the most dangerous countries in the world.” (statistically safer than New Orleans and roughly 2X the murder rate of Washington, D.C. according to citylab.com)
• “Under Trump, a Hard Test for Howard University”: “Trump’s nomination of DeVos, a billionaire businesswoman whom Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, called the “least qualified nominee in a historically unqualified Cabinet,” was seen as another affront.”
• “The Increasing Unfitness of Donald Trump”: “Chaotic, corrupt, incurious, infantile, grandiose, and obsessed with gaudy real estate, Donald Trump is of a Neronic temperament. … there is little doubt about who Donald Trump is, the harm he has done already, and the greater harm he threatens. He is unfit to hold any public office, much less the highest in the land.” (maybe the smarter choice for American voters was Hillary Clinton?)

Who will want to read the above in 2048?]

 

It is a fun/interesting day for Americans whenever Silicon Valley icons Ellen Pao or James Damore are in the news. We can celebrate today because Mr. Damore, the Google Heretic, is back.

In a previous post, I summarized a Hillary-voting anti-development friend’s position with

1) immigration into a nation of 325 million is good and needs to be supported with passionate political effort

2) immigration into a town of 13,444 is bad and needs to be fought with passionate political effort

Maybe he can get hired at Google, based on “James Damore sues Google, alleging intolerance of white male conservatives” (Guardian):

The suit also alleges that Google maintains a “secret” blacklist of conservative authors who are banned from being on campus. Curtis Yarvin, a “neoreactionary” who blogs under the name Mencius Moldbug, was allegedly removed from the campus by security after being invited to lunch. The plaintiffs subsequently learned, it is claimed in the suit, that Alex Jones, the InfoWars conspiracy theorist, and Theodore Beale, an “alt-right” blogger known as VoxDay, were also banned from the campus.

The suit will likely reignite the culture wars that have swirled around the tech industry since the election of Donald Trump. Many liberals within the tech industry have pressured their employers to take a stand against Trump policies, such as the Muslim travel ban, and companies have struggled to decide the extent to which they will allow the resurgent movement of white nationalists to use their platforms to organize.

So permanent immigration of folks from countries where a desire to wage jihad is common (as estimated by Americans who don’t speak the language and don’t know anything about the culture!) is good. But lunchtime immigration of people who might offend the snowflake brogrammers is bad.

[Separately, I’m not sure how any Trump policy can be characterized by a neutral journalist as a “Muslim travel ban.” Countries with the largest Muslim populations, such as Indonesia and Pakistan, were not on the list, were they? Even if the ban had been implemented as proposed, approximately 1.7 billion Muslims would have been exempt from it.]

From a legal angle, I don’t see how this can be a class action lawsuit. Can there be more than a handful of Google employees who will admit to not supporting Hillary Clinton? And in a nation that lacks coherent political ideologies or any significant number of politicians who support an ideology (rather than ad hoc methods of getting reelected), what method could be used to identify a person as “conservative”? If gender is fluid, how could “males” be identified to join the class? What happens if they switch their gender IDs over the years of litigation? And finally what does it mean to be definitively “white”?

Readers: What’s your favorite part of this new chapter in the Google Heretic Saga?

A lot of my Facebook friends are university professors. As such they get, as part of their compensation, free tuition for their children (or, oftentimes, partial payment for tuition if they send their kids to other colleges). Some of them have graduate students, who get their fictitious tuition paid when on research or teaching assistantships.

All of these folks publicly supported Hillary Clinton prior to the election, denounced the Trumpenfuhrer’s hints about shrinking the government’s role in our society, and generally advocate for higher tax rates so as to enable the government to fulfill all of our collective dreams.

How are they reacting to the latest proposed tax law changes? With desperate lobbying efforts to preserve their own tax exemptions. Examples:

To my California friends and family, especially those who have children to educate: Republican representatives in these CA districts near you have BIG influence over *which version* of the tax bill—including whether it taxes things like tuition remission, etc.—eventually gets approved. It’s not an exaggeration to say the future of American higher education is at stake.

A crucial decision remains to be made between the House and Senate versions of the GOP tax bill. So here’s a plea to everyone who cares about the future of American universities: not only must we CALL OUR REPS, we must urge our friends and family to do so as well! I’m calling not just my own reps and senators but others’ too, identifying myself as a professor and trying to convey my sense of urgency about this bill.

[mass email to faculty at University of Chicago] Doubtless all of you are thinking about the potential effects of the Republican tax bill, which appears bent on directly attacking higher and lower education in the United States. …  The bill passed by the Senate *does not* include the grad student tuition waiver tax proposed by the House bill. …

For students like Mollie Marr, pursuing her M.D. and her Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience in the OHSU School of Medicine, losing the tax waiver could mean dropping out of OHSU. Paying the estimated tax on top of her non-deferrable undergraduate student loans would leave her about $500 a month to live on. … students, staff and faculty to share their personal stories and perspectives about the impact of losing this tax waiver … Call and email your U.S. representatives and senators.  [official OHSU news release]

If universities actually are delivering something of value to professors’ children via tuition waivers, shouldn’t these good folks want to pay tax on that value? A core principle of U.S. income tax is that you pay tax on the fair market value of stuff that you receive in exchange for work. Also, if universities are delivering something of value to graduate students in exchange for work, why should a Walmart cashier have to work extra hours to make up for the tax not collected? (see Ugliest part of the Republican tax plan: What if universities were forced to calculate the value of a graduate education? for an exploration of what the imputed value of this tuition waiver should be, though)

These same folks have spent years on Facebook arguing for the government to collect more in taxes. Now they’ve found a tax that they don’t like!

Related:

• “No, The House Tax Bill Won’t Destroy Graduate Education” (Forbes) — it seems that universities can reclassify tuition waivers as “scholarships”

“The Self-Styled Martyr of Silicon Valley: The odd tale of Ellen Pao” (Commentary) is a review of Ellen Pao’s Reset book (see Ellen Pao writes something kind of interesting). The review summarizes the facts:

Pao is a former corporate attorney and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who went to work for the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins and then, in 2012, filed a $16 million gender-discrimination lawsuit against it. She alleged workplace retaliation by a partner at the firm with whom she had a brief affair. Then she alleged that she was fired in retaliation for the lawsuit. Potential damages could have run as high as $144 million.

Is it true that she was an “entrepreneur”? Wikipedia says that she worked for a couple of established companies, such as BEA Systems, prior to joining Kleiner Perkins. Is any non-government job in the U.S. now considered “entrepreneurship”? [And remember that she could have made a lot more than $144 million without risking an unfavorable jury verdict; see Litigious Minds Think Alike: Divorce litigators react to the Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins lawsuit]

Apparently Pao is working her kid pretty hard for the book, having the sad little nine-year-old wonder about the gender balance of a “coding camp.” (Did this happen organically? I’ve seen a lot of gender-unbalanced groups of children and never heard one comment on the gender balance.)

We learn that Pao is a good example of The Son Also Rises and also regression to the mean. Her parents both have engineering PhDs; Pao earned a bachelor’s in engineering and then a law degree.

Based on my experience as a software expert witness, Pao’s description of big law firm life isn’t recognizable:

Pao goes to work for Cravath, Swaine & Moore, … one male partner would always lose his copy of the documents they were working on and would have to look over the shoulder of one of his female underlings. She saw him one day staring down the shirt of one of her female colleagues …. In another instance, “a senior partner would… plant himself just outside the doorway of my colleague’s office, licking an ice cream cone while staring at her.”

Perhaps due to the fact that law firms bill by the hour, I’ve never seen one lawyer simply stand in a hallway for any reason.

The reviewer is as skeptical as the jury regarding Pao’s stated reasons for her failure to make senior partner at Kleiner:

This is all perfectly believable [including the senior partner putting on a display of idleness for everyone else at Cravath to see?], but the problem is that things went downhill for Pao when she started sleeping with one of the other partners—one Ajit Nazre, who was married and had children. … how old do you have to be before you recognize yourself as a walking cliché? Sleeping with a married guy at the office who promises to leave his wife for you?

Apparently estimating the probability of your married sex partner suing his or her spouse is not a subject taught at Princeton or Harvard!

Pao’s conversion (as seen in Bruno) of Buddy Fletcher from homosexual to heterosexual is touched on only lightly in the review: “Fletcher had relationships with men before he married Pao.” This review is the first place that I’ve seen a description of Mr. Fletcher blazing a trail recently followed by some Hollywood celebrities:

It’s no surprise that Pao’s book doesn’t get into the fact that Fletcher himself has been accused of sexual harassment and discrimination by employees. In 2003, Fletcher was sued by a man he’d hired to manage his home in Connecticut. The man alleged that Fletcher made sexual advances toward him. A few years later, Fletcher was sued by another property manager, who claimed he had been fired after refusing Fletcher’s sexual advances. Both men reached confidential settlements with Fletcher.

Who else loves Ellen Pao as much as I do? “The case did make Pao a feminist talking point for a time. She notes that she earned praise from Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sandberg for her brave stance.”

In some ways the most interesting part of the review is that proof by repetition succeeds. The author of the review is Naomi Schaefer Riley. Her Wikipedia page indicates no technical training and no experience ever working for a tech firm or even living in a part of the country with a significant tech industry presence. But she feels comfortable talking about the bad stuff that happens in Silicon Valley:

For all her faults, Pao is not wrong about the “brogrammer” atmosphere at these companies. … At many Silicon Valley firms, men really do act like they are in a college dorm. Their conversations and behavior are completely inappropriate for work,

How does Ms. Riley know that the 35-year-old programmers vesting-in-peace at Google are partying like fraternity brothers? What is the evidence that the typical Silicon Valley firm includes “conversations and behavior” that are more “inappropriate” than what might occur in a car dealership or an airline crew lounge?

Related:

• Global douchebag circuit: Aspen Institute, Ellen Pao, and Buddy Fletcher
• Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins wrap-up