Google doesn’t just take anyone’s word for it that wheels should be round; they try every other possible shape first.

On the hiring side, we found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don't predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.

Instead, what works well are structured behavioral interviews, where you have a consistent rubric for how you assess people, rather than having each interviewer just make stuff up.

Along the way, though, they did discover a few things that many corporate HR folks still don’t accept:

One of the things we've seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.'s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless -- no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there's a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.'s and test scores, but we don't anymore, unless you're just a few years out of school. We found that they don't predict anything.

What's interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who've never gone to college.

Thursday I had my car at the dealer’s for a slightly-belated 60,000 mile major service, and while they were at it, they replaced the wheel bearings on the right rear tire, which had been making some noise. All under warranty, no big deal. I drove back to the office, parked on the side of the building, and all was well.

Saturday morning, while waiting for our instructor to show up at the dojo, another student noticed the head of a 3-inch nail sticking out of the right rear tire. He figured vandalism, because it went in nice and straight, as if pounded with a hammer.

This morning, when I went out to the car, I happened to check the new tires, and found this:

Same tire, same kind of nail, pounded in nice and straight. Guess where I parked yesterday? Guess which side of the office building has no lights, no windows, and isn’t covered by our security cameras?

Grrrr.

In a bold choice, this young historical cosplayer has chosen to dress up as a gangster’s moll and terrorize a room full of innocent people with an automatic weapon.

(moved below the fold because I’m tired of looking at her…)

more...

A) Feinstein isn’t stupid.

B) Pushing for significant increases in gun control is likely to push the Senate into the hands of the Republicans in 2014.

C) She’s too old to run for President in 2016.

D) She’s a big Hillary supporter.

E) The media quite fawningly accused the nasty evil extremist Republicans of picking on poor little Hillary after she finally lied through her teeth testified about Benghazi.

Is it all just a game to make Hillary the “persecuted underdog” for 2016?

PS: I like the suggestion that the way the House can defeat any gun-control proposal is to attach a budget to it; Harry Reid will never let it come to a vote.

The global warming social engineers have been pretty successful at marginalizing anyone who dares to question their ever-changing definition of The End Of The World, so I think it’s only fair that we adopt their methods and refer to gun-control supporters as Civil Rights Denialists.

The fact that warmologers and gun-grabbers tend to flock together just makes it all the more appropriate.

On the current round of Democrat grandstanding, Walter Hudson says:

"The third little pig was the obstructionist in the family."

I was not killed on the way home tonight.

A pack of drunken assholes made the effort, though. They were doing about 25 MPH over the speed limit and apparently had no depth perception, or they wouldn’t have come so close to ramming me from behind on a clear stretch of highway.

…but I cast it anyway. To register my disapproval of the virulent hatred, bigotry, contempt, and racism that dominates modern politics, I voted against the Democrats again.

Also, Benghazi. Obama deserves to spend the rest of his life explaining why he was more interested in trying to keep his job than in doing it. The bodies weren’t even cold before he was back on the campaign trail, lying about what happened.

[Update: driving home tonight, it was so foggy that I couldn’t see the exit sign. #economymetaphor

Also, about the only nice thing I can say about the California election results is that Prop 37 seems to have been soundly defeated. This may be the only real sign of intelligent life in the state.]