Categories
Business

Riddles have no place in job interviews

Indeed.

I have been presented with these riddles, even after I was a best-selling author. The last time it happened to (years ago), I told the interviewer it was a ridiculous question I refused to answer. However, I heard a story last night of what must be the worst interview hazing I’ve heard about. For an employee being interviewed for a promotion, the company arranged for a three-way conference call. By design, one of the attendees did not call into meeting. The test was to see if the employee being interviewed would speak poorly of the jerk who was bailing on an important meeting with no notice.

I wonder if these pranksters understand they’ve made a clear invitation to dishonesty at the crucial beginning of a working relationship.

assertTrue( ): Riddles have no place in job interviews

I’ve seen “tech recruitment” from both sides of the desk. I have been a job applicant, and I have been a hiring manager. Neither role is pretty.

One of the unprettier sides of the hiring process in R&D is the on-site-interview stage, when the hiring manager (or one of his peers) gets to ask the applicant highly technical domain-knowledge questions. This can be done skillfully or poorly. It gets ugly fast when it becomes a hazing ritual based on riddle-solving.

Categories
Science

Your brain imagines everyone nude

Interesting effect.

The Lurking Pornographer: Why Your Brain Turns Bubbles Into Nude Bodies

There is a pornographer lurking in some corner of your mind. He peeks out from behind the curtains of your consciousness without warning, and almost never at an acceptable time.

The lurking pornographer in your brain is ever vigilant, looking for patterns, for signs of nudity, and sometimes generating them out of nowhere. He is exceedingly good at what he does, and isn’t afraid to prove his power over your perception. Just like that, he can take a picture of Daniel Craig in a bathing suit and turn it obscene.

Categories
News

Paleo Pancakes

I made these last weekend. They passed the Tre & Henry test. I used real milk instead of coconut milk. I also made the mix in a blender, which impressed Vicky. It made pouring into the pan very easy. They really are almost exactly like regular, wheat-based pancakes with only a tiny hint of banana and egg.

Easy Peasy Pancakes | Paleo Parents

I have tried for years now to get a handle on making grain-free pancakes. It’s a lot harder than it looks, truly, and no recipe has ever come out like regular wheat ones. Often you’ll find them too thick or too thin, too slow to cook or too easy to burn. Nothing is perfect like the original and that’s a shame.

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Categories
News Philosophy

Penn Jillette on religion and bullshit

These are unrelated except they are Penn, speaking the truth as usual.

 

Atheism Should End Religion, Not Replace It – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It’s the absence of religion, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Religion is not morality. Theists ask me, “If there’s no god, what would stop me from raping and killing everyone I want to.” My answer is always: “I, myself, have raped and killed everyone I want to … and the number for both is zero.” Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don’t need religion.

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Categories
Programming

Is Facebook saying I don’t care?

Today, FB says to me “Notifications from unnamed person are now off because you haven’t used them recently.” (I’m keeping the name private in case it might hurt this person’s feelings.)

First of all, the grammar of that sentence suggests I use my friends. That’s not very nice of Facebook to suggest. I think they mean that it’s been some some since I clicked on a notification item to read the whole story. This might be because I don’t care so much about this person any more. Or it might be that they’ve been writing boring status updates recently. Or it might be that everything I need to know is there in the notification.

What is Facebook trying to do, anyway? Optimize my notification list by weeding out people? Make me feel bad that I’m not engaging with this person enough? If I had the choice, I’d rather this happen only if I specifically clicked a button. I don’t like how they did it and then gave me a link to re-activate the person.

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