Death Penalty:

Legislators in New Jersey have recommended that the death penalty be removed from the books in that state. Interestingly, no one has been executed in New Jersey since 1963, and only a handful of prisoners are currently on death row.

According to The New York Times, the "report found 'no compelling evidence' that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it 'is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency.'"


A Revolution inside Google:

Google, the folks that revolutionized Web search by pushing the stuff they wanted to push at you instead of what might be most useful to you—they shoved advertising down our throats—is going through their own revolution in the way they hire employees.

Traditionally(odd word choice for such a corporation), Google has focused on hiring PhD.s with 4.0 GPAs and perfect SAT scores, and they've had a lot of luck with that, but not wanting to sit on their laurels, they're trying to come up with a new algorithm to make use of in their hiring procedures. Not everyone, it turns out, fits in perfectly who scores perfectly on tests.

The New York Times reports Google vice president Laszlo Bock as saying, “More and more in the time I’ve been here, we hire people based on experience as a proxy for what they can accomplish. Last week we hired six people who had below a 3.0 G.P.A.”