Via the Wall Street Journal: Employers are starting to experiment with using Second Life to conduct job interviews. Candidates can create avatars and set up meetings at virtual job fairs in which they “communicate with executives of prospective employers as though they were instant-messaging.”

Popular Science has released its annual “Ten Worst Jobs in Science” list, topped by Hazmat Diver, described as follows: “They swim in sewage. Enough said.” Other winners include Garbologist, Elephant Vasectomist and Oceanographer (”Nothing but bad news, day in and day out”). Levitt’s father’s “Intestinal Gas Researcher” didn’t make the cut this year, though the No. 8 ranked “Olympic Drug Tester” overlaps with “Sports Doping Doctor” in the British Medical Journal’s list of “Worst Jobs for a Doctor.”

The D.C.-area taco chain California Tortilla offered a promotional discount that we find especially admirable, given our love of the sport: any customer who beats the cashier in a game of Rock Paper Scissors receives $1 off an entree. (Hat tip: DCist.com)

John Steele Gordon writes great historical non-fiction; his last book was Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power. Among many other things, he discusses how it was the Erie Canal that really turned New York City into the center of American capitalism, bringing crops and goods from the Midwest to be shipped to Europe and elsewhere.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Gordon reviewed a book on another fascinating economic-history subject: the business of whaling. If you drive around coastal New England and see all the whaling captains’ mansions, you get a reminder that whaling was once very big business; otherwise, it’s easy to forget. At the time, Gordon writes, whales “were cornucopias of useful products,” producing oil for heating, lighting, and lubricants, while other parts were used to make dyes, clothing parts, and household and farm supplies. The whale was our oil patch, factory, and forest rolled into one. But … talk about a depletable resource!

The book, Leviathan by Eric Jay Dolin, sounds very good. It describes how the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 disrupted American whaling, which eventually came roaring back and ultimately dominated the global industry:

In 1846, of the 900 whaling ships in operation around the world, 735 of them had sailed from the U.S. That was one-fifth of the country’s merchant tonnage. Whaling employed 70,000 people and in 1853, its best year, hauled in 8,000 whales that produced 103,000 barrels of sperm oil, 260,000 barrels of whale oil and 5.7 million pounds of baleen.

Do you think that, 150 years from now, people will be reading this kind of history book about the oil industry?

And: will people still be writing histories at all?

Reporters have been abuzz recently over the release of a document revealing that, in 1994, the U.S. military asked for $7.5 million to develop a bomb filled with aphrodisiac chemicals intended to cause “homosexual behavior” that would “affect discipline and morale in enemy units.” Now, Jon Ronson of the U.K. Guardian writes of another leaked Air Force report containing additional ideas for “non-lethal” technological weapons. He describes them as follows:

There’s the “low-frequency infrasound” which “easily penetrates most buildings and vehicles” and creates “nausea, loss of bowel control, disorientation, vomiting, potential internal organ damage and death.”… There’s the race-specific stink bomb and the chameleon camouflage suit, both of which have apparently never got off the ground because nobody can work out how to invent them, and a special pheromone that “can be used to mark target individuals and then release bees to attack them.”

Then there’s the prophet hologram — “the projection of the image of an ancient god over an enemy capitol whose public communications have been seized and used against it in a massive psychological operation.”

Any other ideas out there for equally creative “non-lethal” battle techniques?

There is a Shell station in San Francisco, at Sixth and Harrison, that was recently charging $4.33 a gallon for regular gas and $4.43 for premium. Across the street is a Chevron station that charges about 70 cents less per gallon. Can you guess why? I seriously doubt it.

You might think it has something to do with Shell vs. Chevron policy or pricing, in which case you’d be a little bit right, but not really. You might think that the Shell station offers something that the Chevron station and others don’t, in which case you’d be wrong. You’d also be wrong if you guessed that the Shell station has huge insurance costs, e.g., or if you guessed pretty much anything else along those lines.

The reason the Shell station charges so much is because its owner, Bob Oyster, got into a feud with Shell over the price of gas and the rent of the gas station. So he decided to jack up the price of his gas to get back at the company. “I got fed up,'’ Oyster told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It makes a statement, and I guess when people see that price they also see the Shell sign right next to it.'’

Oyster says that Shell and other big companies are squeezing service-station owners way too hard, and he plans to shut down his station soon anyway. “I’m going out with a bang,'’ he said. “And I don’t care if I don’t pump a gallon on the last day.'’

My guess is that he won’t pump a single gallon on that last day — unless he suddenly changes tactics, puts up a big sign that says “Oyster Gas,” and drops his price to $2.

(Hat tip: Matthew Greber.)

My friend and co-author Roland Fryer, an assistant professor at Harvard, has just been promoted. Usually, for an academic, that would mean getting tenure. For Roland, it is a little different. He’s been named a CEO — not Chief Executive Officer, but rather Chief Equality Officer for the New York Public Schools system. You can read about it in this New York Times column.

You have to admire Roland. Most academics at his stage in their career stay up at night worrying about what journals will publish their papers and what they will land if they get denied tenure. Roland, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what he can do to change the world for the better.

June 21 is Recess At Work Day, described on its Web site as “your day to relive your youth, create team spirit, increase employee morale and just have some fun.” Otherwise known as Drop in Productivity Day.