From The New Yorker, how do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job? Malcolm Gladwell investigates (and more on Outliers); and team of brainiacs: Lauren Collins on a bad week for the Ivy League. From New York, short-seller Jim Chanos, whose hedge fund is up 50 percent, is having the time of his life; and more women are drinking, and the women who drink are drinking more, in some cases matching their male peers — this is the kind of equality nobody was fighting for; and who will bail out the publishers? How Random House is like General Motors. Fought over any good books lately? Book club trouble often has little to do with books. The Oddball Know-It-All: Paul Collins writes in praise of George Herter — mail-order genius, rustic self-help poet, All-American crank. How Detroit's lost clout in Washington may actually help the auto industry. From Wired, how a rogue geologist discovered a diamond trove in the Canadian Arctic; an article on digging for diamonds 24/7 under frozen Snap Lake, and a look at how DeBeers digs deep for diamonds. The Mathematical Tourist Ivars Peterson on improved pancake sorting, on Stooges statistics; a fractal in Bach's Cello Suite; and random walks to football rankings. The Numbers Guy writes in defense of the BCS computers. A look at what the rise of Southern football says about America.
