From The New Yorker, did Texas execute an innocent man? David Grann investigates. A review of When Law Fails: Making Sense of Miscarriages of Justice. A review of The Problem of Punishment by David Boonin. From City Journal, Heather Mac Donald descends into the nation’s most tumultuous penal institutions, where modern order-maintenance techniques are bringing discipline. Bringing America's real criminals to justice: Two influential voices in the debate over California prison populations speak up on why this country needs more than just health-care reform. An article on the rampant growth of life without parole. Killer@Craigslist: The “Craigslist Murder” was a crime made possible by the Internet, but it is still a very human mystery, with dark sexual overtones and surprising contradictions. The Boy Who Heard Too Much: He was a 14-year-old blind kid, angry and alone; then he discovered that he possessed a strange and fearsome superpower — one that put him in the cross hairs of the FBI. Scott McLemee looks for career advice reviewing Diego Gambetta's Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (and the first chapter). Yellowed skulls, medieval torture devices, bloody gloves, newspaper depictions of murder, death masks, rusty axes — the Kriminalmuseum in Vienna, Austria, is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

From The New York Times, here's some college advice, from people who have been there awhile, including Harold Bloom, James MacGregor Burns, Stanley Fish, Nancy Hopkins, Martha Nussbaum, Steven Weinberg, and Garry Wills. From The Washington Monthly, here's their annual College Guide, including a different kind of college ranking, an article on how America’s mania for college rankings went global; what happened when billionaire pizza mogul Tom Monaghan tried to build an elite Catholic law school; and a look at how the next generation of online education could be great for students — and catastrophic for universities. The Write Stuff: The world’s most prestigious universities have begun posting entire curricula on the Web for free — but how much can you really learn with a DIY online education? Far from being deceptive, alien and wasteful, branding is essential for telling the world what a university stands for and values (and more). Drew Giplin Faust on the university’s crisis of purpose: How the world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. From Fast Company, a look at how Web-savvy edupunks are transforming American higher education. From Wired, a special section on gadgets for school.

A review of Alcohol Today: Abstinence in an Age of Indulgence by Peter Lumpkins. Melanie Rehak on Red Wine and Blue: Americans have a long and contradictory history of imbibing and proscribing. Moonshine returns: The fabled liquor of outlaws and gangsters is making a comeback with craft distillers — too bad it's still illegal. A review of The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire by Linda Himelstein. Cheers: Robert Messenger on the cocktail renaissance. The natural habitat of the Picon Punch — among Basque shepherds, in the wilds of California — is its great appeal. Julian Baggini takes on his toughest assignment yet — drinking wine with Barry C Smith and Tim Crane. Veddy Unfortunate: How the greatest wine hoax ever has diminished a brilliant British oenophile. A review of Alice Feiring’s The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization. Amber Ale: An article on brewing beer from 45-million-year-old yeast. Breaking up Big Beer: Should Obama go after the bloated brewers? Why does Coke from a glass bottle taste different? A review of Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters by Francis Chapelle. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

From CACM, the status of the P versus NP problem: It's one of the fundamental mathematical problems of our time, and its importance grows with the rise of powerful computers. A review of Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics by Jeremy Gray (and more). A review of Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith by Daniel J. Cohen and Is God A Mathematician? by Mario Livio. From Seed, here are photographs and excerpts from Mathematicians: An Outer View of the Inner World by Mariana Cook. Figured out: We don’t understand the math, but can we get the mathematicians? An interview with Steven Strogatz, author of The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life while Corresponding about Math. Did a 16-year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden crack a maths puzzle that had stumped experts for more than 300 years? Unless the parents of all the mathematically-gifted girls in the country are enrolling their kids in the same schools, the evidence suggests that a lot of female talent is just not being tapped. What's luck got to do with it?: An article on the math of gambling. Chris Holloway is encouraging fellow beer drinkers to use math to get their money’s worth. Here are three new ways math can help you stay awake, clear clogged drains, and solve ancient mysteries. An article on the mysterious equilibrium of zombies and other things mathematicians see at the movies.