When we talk about analytic versus intuitive decision making, neither is good or bad. What is bad is if you use either of them in an inappropriate ci… - Malcolm Gladwell

Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.

Everything we have learned in Outliers says that success follows a predictable course. It is not the brightest who succeed. If it were, Chris Langan would be up there with Einstein. Nor is success simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities — and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

lower. As the sociologist John Shelton Reed has written, “The homicides in which the South seems to specialize are those in which someone is being killed by someone he (or often she) knows, for reasons both killer and victim understand.” Reed adds: “The statistics show that the Southerner who can avoid arguments and adultery is as safe as any other American, and probably safer.” In the backcountry, violence wasn’t for economic gain. It was personal. You fought over your honor. Many years ago, the southern newspaperman Hodding Carter told the story of how as a young man he served on a jury. As Reed describes it: The case before the jury involved an irascible gentleman who lived