Here are the links we’ve been reading over the past couple of days.

And if I may make one editorial comment:

So let me get this straight, Goldman and Morgan were essentially taking bets from both sides of the housing boom, and making money on the difference based on the rates on each side that they themselves arranged?

Look, I’m not that smart, but I know a bookie when I see one. -P13

I need to give a tip-o-the-hat to my friend Jennifer who lives in Astoria for the first link below.  

• Locals and linguists argue that notorious Queens accent is fading away – This one hits pretty close to home for me, as my mom grew up in Queens and I have a large extended family from there. I’ll never forget walking into an office in the City one day and hearing a voice that I swore was my late great-aunt. It turns out the secretary there grew up in her neighborhood. There’s a Queens accent, believe me.
• SUNY New Paltz looks to the sky – One of our closest friends now runs her own telescope observatory. Here’s a classic quote: “That’s why the university brought in a person with a Ph.D. in astronomy. I’m expected, and have been trained, to build a telescope.” Go Amy!
• Conservative Admits: Tax Cuts Don’t Pay For Themselves. – As the author says, refreshing not so much for what it says, but because a conservative is saying it. Is there hope for Reality-Based World after all?
• A drug raid goes viral – War on Drugs FAIL. Apparently, it’s standard operating procedure in a mistaken drug raid for the police to shoot your dogs, and possibly other family members, then to lie about it. Radley Balko has been doing the heartbreaking but necessary work of exposing this.
• Color Survey Results – xkcd ran a color survey to see if there were gender differences in how people name colors. The results are both interesting and hilarious. Read the whole post down to the part with “color names most disproportionately popular among men.”
• Stuff White People Do: Blame Their Crimes on Phantom People of Color. A police officer in Philly shot himself in the shoulder and said a black guy shot him. Yeah.