Sunday Night Links!

* But trains loaded with millions of gallons of crude oil thread the thickly populated areas of some of the nation’s biggest cities. Including Milwaukee.

* Love Song for a Neoliberal University: StarbucksU.

* Corinthian Colleges Inc. shut down its remaining 28 for-profit career schools, ending classes for about 16,000 students, in the biggest collapse in U.S. higher education.

* I’m not anti-technology, or anti-innovation. And I think traditional colleges are deeply flawed. But I am very, very much against expanding the money-laundering side of our financial aid system. And that is the coal mine into which the ASU-EdX canary is being lowered.

* Surge Pricing for Your Entire Life.

* On the deep grammar of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

* Hell didn’t exist, so we built it: the Alcatraz of the Rockies.

* What It’s Like to Be a Girl in America’s Juvenile Justice System.

* Baltimore “has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.”

* The myth of police reform.

* A Residence With Locking Doors And A Working Toilet Is All That’s Needed To Justify A No-Knock Warrant.

* This is the toxic tribalism that repeats itself over and over throughout the West. Western victims are mourned and humanized, while victims of Western violence are invisible and thus dehumanized. Aside from being repugnant in its own right, this formula, by design, is deeply deceptive as propaganda: It creates the impression among Western populations that we are the victims but not the perpetrators of heinous violence, that terrorism is something done to us but that we never commit ourselves, that “primitive, radical and inhumanely violent” describes the enemy tribe but not our own.

* When George Packer gets bored, I get worried. It means he’s in the mood for war.

* Tom DeLay: People keep forgetting that God ‘wrote the Constitution.’

* Can We Preserve the Ferguson QuikTrip? Ferguson’s Fortune 500 Company.

* Entire Treasury Department Competing For Same Goldman Sachs Job Opening.

* Ex-NBA player who made $60 million explains what really happens to your money when you sign an 8-figure contract.

* 23 maps and charts on language.

* Before And After: Earthquake Destroys Kathmandu’s Centuries-Old Landmarks.

* How Well Does ‘Daredevil’ Handle Disability Issues?

* Tetris: The Unauthorized Biography.

* An Abandoned Island in The Middle of NYC.

* Native Hawaiians are fighting off an invasion of astronomers. The Heart of the Hawaiian Peoples’ Arguments Against the Telescope on Mauna Kea.

* And some local interest from the Decolonial Atlas: The Great Lakes in Ojibwe.

Links for Thanksgiving Eve

* The Southern Poverty Law Center has courted controversy in naming the Family Research Council a hate group. Good for them.

* Collapsing empire watch: China and Russia will no longer use the US dollar in bilateral trade.

* The Hammer has fallen.

* A new poll shows much of the opposition to the Affordable Care Act comes from people who wish to expand it. More here. Another poll shows Obama is still surprisingly popular right here in North Carolina—at least compared to leading Republicans.

* Can Sarah Palin with the 2012 Republican primary? Wealthy, College-Educated Republicans edition.

* It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant. A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder. Via Alex.

* Another round of accurate but misleading movie descriptions.

* And the Harry Potter series, from Hermione’s point of view.

People Are Unemployed Because They Want to Be

Well, it is the truth.

‘The End of the Monster Years’

Krugman: Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

Who mourns for Bobby the Jew?

The hierarchy of the Gambino organized crime family — from underboss to capo — was arrested Thursday along with scores of street soldiers and associates in what authorities called the biggest mafia takedown in a generation. More at the Smoking Gun, including a truly wonderful list of nicknames:

…the charged hoodlums include “The Greaseball,” “Bobby the Jew,” “Tommy Sneakers,” and “Mike the Electrician.” Some arrestees, like Gambino captain Leonard DiMaria, even have multiple nicknames. DiMaria, the indictment notes, is known alternately as “L,” “Lenny,” “The Conductor,” “Nike,” “Uncle,” and “Fatso.”

At right, John Gotti, beating Tom Delay at his own game.