Carnivals!

For a long time, I thought that bank robberies — at least, the kind where someone with a sock over his head walks into a bank with a gun — were something that happened in the past. That nowadays, it’s done the Bernie Madoff way. Then I started seeing the occasional story on the local news about a local bank robbery. And now there’s this story:

Five Banks Are Robbed in Single Day in the City

The bank runs that regulators feared when they announced plans for an economic bailout in September brought to mind mobs of frantic customers swarming local banks, withdrawing all their deposits.

But that terminology took on a different meaning on Monday when banks across New York City were deluged by abrupt withdrawals of another kind: robberies. In what may be the latest sign of the harsh economic times, five banks in four boroughs were robbed on Monday, four of them within an hour and a half.

But if the robberies, in their frequency and timing, were startling, so too was their brazenness. Most of them occurred in heavily trafficked areas in broad daylight, including one that took place steps away from Lincoln Center in the middle of the afternoon.

Pointers to this fortnight’s blog carnivals:

• Skeptics’ Circle is off for the New Year holiday.
• Carnival of the Liberals #81.
• Carnival of Education #203.
• Carnival of Education #204.
• Carnival of Mathematics #46.
• Carnival of the Godless is delayed by a week for New Year.