The Unused Option

From You’ll Never Be Alone , an article on touring retirement communities:

Meanwhile, the job of asking about construction, bylaws, monthly fees, and whether two people who never played golf would still be paying for the upkeep on a championship course fell to me. Only once did I come up with a question that had apparently never been asked. Most of the residences, no matter how small, had rooms with glass doors referred to as libraries. When I asked Cyndi or Tara [the young perky real estate agents] whether built-in bookshelves were available as an option, she seemed utterly baffled. “Why,” she wondered aloud, “would you want bookshelves in the library?”

An easy target, but still amusing. And the article itself is interesting.

Another interesting article from the same publication, the City Journal : A Media Welfare State? , a review of a new book advocating government subsidy of newspapers and related enterprises, like journalism schools. It is precisely as bad an idea as it sounds.