Sentential Links #216

Two hundred sixteen of these posts.

Here's a weird factoid from my life: 216 is the only room number I remember from my high school building. For years it was a really big room that was only used for study halls, but around my junior year they needed another classroom or two so they put up a wall in the middle of Room 216, turning it into 216 and 217. I have no idea why that's stuck in my head all these years, but I remember spending time being bored in Study Hall 216.

Anyway, the linkage for the week!

:: Certainly our chest freezers are full of meat and it’s difficult to open the refrigerator without beets or carrots or cabbage rolling out and onto the floor, and there’s not always room on the counter due to the cantaloupe or tomatoes but there’s more to life than meat, fruits and vegetables. There’s cheese for one thing. Bread for another. And, of course, sweets. And that’s where bartering comes in. It’s one of my favorite things about going to market.

:: I recognize the library as the remedy to all of life’s problems. (This has nothing to do with Roger's post, actually, but let me reiterate my position that one sure way to mark yourself as an idiot is to say something along the lines of "Since we have Amazon.com now, we don't really need libraries anymore.")

:: Politics in a democracy isn’t a blood sport. We don’t kill members of the other side or intimidate them with violence. But it’s not a parlor game either. It’s serious stuff, and it deserves to be taken seriously. Republicans do a good job of that, and their approach to process “hypocrisy” merely reflects the fact that they have a reasonable sense of priorities. (I'm not sure I agree with Matt Yglesias's point here, but it's interesting to consider. I do think that Democrats would find their lives a lot easier, policy-wise, if they'd get over their somewhat irrational fear of what will happen if they start using process to beat Republicans over the head and get their work done.)

:: It is shameful, of course. Richest country in the history of the word, but don't let anybody tell you we are generous.

:: Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

:: "Anyone who thinks they're ready to be a parent ought to try living with three cats first." (Done, and done.)

:: Are there too many blond female sidekicks?

All for this week. More next week!