Crazy Jane:

Talking about the Weather? Starting slow, I guess.

So, after 4 years of relatively warm winters in Prague, we're finally getting a taste of good, proper cold around here. The windows in our flat are all in the slanting ceiling, and we haven't been able to see out of them for weeks for all the snow. We got about 30 cm earlier this month, and it's been so cold that most of it stayed on the ground, despite a couple of warmer days that served only to turn it from powdery fluff to thick, life-threateningly slick ice. Tonight, we expect a low of -25C, a "frostbite alert" and this week, should get something like 15 more cm of snow. And, you know... it's not January when the weather is coldest around here, it's February. 

We have to be bundled up to the eyeballs to venture out, lately, and when we do, it hurts our eyeballs. 

All this sounds like complaining, I know -- but it isn't. The city is lovely in snow, and cold weather is just an excuse to stay in and bake! 

Here's me ready to brave the outdoors.

 

Back to Normal... Now, let's see if I can't revive this thing

Well! Someone hijacked my blog for a bit there, but things are back to normal, I think. How does this kind of nonsense happen? And, why did it take a full working week for the good folks at Typepad to work this out? 

Anyway, maybe it's time to get ye olde blog back up and running? And, perhaps on topics other than the tawdry political nonsense back home? Let's see what happens.

Links Again

The Bronchitis thing is mostly over. I'm still home on doctor's orders, taking codeine tablets to control the coughing and have injured a rib somehow, but overall I feel a lot better, and will be back in action as a teacher of English by Wednesday. 

During my nearly two weeks of house arrest, I've had time to read great big fat loads of analysis of the financial crisis, and have a few links which will no doubt be totally riveting to my three readers. The Atlantic has this article, in which a former stock analyst pretty convincingly argues that in the free market, where everyone acts rationally in his own interest, bubbles like the recently burst real estate market are bound to form. He also has a fairly cogent take on why we never learn from them. Key point? There's no one to reasonably scapegoat. Ross Douthat offers qualified agreement, but Matt Yglesias doesn't buy it.

Also, this month's Cato Unbound has a round table of four prominent economists with four very different points of view on what happened to touch off the crisis, and it makes for interesting, if slightly laborious reading, and promises in future to become even more interesting as they all start responding to one another.

Finally, a couple of conspiracy theories: please enjoy this article, reporting on the fact that some people are convinced that Barack Obama's election is the "biggest hoax in the history of our country" because guess what?! Obama isn't even and AMERICAN CITIZEN!!!! The article's from politico, but it reads like an article from The Onion. And, there's always the terrifying spectre of the Fairness Doctrine. Even George F. Will saw fit to waste column space on this non-starter, apparently. However, no one but The Embattled Right has any interest in it whatsoever, if you read this recent piece on The New Republic. As Yglesias puts it, "I’ve never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact."

Yes. This is a boring politics blog. 

I'll just end with a brief conversation I had with my 16-year-old son the other day while chatting it up on video skype:

Him, groggy and deadpan, having just woken up: Hi Mama.
Me: Geez! Your hair looks like a MOP!
Him, totally bershon, totally over me: Well, YEAH. I had HAIRSPRAY in it!

Aww yeah.