New Year's eve in the office. It's very quiet. All the talk now is of cuts and redundancy packages - people hoping for the right one, others hoping to avoid it. It looks like my area will have to deliver a 65% reduction over 3 years, with much of that front loaded into the coming year. So we're all nervous.

The practical upshot is that it has become very difficult to actually do anything. Any change or improvement to working practices is fought off strongly - because people are afraid that it might facilitate job losses. That's a bit of a nuisance when you're working on an improvement project like the one I'm involved in.

I am celebrating 'Christmas' on the 21st this year. Why? Partly because the weight of expectation drives the children wild and in the past has ensured that Christmas Eve - Christmas Day has become a dreadful 24 hours. Partly because I'm an atheist, and I would far rather celebrate the turn of the year and the nights starting to get shorter.

I explained this to a tolerant and liberal Christian colleague in work, and was flabbergasted by her response. She told me I was improperly imposing my views on my children, who should be allowed (sic) to celebrate Christ's birth on the day traditionally associated with it.

I could get no traction with her when I explained that I believed celebrating a Christian Christmas would be to impose a belief system on them. No, she equated 'allowing them to make up their own minds' with, basically, following Christian norms.

I asked what a Hindu or other faith family should do. Her response was that they should follow their own faith. So there you have it, she was prepared to extend a courtesy to other faiths that she would not extend to an atheist. I was totally stunned.

Liverpool very cold, but main roads are clear. I've just arrived on a bus which was so cold there was ice on the inside of the windows and icicles hanging from the ceiling. Freezing fog over the river and the pavements are lethal - I had to grab a lampost to prevent myself from hitting the floor at one point as my feet went from under me. I can now here the sound of fog horns from the ships on the river.

Quick winter walk at Dibbinsdale today. Very surprised to see a fox running along the path in front of us. At about 14:00 in the afternoon. Really made the day. And of course on the way back there was the buzzard sat on top of the street lights...but he's always there.

When do you think this was written:

"...at some point in a...boom all aspects of property ownership become irrelevant except the prospect for an early rise in price. Income from the property, or enjoyment ot its use, or even its long-run worth are now academic...[they] may be non-existent or even negative. What is important is that...market values will rise...and a profit can be realised."

Sound like credit-default swaps to you?

It was written by J K Galbraith in 1954 in 'The Great Crash 1929'

But nobody saw it coming in 2007?

Away from home at the moment for work - testing out the internet access in my hotel room. Seems to work fine - currently waiting for an episode of Time Team to load in Channel4's youtube channel, which works fine using flash on Opera in Wine on FreeBSD. It's running now, so signing off to watch :-)

Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems tragic to me. We are approaching the very final end of the last of Byzantium:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/08/26/wus.patriarch/index.html

Really interesting segment at the beginning of Mark Whittow's "The Making of Orthodox Byzantium". He is outlining the position of the Roman Empire in 600 (chapter 3), and specifically talking about the Monophysite controversy. His point is that historians have overplayed it's significance. In fact, differently nuanced Christians had more in common, and this gave them a common identity when compared to non-Christians. In fact, even provincial citizens considered themselves 'Christian' and 'Roman' rather than from smaller ethnic groups. There is a clear shared culture (but is this just the elite?).

In other words, this is Byzantium's historic achievement - to weld a cohesive state out of disparate parts, something which modern nation states seem very unsuccesful at doing.

I'm reading Michael Angold's Political History of Byzantium 1025-1204 at the moment. There's a really interesting section in there about the search for a new policy under Constantine Monomachos, and it's ultimate failure. I think there's the bones of a discussion here about growth and change in the Byzantine economy, and it's impact on politics. Following Alan Harvey's thesis about growth in the 11th century economy - Constantine Monomachos' administration is fostering this as a route to prosperity, and stepping the atate down from it's war footing - hence the runing down of the themes. I think Haldon has also pointed out that employing professional soldiers ('mercenaries') is a rational decision. I guess what I'm working towards is the idea that there is a nascent blossoming in civil society which is abruptly cut short after Manzikert and the capture of the state by the feudal aristocracy (Comnenus) who run the administration in the narrow interests of their own class.

BBC report about the diagnostic brain scan for autism:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/health-10929032