A SLIGHT PAUSE TO REFRESH

Writing a blog is a little like opening a vein and letting your vital bodily fluids [to quote Dr. Strangelove] seep out of your body.  Even if you are eighty years old, as I am, and did a bit of work in your youth, there are only so many ideas lodged in your brain on which you can call for a blog post.  Sooner or later, like it or not, you need to read something before you start to write.  This morning, I checked Paul Krugman's blog [I don't count that as reading], and found him referring to a book called Secular Stagnation:  Facts, Causes and Cures to which he had contributed an essay .  I decided to read it, so I followed his link and downloaded the book.  The book consists of thirteen essays, but since they run, in total, to only 164 pages, I figured I could make it all the way through to the end.  I am now on page 83, which is to say halfway.  By lunch, I think I should be finished, at which point I will have something to say about it, good for another blog post.  But I cannot keep this up.  I mean, if I have to read a book every time I write a blog post I will never make it.  So do not consider this a harbinger of things to come.  I shall in general continue to offer unsupported opinions, drawing on a lifetime of accumulated stuff rather than any new facts or ideas.  That is what it is to be a commentator in the public sphere, right?