Fragments From Floyd

You may have heard that while we are having record high temperatures during the January thaw in our neck of the woods, it's "The Day After Tomorrow" in eastern and northern Europe, with temperatures plunging suddenly from Finland to Japan to as low as -70 degrees F.

Meanwhile, life goes on:

The freeze coincided with Epiphany, when typically thousands of Russians flock to rivers and lakes to immerse themselves in a commemoration of the baptism of Christ. All evening on Thursday, men and women had been taking turns stripping to their bathing suits and plunging in over their heads. Valery Gritskov, an Emergency Ministry rescuer standing nearby, shook his head and quoted a line from a famous poem by Fyodor Tyutchev: "You can’t understand Russia with your brain."

And in Turkey, some 1400 villages were reported cut off by snow. But here's the really sad part: it is now illegal to...well, here's the quote:

...the Uzbekistan authorities added to the misery by banning fur-lined underwear.

Authorities in icy Tashkent, citing the "unbridled fantasy" that the newfangled thermal undergarments could arouse, have ordered an immediate halt to sales of men's and women's underwear lined on the inside with animal fur.