I asked, "Well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?" And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say "eliminate," I mean "kill."

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.

"Although 2011 started tragically, I feel it will be a year of eagerly anticipated change, where Egyptians will stand against sectarianism and unite as one," Father Rafaeil Sarwat of the Mar-Mina church told Ahram Online. The Coptic priest was commenting on the now widespread call by Muslim intellectuals and activists upon Egyptian Muslims at large to flock to Coptic churches across the country to attend Coptic Christmas Eve mass, to show solidarity with the nation's Coptic minority, but also to serve as "human shields" against possible attacks by Islamist militants.

Mohamed Abdel Moniem El-Sawy, founder of El-Sawy Culture Wheel was among the promiment Muslim cultural figures who first floated the bold initiative.

"This is it. It is time to change and unite," asserted journalist Ekram Youssef, another notable sponsor of the intiative, in a telephone interview with Ahram Online. She added that although it is the government's responsibility to act and find solutions to bring an end to such violations, "it is time for Egyptian citizens to act to revive the true meaning of national unity."

Following last year's Coptic Christmas Eve attack on congregants as they left their church in the Upper Egyptian city of Naga Hamady, Youssef created the crescent and cross logo with the slogan "A nation for all" - that was adopted during the past couple of days by many of Egypt's 4 million Facebook users as their profile picture.

Winter is promising to be a home-heating oil budget-buster and so my husband and I have taken to turning down the thermostat and wearing bulky sweaters all day. I never feel completely warm, though, and last night, as we tried to watch a movie, he had to listen to the Greek Chorus of the Winter of my Discontent:

"Brrr; I'm cold," I said.

He tossed an afghan my way.

A little later: "Why is it so cold in here?"

Another afghan.

"Brrr…"

Finally, feeling chilled to the bone, I announced that the movie All the Colors of Paradise was beautiful and sad and wonderful, but that I'd had enough fun shivering and was headed to bed.

"Why don't you put the big cover on the bed, if you're so cold," my husband called after me.

"I tell ye I won't do it!" I called back.

"The big cover" is for us like "the big knife" in Moonstruck; the tool of last resort in a cold, ice-hard world. It is an enormous, puffy comforter that weighs a ton. You lay "the big cover" on the bed, and you finally get warm, but nothing is ever quite right again. The big cover is not subtle; it knows no nuance. It does not take a variable into consideration. Rather, utilizing the big cover means constant adjustments on our part.

Under the big cover, cuddling gets clammy, and so you sleep apart. The reasonable flannels one wears in winter become unbearably warm, and so you bring out the unreasonable, inappropriate summer sleepwear and beneath the big cover you are mostly comfortable. You can even cuddle, a little.

But if you have to get up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom or get a glass of water, the summer threads in a 60 degree house make you giddy with cold. You jump back into bed, and your now-chilled body hits your spouse like ice-water thrown into a hot shower. There is jumping and shrieking and no one is happy until the big cover gets back into place, and the shivers subside.

It struck me last night that "the big cover" is sort of like "big government." It is a deleterious slab of a "solution" that suffocates us unless we adapt to it, and in truth make ourselves rather uncomfortable in order to accommodate it; once we lay the all-encompassing big cover on the bed, nothing is ever "just right" again.

If we could just let the furnace - which is new, energy-efficient and sort of the "engine" of the house - do its job and heat our not-large rooms to more comfortable levels, we could get by with light sweaters, still conserve energy in relation to past years, and keep the big cover packed in cedar.

But no, our furnace - just like the "engine" of our economy, which is business - is currently doing less than it is capable of doing. Like our economy, it is less energetic, and we are less comfortable, because we are afraid to let it run at full throttle. Like small businesses all over the country, we are experiencing a frigid season, one where we cannot feel comfortable about tomorrow's bills; we are holding on to our money, so we are not "hiring" as much oil.

And that means breaking out the big cover. It is a dubious solution - a vastly imperfect one - and using it does not solve the problems that are making us reluctant to fire up the engine of the house and get things warm and toasty around here.

It feels like the big chill is winning.