Back to the debate about the rappers on US TV - especially that stuff between the two guys - how depressing was that? "Gitmo" - when Americans have names from all over Europe they can manage why not this word? It reminds me of the subhuman names they called the Vietcong.

The rappers - it's hard to imagine just how wonderful it must feel to blacks in America that "our President is black". I can remember some feminist milestones that felt a little bit equivalent - like being able to get a mortgage without patronising insulting questions about future pregnancy and being called 'dear'. For 'the children of slaves' to have a black man in the White House. And an intelligent, well educated wife, too!

No-one has mentioned Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. Kim Hill interviewed him before Christmas which changed my mind - I found The Tipping Point very simplistic. Outliers is a sort of cumulative summary of research about success, and how especially the American dream notion of success is flawed logic - unexpected successes all got help - from all sorts of factors.

And I listened to it - do others like audiobooks? Now that you don't have to be stuck in one place like my mother was with her Blind Foundation talking books, it's so great! Bleak House was great, Persuasion was great - all while driving - in New Time! My patience for 'classics' is so much greater hearing them. But actually Little Women... well...