"Black in a new light" and other stories

• The Wall Street Journal has an article about the sociopolitical ripples of Obama's candidacy in the black American community. It reminded me of an article praising Michelle Obama I read recently in The Root.
  
• The Washington Post is doing an in-depth biography of Obama. This segment, quite long and full of information, covers his childhood and the life story of his parents. I found it very absorbing, the sort of thing you would find interesting for the characters even if Obama himself were a relative nobody.
  
• Darling Hubby and I just finished watching the BBC/HBO production House of Saddam. It's worth a watch.
• I am thinking of downloading iPlayer to fill in the gaps created by my crazy schedule vs. the restrictions on recording Freeview (basically the same as SkyPlus, in that you can only do two or three shows that overlap, and since the channels tend to schedule all the good stuff at once, this is a problem.)