I half-assume that most of you listen to BBC7 all the time, but that can’t be right. In its infancy The Economist very kindly referred to it as middle-brow, but I know that’s not true because my tastes are firmly lower-middle-brow, and it could have been programmed just for me. So for those of you who missed it, I have to belatedly alert you to a collection of the funniest sketches of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (sroll down the page), both, alas, no longer with us. Americans, in particular, who might be forgiven for believing that Dudley Moore was a talentless moron, will find conclusive evidence to the contrary. The rest of us can just wonder what on earth happened.
On Friday, George Lakoff of the Rockridge Instutute appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers to discuss the need for Progressives to improve their ability to get their message out to the American people. Specifically, he says they must develop the ability to counter Conservatives’ ruthless efficiency and almost fanatical devotion to Staying On Message. In spite of the fact that the message may use terms which define something completely contrary to what they propose to do, Conservatives’ ability to claim the language in which the debate will take place both puts Progressives on the defensive and diminishes how the left’s position looks in the eyes of the public. Lakoff, who has written about this issue in The American Prospect, calls this “framing,”
I thought I’d indulge my fantasy of joining the hard-core techie kids (like Kieran) by installing Linux on my home PC at the weekend. Bravely ignoring the concerns of my family — who feared for their own future access to the computer — I downloaded a disk image for Suse 9.1 (Personal edition) and rebooted from the CD-ROM. I even managed successfully to repartition my hard disk (and Windows still works). But under Linux I have no mouse (mine’s a Logitech Optical USB creature) and no network (despite faithfully copying down and reproducing details of DNS servers, gateways etc.). Much googling and initialization of modules later, I’m no further forward. The problem isn’t Linux as such, since Knoppix works fine direct from the CD, recognizing the rodent, happily working with other USB devices, and auto-configuring the network. But I’d like a “proper” version, nicely installed on my new partition, so that I can escape the “told you sos” and “what did you expects” of partner and children. All advice gratefully received.