TiVo won a $73+ million patent judgment from EchoStar (Dish Network) today. (See TiVo story in Bloomberg.com or in Reuters) TiVo has lost hundreds of millions of dollars while delivering a wonderful product.  Their competition just took their research and ideas and treated it like it was in the public domain.  Today's jury decision gives TiVo life, since it can now license its technology to EchoStar and the many other cable/satellite companies who have appropriated the intellectual property.  Who knows, maybe some day TiVo will make a profit! The decision reassures our dachshund pack that its TiVo service will likely remain [...]

The Members of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco this afternoon issued a call to the Reverend Gregory L. Stewart to serve the Society as its Senior Minister!  The vote on calling Greg was 216 to 6, or 95% yes. Great stuff by me.  He'll start working with us August 1st, and his first sermon as minister will be September 10. More details.

"Cooking the Cosmic Muffin", "Fashions in Anti-War Protests", and "SF Cures Family's Dorian Gray Syndrome" are the featured articles in today's church's newsletter. If you've ever been curious about what Unitarian Universalists dis-believe...

After ten months of working on the Search Committee, we're down to the final 8 days! Yesterday I greeted the minister and his family as they arrived after a soggy six-hour drive from Reno.  Now the Congregation gets to meet, talk with, and grill Greg and make its decision whether or not he's a keeper. This family photo is the best answer I know to the Catholic Archbishop's comment on the unsuitability of gay people as adoptive parents.  The kids would be better off in foster care being shuttled from residence to residence.  Right. Sure thing. More (and larger) photos [...]

Yesterday afternoon the Commonwealth Club phoned to tell me that next Wednesday's scheduled address by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been canceled.  The speech had just been added to the calendar, so the change was sudden. I figured that government officials have flexible schedules, and didn't think much about it.  redozdachs heard about the change and came up with a great idea.  Maybe Rumsfeld is going to follow Andy Card out of Washington. Rumsfeld has arrogantly and badly misjudged the Iraq war.  He continues to give no public sign of understanding ground-level truth.  He's an architect of a dangerous and unsuccessful [...]

This AP photo scanned from yesterdays' Chronicle shows the danger of allowing your top managers face the press without proper media training.  A good consultant would have had the Cardinal practice appropriate kissing before the big event in front of the camera.

For the past 10 months I have been on the San Francisco Unitarian Universalist Society's Ministerial Search Committee. I have been reading hundreds of pages of sermons, philosophical statements, and background information from 34 ministers in the effort to identify the one who is the best match for our congregation. The Committee has conducted telephone interviews and reference checks.  We flew five top choices to San Francisco, and spent an intensive weekend with each of those ministers. This morning our eight-person committee announced to the Congregation its unanimous recommendation: Reverend Gregory L. Stewart. I'm excited and delighted.  Greg can communicate a Unitarian Universalist [...]

One of my co-religionists is the attorney for a Santa Rosa blogger who created the parody billboard (left). On March 1, the blogger received a cease-and-desist letter from Exodus International, a religious group that promotes "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ."  The original image on the Exodus billboard bore the words, "Gay? Unhappy?" and a link to their website. Laurence Pulgram, the attorney, responded to the letter with cogent intellectual property law arguments, and on Wednesday the counsel for Exodus said that they would drop their legal claims. Congratulations to Justin Watt, the blogger.  And, "Thank You!" to Laurence, [...]

I hadn't seen this before.... Subject: Outsourcing the Presidency Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006  15:10:07 Read the Memo

Wow! Powerful political personal new song by the Dixie Chicks. You can read it and hear it on the Chicks' site. Thanks to campn for blogging about it and them. (And, I especially like his "following the bouncing flag" concept in one of the follow-on comment strings.)