Since the article on our minister's family appeared in Sunday's Chronicle I have enjoyed a wonderful flurry of phone greetings and congratulatory emails.  The Democratic Candidate for California Secretary of State, State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), has called to accept our invitation to the minister's installation ceremony 4 pm Sunday. Assemblyman Mark Leno (D- San Francisco) did, too! Thanks to fuzzygruf for the posting in his blog and for the other good wishes.  After a couple days of excitement I am able to concentrate somewhat on my clients' CPA seminars and email issues.  But, it is a lot more fun to read [...]

The above-the-fold front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning is about my church's new minister and his family.  The focus is on how the family came together and the commitment of two gay men to make a difference through love. The article jumps from the front page to a two-page spread in the front section under the headline "The Forever Family". The Chron cheats!  They use large pictures of the very cute kids to move the story along. It works very well. The family was the lead story on SFGate.com when I looked. Wow! The online article [...]

The latest edition of iTunes (7.0+) by default hides the "Free on iTunes" section on the Apple store for logged on users.  Instead, if the store knows who you are, that part of the screen real estate is taken up with the "Just for You" section a la Amazon.com's personalized suggestions.  In fact, the free information disappears completely from the iTunes display. You won't see this: The easiest solution is to turn off the Apple store recommendations.  The free panel comes back. This afternoon I turned off the suggestion and grabbed for the Battlestar Galactica download.  Can never have too [...]

Thanks to digg.com I surfed to the Washington Post's comprehensive information on Congress.  Great fun for political junkies! The digg.com article touted the ability to get RSS feeds of your member of Congress's votes.  There is a button for RSS feeds on the profile page for each Representative and Senator. But, wait!  There's more! The individual member pages give thumbnail biographies and profiles of the districts, tell when the Senators are up for reelection, and list recent votes.  The vote pages for recent legislation also tells each member's vote and the way the majority of Democrats/Republicans voted.  There are also intriguing pages with [...]

I have sent in money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign because I believe the American values I grew up with are being attacked by committed, well-meaning ideologues who don't let facts get in the way of their world view. These starry-eyed idealists look only at the ends and are committed to using any means to get them. Unfortunately for the country and the world, the means they use are sometimes both immoral and counterproductive.  These misguided idealists are entrenched in power.  They are either Republican officeholders or else they are supported by Congressional Republicans.  It's clear to me that electing a Democratic Congress [...]

The Folsom Street Fair was small, sleazy, and slightly dangerous-feeling when I first attended 20 or so years ago. Yesterday's beautiful afternoon showcased a much different 2006 edition of the fair.  There were more people like the couple on the left (the woman was holding a leather leash that went to the man's dog collar, by the way). It was a lot of fun, but a different type of fun. Not dangerous, but still very San Franciscan. A few g-rated pictures of the crowd and friends from yesterday are in my Folsom Street photo set.

A benevolent dictatorship is a clearly a superior form of government.  An all-powerful do-gooder who can cut through deceptions, bureaucracy, and legal technicalities to benefit the people is dream of the righteous and justice-loving people.  Most religions put God in this role of benevolent dictator of heaven, while secularists bemoan the impossibility of such mortal paragons who can guide our affairs here in this life.  We settle for democracy because we cannot divine which among us is wise and benign enough to have dictatorial power. Democracy, we decide, is the best government that's possible. King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand is [...]

 A fun gray day in San Francisco! I was glad to be able to stop by the end of the LJ picnic in Dolores Park.  I enjoyed seeing in person the icons I have known over the past year. I hear that fuzzygruf will be posting an attendance list and other links.  The few photos I took of the  LJ picnic are up at Flickr.