If you're still considering buying that first Tivo, or you're ready to add a second one, I have the deal for you. Tivo is running a special for an 80-hour Series 2 Tivo for $83.40, which includes the Tivo hardware and a year of service. There is also a 80-hour Series 2 dual tuner Tivo for $155.40 including the year of Tivo service. This a great deal!

Find the details and the opportunity to order here. If you do decide to order, be sure to enter my email address dave@sonic.net in the Referral e-mail address box. That way I'll get Tivo points and I can a free Tivo hat or something.

I saw today that Tivo won their lawsuit against EchoStar and was awarded $73M in damages. Not a bad day's pay if you ask me. What makes this really great news for Tivo is that they now have leverage to go after other DVR makers for royalties as well. Tivo stock shot up 20% on the news.

Daniel Weintraub's column in the Sacramento Bee has an interesting comparison of the positions on education funding of the Governor and democratic candidates Westley and Angelides.

Read the article for yourself, but the short version is that three are within 5% or 6% of each other regardless of the rhetoric you'll hear during the campaign.

Have you ever seen a "blinking content" where two people stare at each other and the first one to blink loses? Well, in the "blinking contest" between State Superintendent Jack O'Connell and the West Contra Costa Unified School District, O'Connell won.

West Contra Costa Unified has been in the news since one of their board members suggested that they violate state law and grant high school diplomas to students who had not passed the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). Read the rest of this post!

Friend of Dave, Sherry, pointed out this NY Times article. The article, describes how minority families are taking advantage of a pilot voucher program in Washington DC.

As a student at Shaw Junior High School here, Amie Fuwa strained to shut out the distractions of friends cutting up. She struggled through math, and used photocopies or the library when textbooks were scarce.

Now Amie, 14, a child of immigrants from Nigeria and the Dominican Republic, attends Archbishop Carroll High School, a Catholic school near a verdant hill of churches nicknamed the Little Vatican. When algebra confounds Amie, her teacher stays with her after school to help, and a mentor keeps her on course.

"It's a lot of people behind my back now," Amie said.

Before, she said, she "felt like it didn't really matter to different people I know, like my teachers, if I failed."

Amie is one of about 1,700 low-income, mostly minority students in Washington who at taxpayer expense are attending 58 private and parochial schools through the nation's first federal voucher program, now in its second year.

Of course, not everyone is happy with the program. The usual suspects are very upset:

School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district's 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country's largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of "exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda" intended to undermine public schools.

I always find it interesting when anti-voucher folks complain that voucher programs only benefit the wealthy. Yet, programs like this one in DC show that minority parents are just as happy to see their children in good schools, even if it means using a voucher.