50 new ways to leave your lover
There is a proven way you can catch a cheating lover by keeping your partner’s dirty mails or – even better - chat logs, at least in the state of Belgium.

Erotic talk with a virtual partner in chatrooms on the web can constitute proof of "grossly insulting behaviour" and can be used as evidence in a divorce case, Belgium's top judges have ruled.

Michael Brown is testifying in front of the sham GOP congressional committee looking to whitewash the Bush administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina.

Brown admitted making mistakes, but his admission was limited to the public relations efforts:

But I do believe there are a couple specific mistakes that I made that I want to put on the table right now. First, I failed initially to set up a series of regular briefings to the media about what FEMA was doing throughout the gulf coast region. Instead, I became tied to the news shows, going on the news shows early in the morning and late at night and that was just a mistake. We should have been feed that information to the press instead of -- and in the manner and in the time a we wanted to instead of letting the press drive us.

It's nice to know that Michael Brown thought the biggest problem with FEMA's response was going on news shows instead of holding press conferences. Something tells me the people of the Gulf Coast who lost their homes thought FEMA should have other priorities.

Ted writes "A former engineering major has written an interesting article explaining why he thinks many smart students are not studying engineering anymore." Many business leaders have commented on the lack of engineers and several companies have even started initiatives to help bolster our diminishing ranks. Will these measures be enough, or does the system require much more drastic measures?
Confessions of an Engineering Washout

In FEMA's haste to play catch-up and provide housing in New Orleans, it contracted with Carnival Cruise Lines for three ships for six months, and did the deal overnight, as reported in today's Washington Post.

The problem with the deal with Carnival was a $236M no-bid contract that effectively paid Carnival twice the per person cost of a cruise, with full crew and entertainment, and the ships never leave port. Yet, the ships are only half occupied, so Carnival reaps even greater profits. Do the math: that's four times the cost of a cruise. Without a full crew, the profit is even greater.

Makes me wonder if anybody at Carnival was a big Republican supporter, or were they just incredibly lucky?

Here are just some of the most egregious cuts:

• $225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
• $200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
• $25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
• $6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
• $7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
• $5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
• $3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
• $8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
• $2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
• $2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
• $417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
• $4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program

Safer Internet Programme HOME: "The Safer Internet plus programme aims to promote safer use of the Internet and new online technologies, particularly for children, and to fight against illegal content and content unwanted by the end-user, as part of a coherent approach by the European Union. "