Life of Smiley

Miers withdraws high court nomination Um, did Miers nominate herself? No, I believe President Bush nominated her. Isn't it his place to withdraw the nomination?

Excerpts from FEMA officials' e-mails _Bahamonde to FEMA Director Michael Brown, Aug. 31, 11:20 a.m. "Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical. Here some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes. The dying patients at the DMAT tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for dome evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need. _Sharon Worthy, Brown's press secretary, to Cindy Taylor, FEMA deputy director of public affairs, and others, Aug. 31, 2 p.m. "Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. Gievn (sic) that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more that (sic) 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounte...

Every so often some spam slips through the filter into my inbox. Seriously, I think they must have a room full of crazy people somewhere writing these. You can't make this stuff up. Also, notice the spam probability is 99% -- why is this in my inbox? Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 22:32:35 +0200 From: "Schulz" Message-ID: To: 20jqian@ECE.NEU.EDU Subject: D3grees Based On Your Knowlege MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Perlmx-Spam: Gauge=XXXXXXXXXIIIIIIIII, Probability=99%, Report='RCVD_IN_SPAMCOP_NET! 0, KNOWN_SPAM_PARAGRAPH 8, OBFU_CLASS_FINANCIAL_LOW 3, RCVD_IN_CBL 3, CTYPE_JUST_HTML 0.848, __C230066_P1_2 0, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CTYPE_CHARSET_QUOTED 0, __CTYPE_IS_HTML 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __MIME_HTML 0, __MIME_HTML_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __RATWARE_SIGNATURE_3_N1 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML 0' yo brother, tell mom i did it finally , i tried this program i seen online and got my Masters in 2...

Big hole too much to overcome They played the Broncos without Corey Dillon, Matt Light, Tyrone Poole, Troy Brown, Richard Seymour, Marquise Hill, Guss Scott and Kevin Faulk. Rookie James Sanders, filling in for Rodney Harrison and Scott, couldn't finish the game because of leg injury. In the backfield, Tom Brady was handing off to Patrick Pass and Amos Zereoue, who just joined the team. Arturo Freeman was signed last week and finished the game at safety. The Patriots don't have enough healthy defensive linemen for a 4-3 or a 3-4. Vrabel played his first full game at inside linebacker -- ever. Linebackers Willie McGinest and Monty Beisel played the game wearing casts to protect broken bones in their hands. Before the season, I thought the biggest losses the Patriots would feel would be Charlie Weiss and Romeo Crennel (under Weiss, Notre Dame's only losses have come in overtime against #22 Michigan State and in a barn burner against the reining champs, #1 USC). The Patriots...

Lawmakers Debate Cell Phone Rights Bill For some time now I've been railing against the industry-wide practice of requiring two-year agreements for cell phone service. I've just endured two years of hellacious customer "service" with Sprint, and I would love to give them the big kiss-off. Problem is, any new company I choose is going to require a two-year agreement. I'm afraid I may be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Finally there is talk of legislation to change this practice. Frankly I'm surprised it was ever tolerated in the first place. The legislation proposes limiting contracts to one year, but I'm in favor of having no contracts at all. I never had a contract for my home phone service. I don't have a contract for my cable and internet service. If I fail to pay my bill, they stop providing the service. It seems pretty damn simple, and it's always worked in the past. Of course, if I hadn't experienced such infuria...

I have no strong desire to join the sea of conspiracy blogs out there -- here 's a good one -- so I'm posting this rant in the guise of a book review. Night Fall is a fictional account of the circumstances and events surrounding the crash of Flight TWA 800 in the summer of 1996. This flight took off from JFK airport bound for Paris, but shortly after takeoff it crashed off the coast of Long Island. The official investigation concluded that an electrical short ignited vapors in the center fuel tank, causing an explosion which tore the plane apart. The popular conspiracy theory posits that the plane was shot down by a missile fired from a US Navy vessel. It is this theory which the author, Nelson DeMille, explores in his novel. I was bemused to discover that the novel is narrated in the first person, using that cheesy private eye macho-speak. Once I got past that, however, I found it to be a compelling, well-paced detective story. The plot revolves around a race to uncove...