http://www.amixedmessage.com

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In a rash moment, these two girls from Anderson Junior College (AJC) locked lips for the camera – all for a wacky class photo.

They pulled off the joke under the noses of their form tutor and their classmates, when posing for an informal memento at the annual photo-taking session.

Now, the former Year One Science students say they did not mean it and are sorry for what they did.

However, it has caused unnecessary embarrassment to the college, their tutor and their parents.

The girls were punished… although it is unclear from the story wether that was because of the prank, or because they are both girls. I assume the homosexual part of the prank had a large influence – after all, have you ever heard of a school photo prank where the first reaction by the principal is to try to get hold of all the copies and negatives? The world has a long way to go before it truly understands “tolerance”.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority alwats votes for the candidates promising he most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

– Alexander Tyler, 1778

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Try this in Google.  Same three words, just reverse the order.  ”Bush mocks Kerry”.  ”Kerry mocks Bush”.  

The first one returns 145 news articles on Google news and 7,110 web pages on regular Google.  ”Kerry mocks Bush”?  One news article and 254 web pages.

Bush’s campaign, by the most conservative calculation, is 27 times more likely to mock his opponent than is Kerry.  Google news reflects more recent data than Google main and therefore implies that Bush is heaping on the mockery at an increasing pace–145 to 1.

The general tone is more revealing than the specific issues.  Kerry’s campaign uses criticism and comparison and sometimes resorts to mockery.  For Bush mockery is the main, and sometimes the only tactic.

This is the behavior of an angry, petulant schoolyard bully.  Like the bully, he wants something he does not deserve and is using words as weapons rather than to convey meaning.

This behavior plays well with angry white men of a certain age.  It is less endearing to mothers who almost inevitably will have seen some other kid do it to their child.

A naked model covered with fruits lies on a table on the first day of the four-day erotic fair “Eroticon” in Warsaw. The mayor of Warsaw banned the “Sexual World championships” which were to take place during the fair(AFP/Wojtek Stein)

A model presents a creation by Colombian designer Paez Minaya during their fashion show in Cali, October 8, 2004. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

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Afghanistan’s first direct presidential election was thrust into turmoil hours after it began Saturday, when the 15 candidates challenging interim leader Hamid Karzai said they would boycott the results, alleging fraud over the ink meant to ensure people voted only once.

The boycott undermined hopes of Afghan voters who had braved threats of Taliban violence and crammed polling stations throughout this ethnically diverse nation. The election is seen as a crucial step toward bringing peace and prosperity to a country of 25 million nearly ruined by more than two decades of war.

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Google, the Internet search engine, has done something that law enforcement officials and their computer tools could not: Identify a man who died in an apparent hit-and-run accident 11 years ago in this small town outside Yakima.

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The rising cost of privatised healthcare in Asia is behind a spike in child deaths in Cambodia and caused more than half the region to fall behind global goals to lower child mortality, a United Nations
report warned.

Cambodia, where one in seven children die before the age of five, is the only country in the region where child mortality had risen since 1990, but others lag well behind death reduction goals set by the UN, the organisation’s children fund (UNICEF) said.

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The Scorer’s Table, having taken two hours to let the Blogosphere complete its due diligence (and to permit the scorer to retreat to a corner of the room, don cold compresses, and moan quietly), can now quote the truth from “Factcheck.Org”: “President Bush himself would have qualified as a ‘small business owner’ under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise.” Brooks Jackson’s marvelous site noted that the timber interest was listed under “royalties” in his 2002 and 2003 returns, indicating The Texas Thunderbolt still has an interest in said concern.

The point awarded to Mr. Bush in the thirteenth round is hereby withdrawn and awarded to Mr. Kerry, for the latter’s enterprising hoisting of his opponent on said opponent’s own petard.

Mr. Bush is also penalized three points for a truth foul.
Mr. Bush is further penalized two points for getting snarky while in the act of being factually incorrect.

The thirteenth round, originally scored 2-0 for Mr. Bush, now reverts to a 1-1 draw, and the rounds awarded total now changes from 12 Kerry, 4 Bush, 3 Drawn, to 12 Kerry, 3 Bush, 4 Drawn.

The final points scoring is now adjusted from Kerry 15, Bush 12, to Kerry 16, Bush 6.  The Scorer thus designates the outcome as a Kerry victory outside the margin for statistical error.

The scorer’s table reproaches President Bush for not knowing when he has wood.

(note: the picture before photoshop got to it is here)

(oh, and check this out. eBay will probably pull it real fast..)

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry gestures toward President Bush during the presidential debate in St. Louis, Friday, Oct. 8, 2004. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

Andrew Sullivan: “There were moments early on… when he seemed to me to be close to shouting; and his hyper-aggressiveness, having to respond to everything, went at times over the line of persuasiveness.”

Ron Forunier, AP: “As he fought to keep his emotions in check in a testy, personal debate with Sen. John Kerry, the president asserted ‘That answer almost made me scowl.’… Several answers brought Bush’s emotions to the surface, for better or worse, as he sought to curb Kerry’s momentum…. Bush was the most aggressive, at one point overrunning moderator Charles Gibson’s attempt to pose a question..”

David Niven, political science professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton (from the above article):”Bush seemed wound a bit too tight. He was a little like Nixon sort of jumping out of his suit… He looked bad on the TV close-ups.”"

Jonah Goldberg, National Review: “WHY DOES BUSH…
Sound like he’s angry at the guy asking about making drugs cheaper?

Paul Begala, CNN: “Good debate. The press will say it’s a draw, but I think Kerry bested Bush — or rather Bush made a few errors. Two words for President Bush: anger management. He spent much of the debate nearly yelling at the audience.”

John Whitesides, Reuters: “An angry Bush at one point cut off moderator Charles Gibson to upbraid Kerry for criticising the size of the coalition backing the United States in Iraq, saying it denigrated allies like Britain and Poland.”

Beth Gorham, CBC News: “It all added up to a major challenge for the president, who appeared angry and defensive during attacks from Kerry in a tense sparring match on Sept. 30 that was watched by some 62 million Americans.”

Oliver Willis: “BUSH FLIPS OUT: Click here to watch your President flip out of his gourd. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Billmon (back from the dead): “If Kerry and the Dems can’t make an issue out of the fact that the president of the United States is utterly incapable of controlling his hairtrigger temper, they don’t deserve to win this election… I mean, the man is a walking time bomb.”

David Paul Kuhn, CBSNews.com: “BUSH MAD, KERRY COMPOSED… Though Mr. Bush was more composed than in last week’s first presidential debate, all agreed his tone was sometimes antagonistic and he again appeared uncomfortable being challenged. Kerry, on the other hand, was viewed as measured and articulate. “

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How swiftly thought evolves in the wonderful world of Ballmer! First, iPods are full of “stolen” music, next he forgets what he said, but suggests that it might be anything that isn’t a Windows Media Player that’s full of stolen music, and now iPod owners turn out to be the most law-abiding people in the world.

We’re sure iPod owners will regard being called law-abiding by an exec from a company with Microsoft’s legal experience as a high point to end the week on. But, you ask, how the blazes did we get to this one? We have Ged Carrol’s blog to thank. Mightily offended by Ballmer’s original comments, Ged used the feedback system at microsoft.com to demand an apology, and he got one. The possibility of feedback systems of this ilk actually working had never occurred to The Register, so we’ve never bothered trying, but if you want your very own grovel, insert your outraged howls here.

The grovel itself is particularly interesting because of the way you can feel the truth shifting under your feet as you read it. “We would like to assure you that when Steve Ballmer implied that most of the music on iPods were stolen, he absolutely did not intend to single out iPod owners for criticism. [this implying would be when he whooped "STOLEN! STOLEN! STOLEN!] In fact, given that they have access to their very own – and very popular – online music store, they are likely among the most law-abiding consumers of digital music.”

Notice the sneaky bit of dissing there? If you weren’t paying attention you might run away with the view that the Apple music store only worked with iPods, and entirely miss the fact that Apple has extremely capable player software in both Mac and Windows formats.

Now that the INDUCE act is on hold (for now), Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy (both owned by and paid for by the entertainment industry) introduced a new bill. There’s plenty of idiocy in the bill to fill a few articles (read the details), but the funniest one is this one:

The original House version of this bill provided an affirmative right for those who used technology to skip objectionable material, such as profanity, violence, or other adult material, in the audio / video works that they legally purchased. This is a right that most believe manufacturers of technology and consumers already have—regardless of HR4077. The entertainment community has hijacked this provision and turned it against consumers and the tech community. Now, the affirmative right to watch and skip parts of the content that a consumer has legally obtained only exists if certain conditions are met: no commercial or promotional ads may be skipped.

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.

– Dr. Seuss