The Matazone blog

This is a bit odd. I had a new-DS poem in my email:

tortuous you mitosis me, arrowhead swanson . clearwater you doric me, orange .
dignify you serbia me, ontario wilkes . bluster you chap me, billie paulsen . carmine you lodowick me, inverness .

I’m really not so keen on this form, somehow the rhythm isn’t so contemplative as they used to be, nonetheless there was something that caught my eye: who is ‘Billie Paulsen’? I don’t remember DS mentioning any names before. A quick Google reveals that there are almost no ‘Billie Paulsen’s on the web.

From the six results, one page seemed to call to me. It has the title ‘Condolement’, and the page heading ‘Circumlittoral’ (which means ‘adjoining the shore’). Imagine my surprise when I discover that it’s a whole page of DS spouting out words and non-existant email addresses.

It gets better! After looking at the Google cached version of the page (Google saves old versions of pages, if you have Firefox then you can see this from your right-click menu using the excellent Gcache. I love that extension, it’s more useful than you might at first think!) I saw that the page is updated regularly too!

There are a few lovely phrases in there:

Although I have no idea about the meaning of:

but it sounds fun!

Or like it needs lubrication.

Or both.

…

Anyway, could this be DS’s secret webpage? And does DS know I’m watching now? Was ‘Billie Paulsen’ a secret clue to me to get me to find its inner-sactum? Who knows, but as you can tell, I’m very excited by this find!

This amused me today:

Star Wars: The Designer Edition

The concept is that the Stars Wars universe would be so much more fun if it was a bit less drab. The designs are fun, but I think it was the descriptions that caught my attention:

Fashion designer Betsey Johnson didn’t want Chewbacca to be called a “walking carpet” ever again. Gone are the earth tones and tattered accessories. The new Chewy is fun, funky, and fabulous!

The whole site has some great stuff on it, so have a browse!

The BBC has covered a recent study with an article titled ‘Goths ‘more likely to self-harm’‘. The New Scientist has also covered a recent study of youth culture and titled their article ‘Goth subculture may protect vulnerable children‘. The titles suggest that the studies have produced opposing results, but they are both covering the same story.

The BBC’s article does counter its shock-scandal style headline with a quite reasonable article yet I can’t help but feel that the damage will have already been done.

As for the study itself, it suggests that people who have self-harmed (cutting and burning usually) are more likely to associate with the gothic ‘subculture’. The New Scientist points out, very reasonably, that it appears that people have self-harmed less after becoming involved with the non-violent and accepting goth social group and so being ‘goth’ has been of benefit to these people.

I find it amusing that the old adage of goths comes into play here, that anyone who says that they are a goth isn’t really a goth, but that’s a bit beside the point. In the study only 25 people said that they were goths, which means that the figures, while being interesting, are worth about as much as George W. Bush’s contribution to the rap music scene. I wonder if one of the people had been missing a leg if the articles would say ‘Goths more likely to lack 25% of their digits’.

Thanks to Wookiee and Novander on my forum for the links.

I had to buy new gloves this winter. I’d had my old ones for about ten years, but I was walking home from the pub on a frezing night and there was a policeman on guard duty without any gloves so I gave him mine.

I had cold fingers for weeks until I bought a new pair, but a rosy glow inside.

So this is your task for the week: find at least one way to do something unexpectedly nice for someone else.

There has been a major discovery in the fossil record of evolution announced today. Several examples of a new species of fish have been found with a functioning neck and bones in its fins. This means that there is now physical evidence of the shift between sea-dwelling species and tetrapods, the main type of large animals that exist today.

Animals such as the newly discovered ‘Tiktaalik roseae’ (the name for this fish-with-nearly-legs) constitute some pretty weighty evidence on the side of evolution being factually correct. Previous to this, one of the main arguments from Creationists has been that no animals have been found that are at an intermediate stage between the major groups that we currently have (despite several examples already existing… But never mind, this is an even better one). You would think that this would be taken as a bit of a blow to the Creationists, demonstrating as it does that animals did live that were halfway between one type of being and another, but apparently not. You’ve got to love ‘em really:

Duane T. Gish, a retired official of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, said, “This alleged transitional fish will have to be evaluated carefully.” But he added that he still found evolution “questionable because palaeontologists have yet to discover any transitional fossils between complex invertebrates and fish, and this destroys the whole evolutionary story.”

Yep, previously it was:

‘there are no transitional animals, so evolution must be wrong’

and now it’s

‘there are no transitional animals for this other bit of time, over there, you know, that bit where things were squiggly, no, no, left a bit, yeah, you haven’t got anything to cover that bit over there have you? Ha! You’re so lame! And you smell! Phew-y! You love digging up bones ‘n’ stuff, I bet you’re weird.’

Err… Well, it’s something like that anyway.

Source.

Blimey, who’d have thought it? I was forwarded an email telling me to visit http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/ and to click on it to help raise money for mammograms. While 50% of the stuff written in the email is way out of date (it’s been circulating for five years), the site is actually real and does raise a huge amount of money through the advertising revenue from people visiting. They already get a massive amount of visitors, but everything helps and it’s going to a good cause. Visit and click today!