Hitchens and the Incident With The Dog

( It's about atheism and religion again; you can skip it if you want to )

This looks important to me

So I'm passing it on to you.

Pain research matters.

It matters to me because I have at one time and another spent weeks or months in persistent pain without adequate pain relief. Non steroidal anti-inflammatories did almost nothing.  Opiates kind of took the edge off but were nearly impossible to get .  It really, really sucked.  I'm okay now.  But pain research matters to me because these conditions can strike anyone, anytime, which means it might be me again. Maybe even soon.

Pain research matters to me because I have friends who have painful, chronic conditions for which they cannot always get adequate pain relief. That really, really sucks, and I would like for it to end, as soon as possible.

Pain research matters to me because there are strangers in the same boat. And frankly, I wouldn't wish anything that really, really sucks on anyone.

Pain research matters.

There is this twitter campaign going on. I won't be contributing to it because I am a cave-woman, stuck back in the internet age, and don't use twitter. But you can. The hashtag is #painresearchmatters

For a little bit more about what is going on in pain research, there is a Scientific American piece here.  And another blog post, explaining what set off the campaign, here.

Um. I think this could end up being big.

I like e-books.  I use a Kindle 2, and I use Stanza on an iPod to read them.

You can't get much into this without discovering that DRM (digital rights management--used to prevent unauthorized copying of electronic files from books to music to movies) can be a pain in the neck when it keeps you from accessing content you honestly bought and paid for and now would like to just read, please.

There are programs to strip out copy protection from content you honestly bought, but as best I can tell, these were considered illegal for a long time.

Now the Library of Congress has published a list of exemptions--purposes for which it is legal to break DRM.  One of them is when the DRM prevents the text from being electronically read aloud.

I'm not quite sure how this is going to play out...  But anything that made DRM less draconian would be a good thing.