interesting things: April 2003 Archives

The title is one of the most frequent questions asked in work. There is an interesting article in this Saturday's Guardian on the dangers of over the counter (otc) painkillers and the possible addiction to painkillers that afflicts three percent of people in the UK. It is a well written and argued case for more control in otc painkillers, they are far too easy to obtain and we take them for the slightest pain or sniffle, the advertising makes such a strong case for not suffering or slacking. Several years back I took neurofen on a daily basis as prescribed by my doctor for RSI, now I'm intolerant to them, I get a mild allergic reaction to them, I tend to be more careful with respect to medicines these days and ask why am I taking this or being offered it and what are are the side-effects.
The article raises several other interesting points about addicition to codeine and the recurrent headaches that some people get from overuse of painkillers. it also comments on the difficulties in getting support for getting off addiction to legal drugs, no-one wants to admit that they are addictive, so you must pay to attend rehab yourself. For paracetamol there is an additional concern. The effective dose for 50% of the population is quite close to the lethal dose for 1% (BMJ article 1, BMJ article 2), yet the pharmaceutical companies are loathe to to introduce drugs containing an antidote to overdosing, as it tastes bad, makes you sick and costs more.
An interesting article that raises an interesting issue that affects most of us, have you got any paracetamol with you today ?

Joi Ito met Brian Behlendorf and helped Brian get blogging and get a blog. Like Joi, I first met Brian virtually via the sfraves mailing list in 92/93, though it was more wistful than real, as I lived in Belfast, rather than sunny California, still good parties in Belfast though. Brian is a great guy who I've met a couple of times, first at www94 in Geneva, then at the Paris www5 conference. He was integral in the early apache server work too. He is an avid mailing list user, something I have been in the past too. Mailing lists are a great form of community, very strong sense of community from them, much more so than many web communities I've been part of, blogging is pretty good as it retains the two way capabilites and can range over a wide variety of topics, unlike mailing lists which tend to be unitopic. I realise that is a sweeping generalization, but you get the idea.
Also, Esther Dyson now has a weblog, entitled release 4, covering the stuff she can talk about, I think it will make interesting reading, like her books.

Lucy and I went to the Pockets exhibition last night, which was sponsored by Nintendo to mark the launch of the new GBA SP. It has been curated by Wayne Hemmingway and consists of four main areas. There is a literary narrative depicting the history of pockets from purses and bags to wraparound belts to real pockets, with some interesting discussion on the role of pockets for men and women. There is a collection of the pocket contents from nine dead famous people, including the diary of Malcolm X and Curt Cobain's plane tickets and receipts. There are a selection of garmets with different types of pockets, and older recreations of pockets from the Middle Ages, some film clips and a selection of modern gadgets from the 70s onwards. It is quite fun, but really only about half an hour of entertainment, luckily it is in the heart of Soho, so if you can tear yourself away from the gameboys then there is plenty of other things to do.