Elsewhere

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From "Think Cheaply," a consumer blog:

Stop spending $300 for eyeglasses, order online.

I was sitting with a friend at lunch the other day, he was talking about his new eyeglasses, and how they were way overpriced. He had paid $300 for eyeglasses at the local shopping mall, and felt like he had been ripped off.

Now, I thought I was a step above him. I would buy my eyeglasses at an discount optical store called America's Best Contacts and Eyeglasses. When I was a kid, this was the place that my parents had dragged me to, and had me pick eyeglasses off the 49 dollar rack or whatever.

Continue reading at Think Cheaply...

From Greenstew.com (recession inspired grocery shopping)

So I really have a special love for my glasses and contacts. I really believe that you should have an extra pair or two of glasses. But really who could afford that? Well now you can, here is a web site that offers very cheap glasses, starting at $9.00.

From Helmet of Mambrino (I have no idea what that title means)

Here are pictures of the glasses I got. I could take shots of me wearing them but I figure no one wants to see my fat mug.

These cost $8. I got them with dark blue on the inside. So they look almost completely black. I like these for their sheer nerdiness.

More than meets the blue eye: You may all be related

If you have blue eyes, you may be related to every other blue-eyed person in the world. Researchers in Denmark have found that every person with blue eyes descends from just one "founder," an ancestor whose genes mutated 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Before then, everyone had brown eyes. Lead scientist Hans Eiberg, a geneticist at Copenhagen University, began in 1973 to study a Danish father with 17 children who carried the gene for both blue and brown eyes. Over time, researchers were able to trace the blue-eyed trait to one specific area near a gene called OCA2.... Continue reading at USA Today...

I ran across this little gem today...

Americans Reveal What Turns Them On and Off About Eyeglasses
Essilor of America, the makers of Crizal® Alizé(tm), a new anti-reflective eyeglass lens with unsurpassed cleanability and durability, recently asked more than 3,000 men and women about their eyeglass perceptions. Covering everything from sexy, spectacle-sporting celebrities to eyeglass fashion, the survey reveals America's stand on specs.

Star-Struck Spectacles
Britney Spears tops the charts again, but this time it's for being rated the sexiest eyeglass-wearing celebrity among men (44 percent). For women, all eyes were on Richard Gere, who topped their list at 35 percent.

continue reading at beauty.about.com...

Here are some sophisticated Avada frames for the fellows:

or maybe this Prada frame:

Those are designer frames, running about $160 (Avada) or $225 (Prada) after you add lenses. Though expensive, this is well off the $500+ you would pay retail. If you are looking for something a little more reasonable, check out the Prague frame at 39dollarglasses.com. It costs, well 39 bucks, including prescription lenses, and is shown here:

Well, that's all from me on this Funday-Sunday. Have a great working week, everyone!

From time to time I'll surf over to Yahoo answers and respond to various questions about how to buy eyewear online. For a little weekend reading, I found a few interesting questions:

TheChosenOne asks, "How do you safely clean your eyeglasses?"
Binky asks, "Where can I buy these [Baby Phat] eyeglasses?"
Overcast ponders, "If eyeglasses did not exist in ancient history, how did people with poor vision see?"
Tictact needed advice, "[What are good] choices of eyeglasses for broad and chubby face?"

and easily my favorite:
"Can eyeglasses change the size of your ears?"

I wish all of you a great weekend. It is a beautiful day here in Colorado, I should probably go skiing...

Would you buy glasses online? That’s one thing I haven’t bought online yet, but I probably would if I wasn’t buying glasses because I lost or destroyed my previous pair. Continue reading at The Deets

"Dark shades such as grey and black are the more preferred ones in terms of the lens colour. Unlike earlier, colours such as light pink and blue are completely out and these days people prefer to go for frames that are made of plastic and that come with different layered and coloured effects. Red and white and red and black are pretty successful combinations. The tortoise shell effect is also extremely popular," she adds.

continue reading at DNA...

Best Buy Eyeglasses, where you can save 40% on Designer Sunglasses

Bifocals Can Be a Pain in the Neck
By Matthew Shulman


When it comes to reading small print and seeing oncoming traffic from a distance, bifocals are a sure bet. But the dual-purpose lenses aren't great at "in between" distances—for example, from chair to computer screen.

So bifocal wearers commonly adopt a working posture that can strain the neck muscles and result in neck pain and piercing headaches. They extend the neck forward to bring the screen into closer view, tilting the head to focus through the lower segments of the lenses, says Richard Guyer, a spine surgeon with the Texas Back Institute and a past president of the North American Spine Society. In some people, the pain extends beyond the neck to the shoulder and can radiate down the nerves to the hands, sometimes resulting in shoulder and elbow injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome, according to Joseph Kleinkort, a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association and an ergonomic consultant.

It doesn't take a spine surgeon, though, to correct the problem. Kleinkort recommends getting a pair of trifocals—essentially bifocals with a third, middle lens for the intermediate zone some 18 to 24 inches away. Another option is progressive lenses, which are typically prescribed for older patients with presbyopia and are made with a single, seamless lens that changes magnification depending on the angle. These lenses "allow you to find the best region in the glasses for whatever distance your task demands," says Lynn Gordon, a neuro-ophthalmologist at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles. Progressive contact lenses are also available.

The ergonomics of your workspace also play a role in relieving the aches. Simply changing the position of the computer monitor, in fact, may do the job. According to Richard Bunch, a physical therapist and clinical associate professor at Tulane University Medical School who consults on ergonomics, lowering the monitor so that the head and neck can remain in a neutral position and the chin level to the floor—whether or not you wear corrective lenses—can work wonders for neck pain. And be sure to sit up tall with your head centered over your shoulders to increase blood flow and lessen the burden on your neck.