Rotundus.com

I'm of the opinion that spending hundreds of dollars for a tiny little bit of metal - glasses - is outrageous, even if I can claim a large part of the cost back through insurance. Thus, when acquiring a new pair of glasses shortly before my travels earlier this year, I also put in an order for a second pair at Goggles4u.com, a company based out of Pakistan.

Just by looking can you tell which is the more expensive pair? (Yes, I'm not the most photogenic of individuals).

The online-purchased pair has slightly thinner lenses than the store-bought pair I think, with me having purchased the highest-index lenses that they offered. Yet even with that the cost of the online pair (+ lenses) was about $50 including shipping, compared to over $400 for the store-bought version.

The online version showed up bent a bit out of shape. The shipping materials seemed quite adequate to the task of protecting the glasses in transit, so I'm guessing that that was the way that they were in the factory. It looked like someone had nicked one of the earpieces with a knife though, presumably when installing the lenses.

The online pair feels a bit tight around the head, although that could be due to me having gotten used to a somewhat unusual type of arms on my store-bought glasses. The store-bought frames bend outwards quite a bit with a different ear piece, and as a result don't fit in normal glass cases. Even if I where to find a wider pair of glasses the two online-purchased pairs in total would only cost 20% of the store-bought pair.

Another criticism of the online pair of glasses would be their weight - they're probably 2-3x as heavy as the store-version. (Goggles4u may have pairs with lighter weight but their search engine doesn't allow you to search by that, even though they do provide some information as to the weight of the glasses).

(The answer, by the way, to my earlier question is that the mail-order glasses are the ones on the left).

I was watching the June 19th edition of the Colbert Report (viewable in its entirety online in Canada and the United States) and stumbled across a disturbing conversation:

Colbert: Mr. Monster, why have you abandoned cookies?

Cookie Monster: Me not abandon cookies. Me love cookies. Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya. But, one cannot live on cookies alone. No. Me now know that cookies are sometimes food. Ya.

Colbert: Right. Because sometimes you have to pause and open a new sleeve of oreos.

Cookie Monster: No. You eat cookies after you eat healthy food like soup or vegetables.

It seems like my world has been turned upside-down, and there's CBS news to corroborate this tragic tale. Next thing you know, N.T. Wright and the Cookie Monster will appear on the same TV show.

Am I alone in considering the summer months the most boring time of year? Some people talk of seasonal affective disorder as something that happens due to a lack of sunlight in the winter - I think that I must suffer from the opposite.

Perhaps part of the problem is that I live by the academic calendar, which tends to mean being ridiculously busy and suffering from sleep withdrawal most of the time roughly September through April. Then through those long and dreary summer months my calendar is virtually empty.

Let's see:

1. no classes to attend,
2. no classes to teach,
3. no TV to watch,
4. church flips to summer mode - missing the christian ed. component,
5. and most other, regular events seem to be cancelled,

"Go outside you nerd!" you might say. I do spend a decent chunk of time there though. I'd guess that I average 1-2 hours each day outside pretty much year round. My roommate used to laugh at me when my glasses would fog up after going on long walks in the winter but given the choose between -20C and mosquitos I think that I'd opt for the former most of the time.

Do you really need four months to go camping, spend gardening, or mowing your lawn?

From the Australian:

According to research conducted by the US Department of Energy and General Motors, nearly nine out of 10 women (88 per cent) say they'd rather chat up someone who owns the latest fuel-efficient car versus the latest sports car. It gets worse. Eighty per cent of American car buyers would find someone with the latest fuel-efficient car more interesting to talk to at a party than someone with the latest sports car. And, more than 4 out of 10 (45 per cent) 18- to 43-year-olds say it's a fashion faux pas nowadays to have a car that's not green or environmentally friendly.

I'll consider this another sign that people's relationships with the automotive world are headed in a more sane direction.

Personally I intend to wait at least until something like the CityZENN is released before I think about replacing my fuel-efficient beater car. Interestingly Zenn is a Canadian-based company. Their current production models are low-speed vehicles with a short-commute capacity. The cityZenn seems to be their entry into the "real car" category. Their plan is for a fully-electric car with a top speed of 125 KPH and a range of 400 KM. Their plan seems relatively realistic if the EEStor technology actually works (batteries with 1/10th the weight and volume of the batteries used in current electric cars and hybrids).