When I was little my family would sit around the table at dinner (remember dinner with your family!?) and ask Dad to “Tell us a story about when you were little”. My daughter has asked me this question a lot of times. I thought that I’d pass along some of the stories I remember my Dad telling me when I was little.
Dad was what I would call a self made man. He grew up in Scranton, PA (think “The Office) where his mother was a stay at home Mom and his father was an Industrial Arts teacher. Dad graduated Valedictorian of his High School class and enrolled at MIT on scholarship. One evening he told us the story of Oliver Smoot, a fraternity pledge who was used as a measuring stick to see how many “Smoots” it took to get across the bridge from Boston to Cambridge. I remember the story as if it happened when Dad was at MIT in the early 1940′s but it appears that it happened in 1958. It seems a Fraternity brother thought it would be a good idea to use Smoot’s 5′ 7″ body as a unit of measurement and they painted a mark on the bridge for each 5′ 7″. Those marks are repainted every year by pledges to the same fraternity. You can check out the story in more detail here. Enjoy!
Did you know that one company, Luxottica Group S.p.A., makes eyeglasses under at least 36 brands? Brands such as Oakley, Ray-Ban, Revo, Vogue, Ann Klein, Brooks Brothers, Chaps, DKNY, Prada, Polo, Ralph Lauren, and Versace? Did you know that this same company has over 6400 retail outlets in the U.S., Canada, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom? Retail names such as Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical and K-Mart Optical. They also own EyeMed Vision Care, one of the leading managed vision care organizations in the U.S. They are the world’s largest eyewear company. Wordnet.princeton.edu defines monopoly as “a market where there are many buyers but only one seller”. Doesn’t that fit here? That’s not all. The founder, Leonardo Del Vecchio, is one of the top 50 richest men in the world. Think of that the next time you spend $400 for a pair of eyeglasses.
Why am I telling you all of this? I bought a new pair of glasses. I tried to do this online, in fact there is one particularly good site for advice if you are interested in doing it this way called GlassyEyes. It is harder to do this if you have a bifocal prescription like I do but not impossible. In the end, I decided to purchase a pair from Costco. Why? Simple. I found a frame that I liked there and the total price for the frame, progressive (no line bifocal) photochromic (automatically dims in bright light) lens, and coatings is $225. Not the cheapest but also not going to Luxottica either!
If you come to the site and some things aren’t working quite right it’s because I am trying out some new things. You can already see the new theme with room for our latest video in the upper right, there’s other stuff going on too. Drop a comment if there’s anything you’d like to know.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVhxvZaVlGo[/youtube]
