Optician Online - The Big Optometry Blog

I recently had to do some research to create an optical quiz. During the process I came across a range of interesting facts. It never ceases to amaze me what opticians through the years have got up to and clearly this has always been the case. One such maverick was Hatschek bela .
He was an optician and the first man in Hungary to have a car. Apparently Arch Duke Ferdinand mistook the noise of his vehicle as an assassination attempt during a visit to the city. If only he had always been so alert.

This Friday's Optician will carry a story on the latest Mintel report. Among its suggestions is that glasses may become part of a company uniform.
I began to think about what brands different jobs could adopt.

Zoo keepers Animal
managers Boss
Petrol pump attendents Diesel
Landlords Lulu Guiness

I was going to have a stab at Playboy but decided against

Optometrists are generally perceived to have received poorer treatment than doctors and dentists over their NHS contracts, but government contracts are not the only area in which optics receives a worse deal in comparison to other health services.

Optics in the arts is another area which could lead practitioners to feel aggrieved over the indifference shown to their profession by filmmakers and musicians. Television doctors are extremely common with some prominent examples being Dr Karl Kennedy in Neighbours, Star Trek's Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy and Dick Van Dyke's Dr Mark Sloan from Diagnosis Murder. Doctors in film are similar common with portrayals of the profession in such classics as Frankenstein and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Set in the Vietnam war, M*A*S*H's Hawkeye and Hot Lips bought screen fame to physicians.

Even dentistry is reasonably represented on screen, with the character of Jennifer Aniston's husband being a dentist in the television series Friends, while who can forget Lawrence Olivier's chilling portrayal of a Nazi dentist in Marathon Man? A similarly memorable performance of a German dentist came from Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes. In fact a search on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for dentist brings up 39 films with the term dentist actually in the title, including six films simply titled The Dentist, 2006's Vampire Dentist as well as The Avenging Dentist and The Kaiser's New Dentist. However the Swedish Dentist does not sound like mainstream cinema.

An IMDB search for optician or optometrist does not yield any results at all and if anybody can remember an optical professional in film or television please add a comment.

A lyric search for optician or optometrist show that the profession has not been referenced by any musicians of greater note than Ulster punk band, Stiff Little Fingers who sang: 'I want to be dead the optician said 20 20 but you stumbled round like you were blind.'

So what to you make of this imbalance? While the drama of a casualty ward might naturally inspire writers, horror films aside surely optometry deserves as much screen devotion as dentistry?

Anyone attending Independents Day last week will have seen optometrist and staff development consultant Sarah Morgan in full voice.
Here is a short clip of her at the Nivea funny women awards. If anyone has the full version from ID '08 put it on You Tube and I'll create a link.
There was more than a hint of theatricality at ID 08. Fellow presenter Wendy Sethi also broke out into song. Unfortunately she wasn't on You Tube so I can't share that with you. Her performance was pretty steamy I can tell you and very popular with some male sections of the audience.

A recent post linking comedy and optics has really got people going. Have a look at this clip. Who says optics isn't funny

One of the great things about being the editor of Optician is the chance to try out the various bits of eyewear that pass through the office.
As a cyclist I find I get through more than my fair share of specs. You would be amazed how many lenses disintegrate when faced with a daily dose of road spray and lens cleaner.
Every now and again a piece comes along that is a dream to wear and I thought I would share with you. Oakley's Radar.
I have had a fair bit of fun with this frame. In its first outing I wore the frame when I was a bouncer at my kids' school disco. I wore a DJ and this frame and the kids loved it.
As a consequence I had to wear it for the cycle home, I'm using Ortho K at the moment so all of my cycling specs are Rx'ed, it was great so it sort of stuck!
If you have any cyclists coming into your practice complaining of problems with wind/dust/bugs in the eyes on fast descents point them in the direction of this.
Sadly the frame is only on loan so my Radar love will be over.

Having recently enjoyed reading Portuguese author José Saramago's novel Blindness, I thought it worth a post as not only does it deal with a epidemic of ocular disorder on a grand scale but has also been made into a film that features Mark Ruffalo as a ophthalmologist.

The film version is directed by Fernando Meirelles, whose previous credits include City of God and The Constant Gardener, and also stars Julianne Moore as the only person left with sight after a wave of blindness and attendant chaos sweeps across a unspecified city.

Despite a lukewarm critical reception at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year, this is surely a must-see for optical folk?

Credit crunch.bmp

I am not often moved to comment on rivals but I was shocked and dismayed by OT 's decision last week to publish a story about a 19 year old woman posing naked in adverts for an optician.
Not only did OT not specify if she was a registered optometrist but they didn't publish the advert in question.
If you are going to indulge in that sort of tawdry, gutter journalism at least publish the pictures of the woman in the buff.
If you want to see Sara Nicoletti's pose please carry on reading....

What with all the latest excitement about Bat Man I stumbled across the picture below and couldn't resist. Unfortunately ( see Optician on friday) not something that is likley to happen again in the future.

Seth Belson of Essex thought the following link might prove interesting/amusing to Optician readers.
As someone who works with words I take no pleasure in typographical errors.
There are the obvious effects/affects, in optics the missing first 'h' in ophthalmology etc. Hong Kong is always worth a second look and we alsomost had a bit of pubic scrutiny in Optician last week.
This has to be one of the classics though.