Sunglasses for Winter--Tell Your Customers

"Skiing on fresh snow, skating on reflective ice or hiking at high altitudes can be harder on your eyes than a day at the beach. Snow, as many East Coast readers may have noticed this week, reflects nearly 80 percent of the sun’s rays. Dry beach sand? Just 15 percent." That's the start of a great how-to article about sunglasses appearing in today's NYTimes. Reprint highlights from article to give to customers. Send them an email. Post a link on your web, Facebook, and Twitter sites. 

How Soldiers Protect Eyes from Explosions

The NYTimes blog by C.J. Chivers starts: "Late in the afternoon on May 27, 2010, a Marine and Afghan foot patrol working in the scrub and dunes along the Helmand River in Afghanistan unknowingly walked up to a hidden bomb." Read on if you want to find out more.

Just Because We Like Baseball, the Yankees, and Eyeglasses

"Ryne Duren, the star relief pitcher for two Yankee World Series teams who stared down batters through thick-lensed eyeglasses and then delivered fastballs that might go just about anywhere, died Thursday at his home in Lake Wales, Fla. He was 81," says a NYTimes post.

Eyes Windows to One's Soul; Tears May Be Its Language

According to a NYTimes post, "research, published on Thursday in the journal Science, could begin to explain something that has baffled scientists for generations: Why do humans, unlike seemingly any other species, cry emotional tears? In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks."

A Great 2011 for Opticians?

Will 2011 bring a retail rebound for opticians? If Christmas sales are a sign of things to come, then yes. "After a 6 percent free fall in 2008 and a 4 percent uptick last year, retail spending rose 5.5 percent in the 50 days before Christmas, exceeding even the more optimistic forecasts, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which tracks retail spending," according to a NYTimes post.

The Times also reported:

Analysts offered several theories for the rebound in spending while the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high.

Stocks have soared to their highest levels in more than two years...

Pent-up demand is also showing up among middle-income shoppers: in government surveys, consumers have been expressing rising confidence for the last five months.

The luxury segment started heating up in late summer, said Joel Bines, a director in the global retail practice at AlixPartners....

The sales figures were bolstered by improved inventory controls among many retailers.

Patients Avoid Eye Exams

Eye care professionals have something in common with dental professionals. Despite their fear of losing their vision, many people avoid eye exams, according to a posting in the NYTimes. "Joe Lovett was scared, really scared. Being able to see was critical to his work as a documentary filmmaker and, he thought, to his ability to live independently. But longstanding glaucoma threatened to rob him of this most important sense — the sense that more than 80 percent of Americans worry most about losing, according to a recent survey."