Researcher Takes Aim at Alien Abductions – Yahoo! News

Take a look at the story above. It’s an interesting story, but the really noteworthy thing is the web advertisement for Bausch and Lomb Soflens Multi-Focal contact lenses. It’s hard to ignore, because the tagline keeps changing – one line is “Read your news. Without reading glasses.”. At least it’s in soothing colors and doesn’t cycle too fast, so it’s relatively easy to ignore.

But here’s the really annoying part. When you roll your mouse pointer over the advertisement, the clear image is replaced with a much larger image that covers the first few paragraphs of the news story, so that it appears to be completely blurred. The ad part stays in sharp focus, but there’s a “magnifying glass” you can click on to read the ad copy in the blurred-out portion. It’s still really hard to read, but at least you can get the gist. Which is, of course, that the product will benefit those of us who probably should be wearing bi-focal glasses by now, but who’ve been getting along by moving our glasses up and down the bridges of our noses, or by wearing contact lenses with one strength in one eye, and a different strength in the other eye.

Show of hands? It’s not just me, I know.

The really annoying thing is that I’d probably be interested in this product come January, when it’s time to replace my specs and/or contacts.