Designers help people to see and medicine to hitch a ride with cola
“Designs of the Year” include two to improve the health of people in developing countries. A pair of spectacles has lenses filled with liquid silicon via mini-syringes hidden in the arms. The wearer simply adjusts a dial to fill the lens (so changing its shape) until the world comes into focus. With optometrists in short supply in these countries, these spectacles eliminate expert fitting and 1 billion people could finally see for the first time. Another design enables lifesaving oral rehydration salts to reach children with diarrhea by hitching a lift in a crate of cola!
April is the cruellest month…
I wonder if T.S. Eliot1 was suffering from diarrhoea when he wrote this line? I believe English literary history generally has him down as recuperating from a nervous breakdown at the time, but who knows?2 So what is the tenuous link between T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and diarrhoea? It’s not necessarily what you’re thinking…