3 topics from boxofdelights

[oursin]

Glasses
What I have worn since I was 8 or so years old for myopia + astigmatism. There was a period - a decade or so? - during which I wore contact lenses, first the hard sort and then the soft ones. I think this was either just before the extended-wear ones had come in or they were only just becoming a thing, because these were the ones that had to be put in in the morning and taken out at night and involved various paraphernalia of equipment to keep them in and consumables to sterilise them with. And I had various infections and problems and finally went back to glasses. A decision probably made easier by the rise of ultralight optical plastic lenses, though my sense is that the whole business has got more sophisticated with varifocals, transitional lenses that darken in sunlight, etc, over the years. And more expensive...

A comet
I don't think I've ever managed to see a comet: questions of timing and overcast skies and so on. On comets more generally, I have lately been put off an otherwise well-reviewed novel about women astronomers by hearing that it erases the existence of Caroline Herschel, an astronomer and discoverer of comets of such renown that there is absolutely no way she would have been unknown in astronomical circles of the period. WOT. I am used to her contemporary poor Mary Somerville being erased from the record, though she was famed enough in her day as a polymath to have her bust at the Royal Society, but Herschel was not only famed, she was salaried (rather than coming as a freebie with husband, father, or brother).

A bridge
Oddly enough the night before I saw this answer I'd been having a dream about bridges - some kind of discussion about the bridges of Venice compared to those of Florence - and crossing a bridge over a sort of moat, and planks were missing and it was all a bit dodgy (symbolic??). However, for a particular bridge, I will actually give you the world's highest arched brick viaduct - which I knew was impressive from seeing it from my earliest years, but didn't realise was quite so world-class!

If anyone still wants 3 random topics, ask away.