An extraordinary eye operation

This is crazy stuff. A woman in BC has become one of the first three in Canada to benefit from a rare operation that involves essentially embedding one of her own teeth in her eye.

Ms. Lane went blind 11 years ago, and thought she would never see again. But she has a particular kind of blindness that can be cured by a very peculiar operation. A tooth is extracted and implated in the patient's cheek for three months, where it accumulates a covering of tissue that then allows it to be implanted in the eye, modified with a telescopic lens (I kid you not!). And somehow - magically, medically - this allows the scarred cornea in this kind of blindness to heal, and for the patient to see. 

It's an extraordinary and improbable medical advance, but it seems to work. Ms. Lane now has good vision, and and a whole new lease on life.

Talk about giving her eye teeth!

Another Summer of Summer

We're having ourselves another Summer of Summer.

Canadian teen swimming phenom Summer McIntosh is bringing in the hardware again at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. On winning her third gold medal of the meet, the 200-metre butterfly, she didn't even look that pleased. In fact, she could clearly be seen mouthing "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" (She definitely wasn't saying "Fiddlesticks! Fiddlesticks! Fiddlesticks!") 

The reason? She missed out on breaking another world record by 0.18 of a second, a record set back in 2009 by China's Liu Zige, at a time when the now-banned "supersuits" had just come out, but before they were banned.

That's how good she is: she expects to beat world records, even world records set under dubious circumstances. She's currently on track for five individual gold medals, a feat only ever achieved by the great Michael Phelps.