An Auckland man was left partially blind because of an infection as a result of wearing a pair of coloured contact lenses for several days.

President of the Cornea and Contact Lens Society Dr Trevor Gray says the industry needs to be more controlled to prevent similar tragedies.

One option is to make all contact lenses prescription only.

While in no way minimising the tragedy of the loss, nor impugning the motivation of Doctor Gray, I think this might not have been the best example to use as a media lever for greater regulation.

The victim borrowed the novelty contact lenses from a friend. How would the legislation proposed by opthamolgists influence that? It wouldn't, it wouldn't have as much effect as the now well publicised risks will have. And I doubt there'll be any water drinking contests run as a result of the "Hold Your Wee For A Wii" in the US.

Even regulation would not prevent further occurrences, many things occur even when there is regulation and information in abundance.

We don't need regulation and experts forced on us, it is probably sufficient to publicise the problem, and its regrettable that the publicity only arises from our media, and/or that we pay attention, when there is a tragedy.

In response to a Telecom marketing initiative linking broadband to education, Steve Biddle at Geekzone expressed some reasonable concern about kids relying on the Interweb as a source of credible information.

I'd go further and be concerned if anyone was using any single source of information for any purpose.

Teachers, text-books (Feynman's experience), parents, poets, priests, politicians, the books in the library, newspapers, TV news; all suffer from weaknesses, biases and plain inaccuracy.

There's no perfect source and trying to identify it is not the skill that's needed. Discrimination is whats required, to learn to discern at best the probable accuracy taking into account source and a whole lot more.

So I agree, kids shouldn't rely on the Interweb, or anything else in isolation.

"Many eyeballs make all bugs shallow" also works in reverse.

This multi-source approach is acknowleged in the press release:

“The great thing about using broadband is that you can do so in conjunction with other excellent learning resources such as library and text books” — Telecom GM of Consumer Marketing Kevin Bowler.

The line I heard and like about Wikipedia is that it might be the first place you go, but should never be the last.

And if schoolkids using it for homework is a concern, how about the American mid-term elections?