First Posted: 3/25/2012
By Samantha Weaver
• It was Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw who made the following sage observation: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
• We’re all familiar with the act of CPR – we often see a film or television character come to the rescue and save a life using the technique. And on TV, according to a recent study, CPR is shown as being successful 75 percent of the time. The reality is not quite so rosy, though. A study conducted in 2010 found that when CPR is used in real life, only about 8 percent of the patients were still alive after one month. Of those who did survive that long, 97 percent couldn’t live a normal life.
• Do you suffer from astraphobia? If so, I hope you don’t live in Florida. Those who are afraid of lightning would be terrified in the Sunshine State, especially in Tampa, known as the lightning capital of the world.
• Researchers in the United Kingdom have invented a robot that eats slugs and is powered by the gas from the decaying creatures. They have dubbed their creation the SlugBot.
• For six generations, many members of the Fugate family of the Appalachian region of Kentucky have suffered from a rare blood disorder called methemoglobinemia. The disorder seems to have no adverse health effects, but it’s not at all difficult to diagnose it at a glance: Sufferers have blue skin. Not just a slight tinge, either; various family members have been described as “blue as Lake Louise,” “the bluest woman I ever saw” and “almost purple.”
