STRANGE BUT TRUE

• 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.

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Thought for the Day: “A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, ‘At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas.”’ — Claude Pepper

(c) 2012 King Features Synd., Inc.