Read this and you'll look smart. You don't have to be intelligent to impress people -- you just have to fake it. Here's a daily list of fascinating articles that will wow your friends, surprise your co-workers and make you seem sharp at a cocktail party or over the lunch counter....
- Can you measure a recovering drug addicts' success? Apparently the answer is no. Not even Alcoholics Anonymous publishes data on members' success rates. Drug rehab may not be all it's cracked up to be, and with no standard guidelines or proof of effectiveness some are calling into question the whole process.
- A robot named Hector is helping engineers fix the underwater cables severed during a seabed earthquake that left the Middle East, Africa and Asia without internet and phone access.
- A suspect in a car theft was arrested in Finland after police took blood from a mosquito in a stolen vehicle and it matched it with a sample on file.
- The infamous shoe that was hurled at President Bush has helped create 100 new jobs. The owner of the Istanbul-based Baydan Shoe Company had to recruit an additional 100 staffers to help meet orders for 300,000 pairs of the model 271 shoe.
- A retired professor created a pair of glasses that he hopes will help the world's underprivileged see. The glasses can be adjusted or "tuned" by the wearer without the need for a prescription.
- The nation's first commercial hydrokinetic turbine has been placed into the waters of the Mississippi River. The 35-kilowatt turbine harnesses power from moving water without a construction of a dam.
