Friday Snippets and Soundbites

Did you miss "Snippets and Soundbites" last week when the ec team (and we hope, you!) were all celebrating the holiday with our friends and family?

We hope so!

And we hope this week's stories get your first weekend in December off to a good start. Here we go!

Where the books are. 

Regina M. Smith loves to read, but she's currently without a job, so buying books isn't really in the budget. But that's not really a problem when her local Anniston, Ala., library is full of books she can check out for free with a library card. Which she has. But instead, the 42-year-old woman was arrested this week for stealing books from the library. Police say Smith had taken 222 books valued at $5,432 over the past couple of years. Her top picks? Crime novels, mysteries and vampire stories. A police investigator said the woman had a valid library card, but sneaked the books out and kept them rather than using it to check them out. To learn more, go here.


There's an app for that.
iPhones have definitely revolutionized the way we use our cell phones, with apps, games, and any number of special function. But a California man is taking his love for the iPhone and its applications a step further: he credits an app for helping him to save a player's life. Eric Cooper, a basketball coach, had downloaded an app called Phone Aid and studied CPR the night before his teen's basketball game. One of his players, Xavier Jones, stumbled, stopped, and collapsed during the game on the day before Thanksgiving. Seeing that Jones wasn't breathing, Cooper and his assistant coach delivered CPR and got the teen breathing again. Jones heart had also apparently stopped. He was later diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a sometimes-deadly thickening of the heart that impedes blood flow. To learn more, go here.

It's a tough economy.
Things have been a little tight financially lately, but Iowa's prison system is finding an interesting way to cut down on costs. Their inmates could soon be manufacturing the toilet paper that will be used in the prisons. Inmates at two prisons are testing a single-ply toilet paper processed at a Missouri prison. Officials say the Iowa inmates could start processing their own toilet paper next year if the state legislature supports the idea. Iowa prisons use about 900,000 rolls of toilet paper a year. Officials estimate that processing it in-house would save about $100,000 a year. It would also create jobs for the inmates. To learn more, go here.