Yahoo! Answers

Hey Guys,

Seen a movie or TV show in the last 25 years? If so, you probably noticed that on screen, 99% of phone numbers start with “555.” Is this a law of some kind, or just a case of Hollywood not wanting to accidentally use a real phone number? Here’s the deal…

The 555 phenomenon is well documented on the Web. And the expert researchers at The Straight Dope covered this exact topic way back in 1978. According to TSD, the “555″ prefix was “created in 1973 — no matter where you are, dialing the 555 number plugs you into directory assistance.” Interesting, and no doubt accurate when it was written, but I suspected phone conventions have changed a bit in the last 30+ years.

TV Acres writes that movies and TV shows use 555 mostly as a favor to the public. The convention “was designed to prevent people from receiving crank calls when a phone was mentioned on a TV show or movie.” Ask Yahoo!, a site I used to write for, explains that the number 555 was likely chosen by the entertainment industry because “in the old exchange-name telephone number system (think Pennsylvania 6-5000), no English place names contained the combination of the letters J, K, and L — all assigned to the digit “5″ on the phone. So, the prefix 555 went largely unused.” A “mind-numbingly comprehensive” site lists just about every movie or TV show to have used a 555 number.

While most movies and TV shows use 555, there are some rebels who don’t. For example, I watched the movie “House of the Devil” (obviously not a romantic-comedy) several weeks ago, and one of the characters mentions a phone number that does not begin with 555. I’d gotten so used to hearing “555-whatever” that I actually did a bit of a double take.

The most famous instance of an artist not using the 555 prefix is, of course, the 1982 song 867-5309 by Tommy Tutone. There are countless stories of people who were unfortunate enough to have that number when the song came out. No doubt that their having to explain that “Jenny doesn’t live here” got old very quickly. I couldn’t find any proof, but I suspect that understandable outrage had a lot to do with movies and TV shows sticking with 555-XXXX.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

This weekend, a movie that is destined for greatness hits theaters: “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Yes, I really am that excited. While “HTTM” is the first movie to combine time travel with a dirty Jacuzzi, it’s far from the first flick to send characters back or forward in time.

To many moviegoers, the genre began with “Back to the Future,” that timeless flick (bad pun intended) from 1985 in which a teenager played by Michael J. Fox travels back to 1955 and runs into the teenage version of his parents. I’d argue that BTTF is the most famous example, but the genre started a long time earlier.

Near as I can tell, the first major movie to feature time travel came in 1931, when Will Rogers starred in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” Of course, that was an adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic novel, and not an original story. Twain’s novel, more comedy than science fiction, was published in 1889. “The Time Machine,” by HG Wells, was published several years later. Bartleby writes that “The Time Machine” “launched the time-travel genre.”

In the years since those books (and later movies) brought the idea of time travel to the main stream, there have been dozens of films that take audiences either back or forward in time. “Planet of the Apes” whipped Charlton Heston thousands of years forward to an era when primates rule the Earth and speak with English accents. “Peggy Sue Got Married” took the opposite approach, sending its protagonist back to her own high school with the knowledge that her future husband wasn’t all he was cracked up to be.

There has been considerable debate among people who are much smarter than me on whether or not time travel is really possible. Some say that no matter how much you trick your silver DeLorean or hot tub, time travel is a scientific impossibility. Others, including Albert Einstein, have argued that “time is simply what a clock reads.”

So, two questions for you guys. First, what’s the all time greatest time travel movie? And second, do you honestly believe we’ll ever time travel? Leave a comment below, and I’ll see you in the future (well, next week).

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

Let’s talk about excuses for a moment.

Everyone likes to say they don’t like them (“No excuses, people!”), but most of us couldn’t get by without using at least one a week. Some of my favorites include: “My alarm didn’t go off,” “It must have gone to my spam filter,” and “But I didn’t know you were allergic to fish.” Each of those comes in handy, but all owe a debt of gratitude to the grand-daddy of all excuses: “My dog ate my homework.”

Dropping the “dog” line is, of course, now more of a joke now than actual excuse. (Although, for the record, dogs have been known to eat homework on occasion. Slippers, too.) I set out to discover who coined this phrase, but met strong resistance from an Internet that didn’t want to give up the information.

First, I searched on “dog ate my homework origin.” Nothing. I then changed tactics and tried “excuse origin dog ate my homework.” Again, not much. Could it be that nobody knows who coined one of the most famous phrases in the English language? I wasn’t about to give in so easily.

I did some more searches on Yahoo! Answers and then visited a few of my favorite word-origin sites. WordSmith? Nada. WorldWideWords? Nope. The Word Detective? Sorry. Even Phrases.org, a site that has saved my bacon more times than I can count, had nothing on the origin of the world’s lamest excuse.

Soooo, here’s the thing, readers. I was totally going to write an interesting column on who coined the most famous excuse of all time, but well, a dog apparently ate the answer. So now all I’m left with is a bunch of lame excuses. Arghh!

Obviously, I failed to track down an explanation for how this phrase came to exist. But I have faith in the Yahoo! Answers community. Please chime in with your theories and links. More than a few sites explain that “My computer crashed” and “The Internet was down” have replaced “My dog ate my homework.” Thoughts?

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

Everybody loves an underdog. But not everybody knows how they earned the nickname. In honor of the NCAA tournament and all the upsets that are sure to occur (go Murray State!), I set out to shed some light on the underdog. Here’s what I found out.

For those of you who don’t follow sports, an underdog refers to a team or individual who is generally expected to lose. Think: the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team upsetting the Soviets, or James “Buster” Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson. From what I can tell there are a couple of theories regarding the phrase’s origin.

According to one of my favorite sites, Phrases.org, many believe that the word got its start at the shipyard. “When wooden planks were sawn by hand, two men did the job using a two-handed saw. The senior man took the top handle, standing on the wood, and the junior took the bottom, in the saw-pit below.” Now, here’s where it starts to make sense. The wood was held in place by irons that were nicknamed “dogs.” Apparently, the man in the pit had the harder job, as it was far less comfortable. He became known as the underdog, while the guy above was the “top dog.”

Good story, and it makes sense to me, but Phrases.org points out that there’s no proof to back it up. Far more likely, the word was originally used in reference to dog fighting. The Online Etymology Dictionary explains that the word comes from “the beaten dog in a fight.” India’s national newspaper writes that bookies kept tabs on which dog won and which lost for future fights. The one likely to lose was labeled the underdog. WritersBlock.com adds that the term “may have originated in a popular 19th century song, entitled “The Under-Dog in the Fight.” Some lyrics: “But for me, I shall never pause to ask/Which dog may be in the right/For my heart will beat, while it beats at all/For the under-dog in the fight.” You can read a few stanzas here.

Do you guys have a favorite underdog? Rocky Balboa? The Chicago Cubs? The American auto industry? Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Over the past few weeks we’ve made several exciting new changes to the overall Answers experience including changes to the look and feel of the site, as well as a new search experience for Yahoo! Answers.

While these changes have taken place, many of you have had questions about where we have relocated your favorite features, and what changes lie ahead. Below you’ll find some of the most commonly asked questions and their answers.

Q: Previously, I could click on “My Profile” to go straight to my profile page. This link is gone—how do I get to this page now?

A: To easily access your profile page, you can either click on your name next to the “Hello” message, or, click on the “My Activity” tab to jump straight to your profile.

Q: Below my name there’s now an “invite your friends” link—what does this do?”

A:   Clicking on the “Invite your friends” link allows you to easily invite any of your friends to join you on Yahoo! Answers.  From this page, you can easily enter in the email addresses of your family and friend and encourage them to join you on Answers—that way if you’ve recently asked a question on Answers and think your Aunt Sally may know the Answer but know she’s not on Answers, you can easily get her on board, and, get her to answer your question!

Please note that if you’re a Level 1 member, instead of seeing “invite your friends” you’ll instead see a link reading, “What are points and levels?,” encouraging you to learn more about Answers. For members who are level 2 and higher, you’ll be seeing this link added in under the “About” tab in the near future.

Q: How do I see my suggested questions?

A: If you have suggested questions, they’ll show up on your homepage as they did before. Currently, we don’t have a message in place that tells you “there are no suggested questions available at this time” but we’re looking to add this back in the near future.

Q: How do I see my recent activity details?

A: To see your recent activity details, just click on the “My Activity” tab—from here, you can see your activity summary, your activity details, as well as your questions, answers, starred questions and your watchlist.

Also from this page, you can easily click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to edit the content found within your Answers profile, or, if you’re elsewhere on the Answers site, just hover back on the “My Activity” tab and click on the “Edit My Preferences” link to be taken to the same edit screen.

Q: Now that you’ve changed the look and feel of Answers, what’s next?

A: We always have a few tricks up our sleeve, so be on the lookout for new things heading your way. In the meantime, we still love hearing your thoughts about the new homepage and the changes to search, so please keep the constructive feedback coming!

If you have additional “how-to” questions about the new homepage or search, or, just want to tell us what you think, please leave a comment below or stop by the Suggestion Board!

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