Yahoo! Answers

Hey Guys,

People who make grammatical errors drive me nuts. Or should I say, people whom make grammatical mistakes drive me nuts? How do you know when to say who and when to say whom?

The American Heritage Book of English Usage puts it like this: “Who is used for a grammatical subject, where a nominative pronoun such as I or he would be appropriate, and whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition.”

OK, great, but what the heck’s a nominative pronoun and what’s a preposition? Basically (and I had to look it up), a nominiative pronoun acts as the subject of a verb. For example, “Who put my underpants in the freezer?” Use the word “who” if you could swap “who” for pronouns like “I” or “she.”

Contrast that to the object of a verb, also known as a direct object. That’s when you use “whom.” An example of that would be: “You saw whom near the freezer, looking all suspicious?” Use “whom” if you can replace it with “him” or “her.” If a pronoun ends with the letter “m,” it’s an object.

The Yahoo! Style Guide puts it like this: “One trick for finding the correct form is to recast the sentence in your mind, substituting he and him for who or whom. If him sounds correct, use whom.” Keep this in mind as well: “Sometimes it’s better to just rewrite a sentence to avoid a potential grammatical error or a grammatically correct but awkward or formal-sounding construction.”

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

You know how when you’re at a party and you crack your knuckles, there’s always that one guy who says you’re going to get arthritis? Is he right? Does cracking your knuckles really cause joint problems?

Nope. Cracking your knuckles is perfectly safe. When you crack your knuckles what you’re really doing is popping the joint in and out of its socket. The knuckle is held in place with a lubricant called synovial fluid. When you crack ‘em, the bones pull apart away a bit and the pressure that surrounds the fluid reduced. Bubbles form and then pop. That’s the sound you’re hearing and experts call it cavitation.

It usually takes about half an hour before you can crack again. That’s because it takes a while for “the gas to redissolve into the joint fluid. During this period of time, your knuckles won’t crack,” according to HowStuffWorks.

As for whether or not you’re hurting yourself, fear not. A doctor from The Johns Hopkins University explains that any risks associated with knuckle cracking are minor. “There is no evidence that cracking knuckles causes any damage such as arthritis in the joints.” However, one study did find that people who cracked their knuckles often did have reduced grip strength.

If, like me, you’re addicted to knuckle cracking, you might find this article from Scientific American a good read. Here’s the gist: A kid was told that the habit would lead to problems. Over 50 years, he did an experiment in which he cracked the knuckles on his left hand often. He cracked his right hand rarely. “There was no arthritis in either hand, and no apparent differences between the two hands,” he concluded

In other words, crack away.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

Baseball is the sport of choice for stat nerds. There are home runs (HR), earned run averages (ERA), runs batted in (RBIs), and, of course, strikeouts (K). But hold up — why are strikeouts abbreviated with a “K” instead of “S”? Here’s the scoop.

According to legend, the credit goes to an old school sports writer named Henry Chadwick. Apparently, Chadwick used “K” for a strikeout because the letter “K” is the last letter of the word “struck.”

Why didn’t he just use “S”? Good question. According to The Straight Dope, it’s because Chadwick had already used the “S” as shorthand for sacrifice hits. So, he went with “K.”

Chadwick, a respected sportswriter, was largely responsible for creating much of the shorthand that baseball fans use on scorecards. You know how during a double play the announcers will say something like, “That was a 6-4-3″? That’s due to Chadwick, who came up with the system used to number the fielders. A shortstop is “6,” a second baseman is “4,” a first baseman is “3,” and so on. That’s still in use today.

Chadwick died in 1908 and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously in 1938. According to the Hall, Chadwick wrote the first hard-cover book on baseball ever.

Thanks for reading and let’s play ball,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

With the rise of the casual office, the men’s necktie has lost much of its mojo. Who came up with the necktie in the first place?

Opinions vary, but many believe the concept originated in Croatia. Sometime during the thirty years war of the 17th century, Croatian soldiers visited King Louis XIV of France. The soldiers apparently wore loose scarves around their necks. Louis liked the look. “By 1650, Louis and his court were wearing Croatian neck scarves instead of the full lace ruffs that had previously been fashionable.”

Some argue that the necktie goes much further back. The terracotta soldiers buried with Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti seem to wear a kind of neck scarf that may be a type of early necktie. That’s from 210 B.C. Another possible originator — Ancient Rome. On a marble column constructed in 113 A.D., a group of soldiers appear to have neckwear.

Whether those instances “count” as neckties is open to debate, but most folks give King Louis XIV credit with making the look popular. Sister site Ask Yahoo! explains: “Exiled King Charles II of England brought the French cravat with him when he returned to his throne. Englishmen soon began sporting stylish neck scarves and tied them in as many as 100 different knots.”

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

Whenever something can go wrong, it will go wrong. That cynical bit of wisdom is known as Murphy’s Law. But who was Murphy and why was he such a Gloomy Gus?

In the late 1940s, Air Force engineer Edward A. Murphy worked at Edwards Air Force Base near Los Angeles. In 1949, the dawn of the jet age, it was Captain Murphy’s job to figure out how much rapid deceleration the human body could tolerate. The findings would help inform future plane design.

Murphy went about this task as best he could. He instructed his assistant to mount 16 different accelerometers to a human subject. The idea was to use the instruments to measure how well the human body could tolerate the force of gravity. A rocket sled, with the human aboard, would take off super fast and then come to a quick stop.

Unfortunately, the assistant installed the accelerometers the wrong way. Upon hearing this, Murphy was said to have proclaimed, “If there is anyway to do it wrong, he’ll find it.” The comment was picked up by the press. And before long, “Murphy’s Law” became an idiom meaning “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

And that’s the story of Murphy’s Law. It’s a law that everybody, at one time or another, follows. Whether they want to or not.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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