Yahoo! Answers

Hey Guys,

Food has a habit of falling on the floor (stupid gravity). The question then becomes: To eat or not to eat? Is there any truth to the adage that food that’s been on the floor for five seconds or less is safe to scarf?

According to legend, the idea originated with none other than Genghis Khan. According to The Citizen, historians have traced the maxim to the great military leader. Back then, it was known as the Khan Rule and it was a bit more liberal.

During post-victory banquets, Khan supposedly would declare that if food fell on the floor, it could stay there for 12 hours. Any longer than that, and you risked death.

Of course, that’s just a legend. Whether Khan actually had such a rule is anybody’s guess. What we do know is that the five-second rule (let alone the 12 hour rule) doesn’t make much sense. Snopes.com explains that researchers have done experiments and found that the amount of time a piece of food is on the floor really makes no difference. If the floor is dirty, so is the food.

“Bacteria and viruses grab on by contact, and even brief encounters of the split-second variety can be more than enough for them to claim a new home address. They harbor no respect for a time barrier of a specific number of seconds.”
Of course, a little bit of bacteria isn’t gonna hurt (well, probably not), but if the floor isn’t very clean, you’re probably better off tossing the food and starting again.

Thanks for reading,

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Hey Guys,

When a man dies and can’t be identified, police refer to him as a “John Doe.” Similarly, when an unidentified woman is found dead, she is called “Jane Doe.” Here’s why.

The Word Detective, an old school site from columnist Evan Morris, has the answer. Morris explains that the term dates back to the reign of England’s King Edward III. Back then, there was a legal debate going on about the Acts of Ejectment.

The debate had to do with a hypothetical landowner dubbed “John Doe” who rents property to “Richard Roe,” who then attempts to evict Doe from his own land. According to Morris, the debate was a “hallmark of legal theory.” The moniker John Doe became well known, both in and outside legal circles. Over the years, the name “John Doe” became synonymous with an unknown or unnamed person.

But let’s say there is more than one unidentified person involved in a case. What do we call the other people? Subsequent males are called “Richard Roe” and “John Stiles.” If there are two unknown females, the first is Jane Doe, and the second is Mary Major. In Roe vs. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case on the legality of abortions, “Jane Roe” was a combination of “Jane Doe” and “Richard Roe.” The plaintiff’s real name was Norma McCorvey.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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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,

Today’s cars can go zero to sixty in the time it takes you to read this sentence. But that wasn’t always the case. Back when the first cars were manufactured, the top speeds were, by today’s standards, comically slow. One has to wonder when the first speeding ticket was issued. And just how fast was this bandit of the blacktop going?

I thought there might be some difficulty in tracking the answer down, but the pursuit was a lot like beating a Yugo in a drag race. According to Ohio History Central, the dubious distinction belongs to one Harry Myers. In 1904, Mr. Myers was given the very first speeding ticket for going a whopping 12 miles per hour on West Third Street in Dayton, Ohio.

But hold the phone. That might not be totally accurate. A blog from Open Salon explains that the first speeding violation may have actually occurred five years earlier. According to the blog, New York City cab driver Jacob German was arrested in Manhattan for going 12 miles per hour in May, 1899.

The blog goes on to note that back in 1899, the police didn’t actually give out paper tickets. So, in a way, Mr. Myers may have still earned the first actual ticket. However Mr. German, who drove for the Electric Vehicle Company, scored the first violation. As Planet Buzo points out, it seems appropriate that “our country’s first arrest for reckless driving should be leveled at a New York cabbie.”

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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Hey Guys,

The other day I was watching a LA Lakers game on TV when something struck me. Why in the world are they called the Lakers when there is barely so much as a puddle in Los Angeles?

The answer, as many of you know, is that the team wasn’t always from Southern California. Originally, they hailed from Minnesota, self-described land of 10,000 lakes. The team kept its old nickname rather than change it. But, the Lakers aren’t the only team to have a nickname that makes no sense.

Consider the Utah Jazz. Salt Lake City is a great place, full of beauty and wonderful people, but, near as I can tell, it’s not particularly known for its thriving jazz scene. So, what’s the deal here? Like the Lakers, the Jazz moved to Utah from somewhere else — namely, New Orleans, where jazz is an art, religion, business, you get the idea.

And there are more. The Grizzlies, another NBA team, used to be in rugged Vancouver, Canada. Now they play in Memphis, where Elvis sightings are far more common than fearsome bears. And what about the Colts of the NFL? Is Indianapolis really a horse racing town? Nope, but Baltimore is. The Colts used to play in Baltimore (home of the famous Preakness Stakes) before moving to the Hoosier State.

One of the most popular teams in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers, has a similar story. Originally, the Dodgers hailed from Brooklyn, New York. According to the official site for club, the team’s nickname was originally “Trolley Dodger,” “due to the complex maze of trolley cars that weaved its way through the borough of Brooklyn.” The name stuck even when the team moved to California.

Some team nicknames match perfectly with the their cities. The San Francisco 49ers come to mind. Ditto with the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Phoenix Suns, and Pittsburgh Steelers. Got any other thoughts on team nicknames that either make perfect sense or no sense at all? Leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

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