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 swamp “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

Flowers, breakfast in bed, and handmade cards are popular gifts to give to your mother on Mother’s Day.  Sunday, May 13, marks the day this year and in honor of mothers here are five fun facts about Mother’s Day:

1. Mother’s Day is celebrated all over the world, mainly during the months of March, April and May.
2. The word for mother in most languages starts with the letter M.
3. Anne Marie Jarvis is the founder of Mother’s Day, but it didn’t become an official holiday until 1915.
4. Next to Christmas and Easter, Mother’s Day is the third most popular holiday.
5. Red Carnations are the flower associated with Mother’s Day and is meant to honor mothers.

Happy Mother’s Day to our community enjoy your special day!  How do you plan on spending this Mother’s Day?  Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

Photo from Sony Pictures

Agent J (Will Smith) has exactly one day to rewrite history. To do this he has to travel back to the year 1969 to save his colleague Agent K (Josh Brolin/ Tommy Lee Jones) from the evil alien Boris.

In the third installment of “Men in Black,” set to release on May 25th, you have a chance to ask a question to Will Smith and/or Josh Brolin.

On May 17th,  both stars  will answer selected questions from the Yahoo! Answers community. Check back here for the filmed interview! So don’t miss out on this chance.

Click the link below and start asking!

Question: What would you ask Will Smith and Josh Brolin, and why?

Thanks for reading,

**Secret Revealed**

You probably don’t think about it much, but if you did, you’d notice that it often feels like one nostril or the other is always plugged. That’s completely normal for about 70% of adults.

Assuming you’re healthy, your “plugged” nostril actually allows a tiny amount of air through and your other nostril handles the rest. After an average of 2.5 hours, the cycle will shift and use the alternate nostril as the primary source of air. The following scan shows one nasal passage mostly blocked and the other mostly open.

For a long time, Eastern medicine has had theories about the purpose of this cycle and a number of exercises that involve moving air through a specific nostril. On the other hand, Western scientists didn’t come up with a physiological purpose for this phenomena until more recently.

Research indicates that the high/low flow approach in the two nostrils optimizes your sense of smell. As you’ve probably discovered first hand, or shall we say finger, the inside of your nose is lined with mucus. This mucus continues deep inside your nasal passage and is very important; it acts as a barrier and helps protect your brain from infection. But, it also means that something you smell has to be absorbed by the mucus before you can smell it.

This mucus absorbs different chemical compounds at different rates. Therefore, some smells are better detected when they are absorbed in more concentrated levels in the slow moving airstream of your plugged nostril while others are better smelled when absorbed in lower concentration through the fast moving airstream of the other nostril.

Humans have about 1.6 sq inches (10 cm²) of smell receptor cells in our nasal passage. By contrast, dogs have 17 times more space dedicated to these same receptors, and in greater density, which explains why their sense of smell is so much better than ours.

Chad Upton is the editor-in-chief of Broken Secrets and an official Yahoo Answers contributor.

Thanks for reading,

Sources: wikipedia (Nasal Cycle, Olfaction)

The video lampoons what it’s like to be 10 years out of college, overweight, married, health problems, drinking problems and unemployed.  Fun’s original song is all about being young and carefree and hopeful of your future.  When you’re young, your primary concern is about having fun, having no responsibilities because you have parents to take care of practical details, and just thinking about what you want to be when you grow up.

So, when you finally leave that bubble of youth exuberance and realize all the clichés that you heard really are true, “time flies”, and “growing up is never easy”,  how do you cope with crushing reality?  Well, as the song parody says “I guess I’ll do elliptical. Maybe I can finally do that yoga class. But I probably won’t. HGTV. Going to stay at home. Watch Modern Family.”

When does “world is your oyster” mentality disappear and real life’s challenges, burdens and broken dreams begin?   Are you where you want to be?  Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

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

We all know you enjoy earning points and moving up through the levels. But we are also aware of people taking advantage of the unrestricted limits to spam and publish low quality answers, such as “Thanks for the 2 points” or “I don’t know.”

Starting today we have modified our limits for Level 5, 6 and 7 users. This will help us protect the community from spam and help those who want good, serious answers.

Instead of the generous unlimited questions, answers and comments, we have now changed it to 20 questions, 80 answers and 40 comments. Please see the table below:

We believe these limits will still allow you to full enjoy Yahoo! Answers. If you’re hitting the limits, we suggest that you be more selective and focus on those questions/answers you have more to share about.

We aim to increase content quality and this change is just the beginning of many. Please know that we are always working towards a better experience for you, the community. We welcome your feedback below.

Thanks for reading,

Have you ever worn out a magnetic card? You can ask your bank for a new one but it usually takes a few days. In the meantime, you can put a piece of clear tape or use some receipt paper from the cashier to cover the magnetic stripe while the card is swiped.

Usually, the cashier will do this for you, but if not then you can ask them to try it. Some may even use a plastic bag, but any thin barrier may work. Be sure it’s very thin so it doesn’t get jammed in the card reader.

Many people know about this little trick; the real secret is why it works…

As a magnetic card gets used, the magnetically charged particles get smeared. This smearing repeated many times creates  magnetic noise which distorts the data when read. The magnetic strength of the noise is low enough that a small barrier can block or reduce it enough to get a proper reading from the card.

For a bit of anecdotal evidence, I worked retail back in college and I used this trick hundreds of times — it worked nearly every time.

Chad Upton is the editor-in-chief of Broken Secrets and an official Yahoo Answers contributor.

Thanks for reading,

Sources: creditcards.com, wired magazine (Nov 2011)

Boy meets girl and falls head over heels – that’s the start of most romantic comedies. Those first exciting moments of chemistry and attraction that make your heart flutter, eventually develop into love, and as the playground song says “then comes marriage”. The girl gets her prince charming and they go on to live a happy romantic fairytale.

Real life however isn’t like the movies and eventually, your happy ever after ends either in a break up or death. However, is it possible that being in love can lead to dying of a broken heart?

Marriage statistics and divorce rates are always in the media, and whenever there is a relationship that lasts it garners headlines.  Yahoo! Shine printed a story about a husband and wife that died 16 hours apart after 76 years of marriage. There are several stories similar to this one, where couples who are married for 50+ years die within hours or days apart.

The pain of having a relationship end is very real and well documented. A study in 2005 in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that when a loved one dies, stress hormones are increased which increases blood pressure and can trigger a heart attack. Falling in love is not only an emotional, mental, and physical sensation it also is a physiological response that can literally break your heart.

Dying of a broken heart is a very real occurrence and isn’t rare. But, what makes a couple’s love so deep that they literally honor their vows of “till death do us part?” Please leave a comment below.

Thanks for reading,

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