We’re joined this week by a special guest blogger. Patricia T. O’Conner, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, is the author of the national best-seller Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, as well as other books about language. She is a regular monthly guest on public radio station WNYC in New York. Learn more at her website, grammarphobia.com. Today she’s answering questions from our readers.

Q: “All right … so there’s no good reason to not end a sentence in a preposition … but that doesn’t mean that I have to like hearing, ‘Where you at.’”—Posted by Fruppi on 5/5

A: The problem with “Where you at?” isn’t that it ends in a preposition. The problem is that it shouldn’t have a preposition at all. (What it ought to have is a verb!)

Constructions like “Where is my car at?” and “Where are my keys at?” are considered substandard usage because “where” makes the addition of “at” redundant. “Where” essentially means “at (or in) what place,” so adding another “at” is overkill. It’s roughly equivalent to saying, “In which pocket are they in?”

Q: “Can we look forward to a discussion of the singular they this week?”—Posted by s michael c on 5/5
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I grew up in a town called Ottumwa and I think it’s pretty safe to say that there aren’t too many of those scattered across the United States. These 10 places, though, are likely to show up more than once on a cross-country road trip.

10 of the Most Common Place Names in the U.S.

1. Franklin - 37, including five in Wisconsin and three in New York.
2. Salem - 36. I wonder which one is home to the Days of our Lives Salem?
3. Washington - 32, including eight in Wisconsin. Wouldn’t that get confusing?
4. Springfield - 32. Guess what? Five in Wisconsin. Springfield, Vermont, was the town chosen to hold the premiere of The Simpsons movie, but in reality, the actual location of The Simpsons’ hometown remains a mystery.
5. Clinton - 31, including three in New York and three in Wisconsin.
6. Georgetown - 27, including two in Georgia (makes sense), two in Indiana, and, yes, two in Wisconsin.
7. Greenville - 26. Three in New York, but only one in Wisconsin!
8. Madison - 26. FYI, Madison, Connecticut, is the hometown of Bootsy Collins.
9. Fairview - 26. Two each in New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Kentucky… but none in Wisconsin.
10. Manchester - 25. The biggest of these is Manchester, New Hampshire, with about 110,000 people.

Engineer/economist Bill Phillips, a New Zealand native, built a machine to model the British economy in 1949. Although it was high-tech for its time, today the Phillips Machine seems a little…nutty. What’s odd about the machine is that it used water power — hydraulics — to model the flow of money through the British economy. Here are some snippets from yesterday’s Guardian article about the machine (emphasis added):

The prototype was an odd assortment of tanks, pipes, sluices and valves, with water pumped around the machine by a motor cannibalised from the windscreen wiper of a Lancaster bomber. Bits of filed-down Perspex and fishing line were used to channel the coloured dyes that mimicked the flow of income round the economy into consumer spending, taxes, investment and exports. Phillips and Walter Newlyn, who helped piece the machine together at the end of the 1940s, experimented with treacle and methylated spirits before deciding that coloured water was the best way of displaying the way money circulates around the economy.

Read the rest for some great tidbits about Phillips, including his engineering exploits as a P.O.W. The article also includes an anecdote explaining how, if monetary and fiscal policy were out of whack, water literally overflowed from the machine onto the floor. Way to make a (literal) mess of economic policy, guys.

The Phillips Machine is also known as the MONIAC. You can read more about it at Wikipedia. (See also: Bill Phillips.)

Googling “bad rap lyrics” returns a flood of flawed rhymes that could take all day to comb through (my favorite was penned by Mase: “Young, black and famous / with money hangin’ out the anus”), but one thing I realized while reading, that I hadn’t quite gleaned from years of listening, was how often rappers use basic math and science concepts in their lyrics. Perhaps reflecting the current state of American math and science aptitude, rappers don’t always get it right — and sometimes get it very wrong. Here are six of our favorite flubs (thanks to Henry Adaso, among other sources).

1. Math: Redman, “Five Boroughs”

My paragraph alone is worth five mics (uh-huh)
A twelve song LP, that’s thirty-six mics (uh-huh)

Unless Redman uses less than a paragraph of lyrics per song, I think he’s a few mics short of an LP.

2. Physics: Canibus, “Funkmaster Flex Freestyle”

I can double my density from three-sixty degrees to seven-twenty instantly.

While 360 times 2 is indeed 720, Canibus needs a little help when it comes to measuring units of density. Rather than “degrees,” acceptable terms would’ve included kilograms per cubic metre (kg/m³), grams per millilitre (g/mL) or pounds per U.S. bushel (lb/bu) — for all you farmers out there.
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Last week, I saw the great documentary Gotta Dance about the Netsationals, a team of senior citizens that danced hip-hop at New Jersey Nets games. Then I found out that Julio Franco retired, which would indicate that Julio Franco had still been playing baseball. I was shocked; I had assumed that Franco had retired long ago, what with him being older than my father.

In honor of my elderly athletic discoveries last week, here’s a look at some athletes that didn’t let their age slow them down on the field.

Julio Franco

Baseball’s most senior player debuted in the majors in 1982 and made his last MLB appearance 25 years later. He holds the distinction of being the oldest person to hit a home run, on May 4, 2007 at age 48. He played for eight MLB teams and had pit stops in Japan, South Korea and Mexico, where he ultimately retired. ESPN compiled a fun list of facts putting Franco’s streak in perspective. Here are a couple of highlights:

- Pitcher Edwin Nunez of the Mariners was the youngest player in baseball (19) the year Franco came into the majors. He played a total of 13 seasons in the majors … and retired 14 years ago.
- Franco was in his sixth major league season, with his second team, when current Diamondbacks outfielder Justin Upton was born.

John Burnosky

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How well do you know some of the world’s most famous man-made landmarks? Try your hand at the next installment of Who am I? and decode some of the most glorious wonders of our world.
[n.b. do not use the word the up front. If the answer is “the Empire State Building” only put down Empire State Building as your answer - no the. And be sure to use capital letters where appropriate.]

[there’s still time to get your caption in!]

We’re back with another cartoon by regular _floss reader, the multi-talented Robert Bonotto. To repeat the rules, the idea here is quite simple: Your job is to come up with a gag. Make us smile, make us laugh, extra-points for those who are able to drop some interesting fact or trivia along the way.

We’ll narrow down the entries to our favorites and then let YOU guys pick one winner. As with last time, when dropping your gag in the comments, also let us know which t-shirt you prefer in case your caption is selected the winner. (T-shirts can be found over in our store.)

Lastly, if you’re good with the pen and think you’d like to contribute a cartoon of your own for a future caption contest, or want to pitch me an idea for one, please leave a comment and I’ll be in touch with you via e-mail.

click cartoon to enlarge

Violinist Gives Thank You Concert for Cabbies

Violinist Philippe Quint took a cab home from the airport in New Jersey last month, and left his 285-year-old Stradivarius in the car. Cab driver Mohamed Khalil returned the $4 million instrument to Quint. As a “thank you,” Quint performed a special lunchtime concert for about 200 cabbies in the parking lot at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Artificial Beak for Bald Eagle

Beauty is an Alaskan bald eagle whose beak was shot off several years ago. She was taken to a refuge, but her beak did not grow back. Next month, Beauty will get a new nylon-composite beak, thanks to the work of volunteer engineers and veterinarians. The bird must remain in captivity, but will be able to drink and eat properly.

Self-tracheotomy with a Steak Knife

55-year-old Steve Wilder of Omaha, Nebraska awoke one night and couldn’t breathe. He had a similar episode once before, in which his air passage swelled shut. Figuring he didn’t have time to wait for emergency medical help, Wilder used a steak knife to cut a small hole in his throat, which allowed air to enter his windpipe. Doctors expect no adverse effects from the self-tracheotomy.

Chunky Monkeys Put on Diet

Visitors to Ohama Park in Sakai, Japan love to feed the monkeys. Now 30 percent of the monkeys at the zoo are so fat they have trouble getting around, and some weight three times as much as they should! Zookeepers have instituted a strict diet, and visitors are asked not to feed the monkeys.

X-ray Shows Python Swallowed Kitten

An eight-week-old kitten in Australia’s Northern territory was killed and consumed by a five-foot python. The cat’s head was three time the size of the snake’s head, but the python unhinged its jaw and swallowed the kitten whole, as an x-ray shows. The kitten’s owner found the bulging snake, and called a snake wrangler after rounding up the other cats. The python will be released after he has digested his big meal.

World Record Lego Tower

Legoland Windsor in Berkshire, England has the world’s largest Lego tower ever! The tower, shaped like a Viking longboat, was completed with the help of park visitors. Children built 20 cm sections, which were hoisted in place by crane. The previous record is held by a 96-foot tower built in Toronto last year.

Yes, we have riddles in the daily Brain Game feature. See how well you do with this one:

What has a man at the beginning,
a man in the middle,
and an insect at the end?

Click here for the answer.