‘Normalcy’ or ‘Normality’?

I’m still waiting to get my first COVID vaccination, but man, I am starting to feel hope on the horizon, and it seems I’m not the only one because I’ve been getting questions like this one from Steve in Pataskala, Ohio:

“In reference to ‘returning to [life] after the pandemic’ I have wondered what is correct — ‘normalcy’ or ‘normality’?”

'Normality'

“Normality” is the slightly older word, and the short answer is that it’s also a little more respectable than “normalcy,” but “normalcy” has the more interesting history.

'Normalcy' and Warren Harding

“Normalcy” first showed up in some obscure references to mathematics, but it seems to have been popularized in the United States by president Warren Harding in the 1920s.

The Oxford English Dictionary labels it as “chiefly U.S.” and has these two citations, which I find funny back-to-back.

First, in 1920, Harding said, “America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.”

He went on to make his campaign slogan, “Return to normalcy.”

The next citation in the OED is from a 1929 tract from the Society for Pure English, that says, “If...‘normalcy’ is ever to become an accepted word it will presumably be because the late President Harding did not know any better,” because, as it turns out, “normalcy” is the result of an error by a U.S. president. 

In fact, Harding was apparently mocked at the time for using “normalcy,” but then his supporters came to his defense citing the earlier math references. But that wasn’t really the point. It did exist before he used it, but nobody imagined he was reading old math dictionaries and decided to use the word he found there. He wasn’t using it deliberately that way. He just got the usual word, “normality,” wrong.

I recommend saying we’re “getting back to normality.”

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage, people continued to use “normalcy,” often in criticisms of Harding and often in quotation marks to highlight their sarcasm. 

The closest  modern parallel I can think of is when people mocked George W. Bush for saying “nucular” instead of “nuclear.” But unlike “nucular,” “normalcy” seemed to catch on, and eventually, people moved from using it mockingly to using it as just another word...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Frankly, My Dear, Do You Need a Comma After ‘Frankly’?

The phrase “Frankly, my dear,” begins one of the most memorable movie lines. Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable), said those three words to start his final, parting line to Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) in the 1939 movie “Gone with the Wind.” Even if you’ve never seen that movie, you’ve likely heard that movie line. It created quite a stir because it ended with profanity that was frowned upon onscreen at the time, even though the movie producer was granted an exception by the Hays Office to use it. Eventually, that controversy died down, but another controversy arose concerning that line that has nothing to do with profanity and everything to do with punctuation.

Frankly, my dear...

In the book “Gone with the Wind,” the word “frankly” is absent from that iconic line spoken by Rhett to Scarlett. The line just begins with “My dear,” followed by a comma. Movie producer David Selznick added “Frankly,” followed by a comma, and he was insistent about that, as can be seen in his list of possible, less-offensive ways to end the line. Each suggestion that he considered began with “Frankly, my dear,” with a comma after “Frankly” and after “dear.”  For example, one of those suggestions was for Rhett to say, “Frankly, my dear, it is of no consequence,” which might be what some of you are thinking about this article’s focus on the commas in that line. 

Is it of any consequence whether or not “frankly” is followed by a comma? It was to William Safire, a writer for The New York Times. In 1994, when CBS produced its spinoff “Scarlett” series, one of its advertisements had the beginning of that iconic “Gone with the Wind” movie line captioned onscreen as “Frankly my dear,” with no comma after “Frankly.” That prompted Safire to give CBS his annual Bloopie Award because of the missing punctuation. 

Adverbs at the beginning of a sentence

But, wait, an adverb at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t have to have a comma, right? That’s correct. 

The word “frankly” is an adverb and when used at the beginning of a sentence, it is called a sentence adverb. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, but ...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

6 Items You Should Never Put in the Garbage Disposal

A few episodes back, I talked about 8 items you should never put in a dishwasher. The other day I got to thinking about our garbage disposal and mistakes we’ve made with it over the years. There are definitely items that should never be put in a garbage disposal. I haven’t heard many people talk about this, which means they are likely learning these lessons the hard way. Putting these items in a garbage disposal can cause dull blades, clogged drains, or even completely breaking the disposal for good.

Help keep your garbage disposal running well by never putting any of the following items down a garbage disposal.

See Also: 10 Tips That Will Change How You Clean Your Kitchen

1.) Non-food items

First and foremost, no non-food items should ever be put in a garbage disposal. It may be obvious that metal items like silverware should not go in the garbage disposal. If it’s not obvious, as soon as you have a spoon end up in the running blades, you’ll know that it’s not right. The garbage disposal is not a trash, and even things like plastic and paper can damage the blades. Any items that are not food should always go straight in to the trash.

2.) Grease and oils

The second item that shouldn’t go in the garbage disposal is grease. Animal fats, oils, and grease can coat the blades and cause them to become less effective. Grease can also accumulate in both the garbage disposal and the sink drains, which can lead to some nasty clogs. If you haven’t picked up on this one yet, putting grease and fats down the garbage disposal will eventually lead to a call to your friendly neighborhood plumber.

3.) Starchy foods

The next item on the list is one that I learned the hard way. We love to host Thanksgiving dinner, and one year I decided to toss my potato peels in to the garbage disposal. While it seemed that things were OK for a while, when we turned on the dishwasher to run before all our company arrived, we realized that the starchy peels had formed a thick paste and clogged the garbage disposal. Since the dishwasher drains through the same pipes, we ended up flooding our kitchen right as the first guests were arriving. It was an absolute disaster, and thankfully our friends were there to help catch the dirty water and my husband was handy enough to open the pipes and remove the clog.

Don’t make my mistake and never, ever put starchy items like potatoes, rice,...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Unpacking Copy Trading: The Best Option for Crypto Trading Newbs?

The fast-paced and constantly evolving crypto space is an exciting field for investors, offering a unique opportunity in an asset class that has outperformed all others over the last decade.

However, the potential on offer is not without risk, and the volatility and permissionless nature of the crypto market can seem daunting to the novice trader. But what if there was a more passive way for newbies to capture some of the best opportunities without the trading skills, time, and analysis needed to keep track and manage risk? Enter copy trading.

What Is Copy Trading?

Copy trading is a form of social trading that has grown in popularity in recent years among investors who lack the expertise or time commitment in a particular market, such as crypto. It allows traders' positions to be replicated automatically by copiers, leveraging the skills and knowledge of those with more experience in that market.

Copiers can diversify their investment portfolio into more unfamiliar markets by allocating a percentage to expert traders in that field and copying new positions they take out at the same ratio. For example, if a copier allocates 10% of their portfolio to a particular trader, who opens a position worth 10% of their portfolio, 10% of the copy allocation would then take the same trade – equal to 1% of the copier’s overall portfolio. Alternatively, a fixed amount may be allocated to a trade or trader.

It allows traders' positions to be replicated automatically by copiers, leveraging the skills and knowledge of those with more experience in that market.

The entire management of the trade including the opening of a position, stop losses, take profits, and closing will be copied and executed unless the copier wanted to override that for any reason, retaining the ability to control and manage individual trades. Copiers can also end the relationship with a trader at any time as copy trading does not eliminate risk, past performance is no guarantee of future success, and copiers are still responsible for the trades made.

Therefore, it is not a completely passive process as analysis of the performance, activity, and track-record of traders will still need monitoring. A diversified balance of copy traders should be used to ensure copiers are not increasing risk unnecessarily with a reliance on too few traders copied.

How Does Copy Trading Work?

Copy trading works by harnessing the social networks on trading platforms, providing transparency over the positions and...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

5 Ways the American Rescue Plan Puts Money in Your Pocket

When President Biden was inaugurated, he pledged to make COVID-19 relief a top priority. You probably heard that the latest stimulus, the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act was signed into law on March 11, 2021. It’s the third round of assistance designed to boost the U.S. economy as it continues to struggle from the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law on March 11, 2021.

ARP is a massive $1.9 trillion package that gives funding to state and local governments, schools, infrastructure projects, COVID testing and vaccination programs, and more. According to the Tax Foundation, about $850 billion will go to individuals and about $65 billion to businesses. Most of the provisions are temporary expansions to manage the pandemic. However, some benefits may likely become permanent. 

The relief for individuals comes in the form of stimulus checks and various tax credits, building on benefits from previous laws, such as the CARES Act. Today, we'll review five ways the recent stimulus helps individuals. We’ll cover who qualifies for payments and other significant benefits.

How the American Rescue Plan of 2021 Helps Individuals

Here’s the detail on several ways ARP may put money in your pocket.

1. Receiving a stimulus payment

For this round of Economic Impact Payments, which are also called recovery rebates or stimulus payments, the qualifying income levels are lower. That means some people who received previous payments won't be eligible for the third payment. However, those who qualify will get larger payments (the previous rounds were $1,200 and $600 per person). 

The third stimulus payment will be $1,400 per eligible person if you have adjusted gross income of up to $75,000 for single filers, $112,500 for head-of-household, or $150,000 for married couples filing a joint tax return.

The third stimulus payment will be $1,400 per eligible person if you have adjusted gross income of up to $75,000 for single filers, $112,500 for head-of-household, or $150,000 for married couples filing a joint tax return. 

Those earning up to $80,000 for a single, $120,000 for head-of-household, and $160,000 for joint...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Should You Trust Your Calorie Counter?

Nutrition Diva listener James writes:

I was wondering if you could devote an episode to calories: how they're measured, how we process them, what a bomb calorimeter is, and all the problems with counting calories.

What do calories measure? 

A calorie is a unit of measure, like an inch or a kilogram. Only instead of measuring length or weight, a calorie measures energy. Technically, a calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius.

Calories can be measured by something called a bomb calorimeter. You might have even built a crude version of a bomb calorimeter in science class. In broad strokes, you submerge a chamber in a bucket of water and put a thermometer in the water. Inside the submerged chamber, you set something on fire. The heat generated by the combustion raises the temperature of the water in the bucket, which you can measure with the thermometer. You can then calculate the amount of energy or calories were in the thing you set on fire. 

If we habitually take in more energy than we use, we gain weight. So, we use calories as a guideline to determine how much food energy a person needs.

We used to use bomb calorimeters to calculate how many calories a given food contains. These days, however, it’s more common to estimate the number of calories based on how much protein, fat, and carbohydrate a food contains.  (These amounts can be determined through chemical analysis.)

When we’re using the word "calorie" in relation to food, by the way, we’re actually referring kilocalories.  Sometimes you’ll see calories abbreviated as kcal and that’s what that refers to. When we say that a food that contains 60 calories, it technically contains 60,000 calories. But all those zeros would would be a pain to deal with so we just lop them off. This drives phycisists and chemists absolutely nuts.

Why do calories matter? 

Just like in that bomb calorimeter, our...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

The 11 Best Ways to Get Rid of Mosquitoes

As the saying goes, "If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito." These pesky creatures are the bane of our skin's existence, but there are plenty of methods you can use to effectively repel them when the need arises. 

1. DIY bug spray

Use this (almost) all-natural insect spray to repel mosquitoes as well as other insects like flies. Chop one small onion and one head of garlic. Mix together with four cups of water, four teaspoons of cayenne pepper, and one tablespoon of liquid dish soap. Spray around your deck and in places where your children play (rather than on the children themselves). This mixture will last a week or so if stored in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and kept in a dark, cool place.

Although it's safe, this mixture is meant for use in your environment, not on your skin.

2. Another DIY bug spray

If you’re uncomfortable with all of the unpronounceable ingredients in commercial bug sprays, try making this natural version. Mix together a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, a quarter cup of witch hazel, and around 20 drops of a combination of any the following essential oils: rosemary, citronella, tea tree, cedar, eucalyptus, or lemongrass. Transfer the mixture to a spray bottle, and shake before each use. Spray directly on exposed skin and the bugs will stay away!

Check out Who Knew's 17 Things You Didn't Know Essential Oils Could Do

3. Lemon eucalyptus

When shopping for a natural mosquito repellent, look for one that contains oil of lemon eucalyptus. It’s extremely effective and provides long-lasting protection.

4. Peppermint

Looking for an effective-yet-natural way to combat mosquitoes? Try peppermint! Combine a few drops of peppermint essential oil with one cup of water in a spray bottle, shake well, and spray onto skin. Not only will the chemical compounds in peppermint help repel the blood-sucking beasts, but you’ll also smell minty fresh!

5. Rosemary and sage

Do mosquitoes hover over the grill when you barbecue? Next time, place a few springs of rosemary or sage on top of the coals. The scent will repel mosquitoes, leaving your meat in peace.

Do you feel like you're a mosquito magnet? Read Ask...

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips