Bonus Explainer: Which type of golf club works best for breaking windows? The 1-iron, if you’re carrying one. You want the longest club you can get, to help you generate head speed. An iron is better than a wood, because its sole—the part of the club that sits on the ground—is narrower and thus generates more pressure at the point of impact. I heart Explainer.

Dear Explainer, Like anyone who rides a bike, I was happy to see the conviction of the doctor who took it upon himself to teach a "lesson" to the two guys riding their bikes down the canyon near Los Angeles. What has me confused is the fact that he was also charged in the same trial with an earlier incident involving another rider. I always thought that prosecutors couldn't bring ...

... this week. This latest scare follows an October New York Times article on pervasive flaws in the beef-inspection process, featuring a woman who became paralyzed after eating hamburgers tainted with E. coli in 2007. Panicked? Here's an Explainer roundup on food contamination. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Food - New York Times - Beef mince - Hamburger

I suppose I've said things in the same vein before but one of the things that drives me nuts about Obama and his crowd is his/their utter inability to explain difficulties to their audience in ways that will inspire even a minimum of confidence. Here's a selection, culled from current reading although I haven't kept good track of sources. So, they haven't explained that: We knew ...

It's simple. Rarely listen to mainstream pop = never heard of Auto-Tune before. Until this, that kind of thing was not on my radar. But now there's a great introductory explainer about this tool and its surrounding controversy, and best of all, it's kinda funny! (However, I wouldn't classify the SoS works as parody.)    Supplemental info at the video's homeport.

DAILY NEWS:The U.S. House already has passed a sweeping health-care bill, and the Senate narrowly voted Nov. 21 to open debate on its own measure, crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid. If the Senate approves a bill and the two houses of Congress work out an agreeable plan, we could have the most significant new domestic program enacted since Social Security. “I think we’ll see a bill ...

Lord and Taylor just settled a lawsuit filed against it by the Humane Society, which charged it with labeling raccoon dog pelts as faux fur. The suit also accused Lord and Taylor and a number of other brands, including Dillard's, Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Saks, and the parent company of Andrew Marc, of passing off raccoon dog fur as raccoon, coyote, or rabbit. In the settlement, Lord & ...

... it means. It's HTML5, and if you're not exactly sure what it is, here's an explainer. Image taken from Bruce Lawson's fantastic HTML5 ... browser differences down the road. Ars Technica has a good explainer on the HTML5 video codec debate. Further reading ... darned standard. Dive Into HTML5: Programmer, and explainer of all things programming, details what's different about HTML5 ...

By Grace Wong and Mairi Mackay var clickExpire = "-1"; var params = {};var attributes = {};var flashvars = {};params.wmode = "transparent";if (swfobject.hasFlashPlayerVersion("8")) {swfobject.embedSWF(" "cnnInteractive", "430", "400", "8.0.0", false, flashvars, params, attributes);} else {$(' ...

Words are a powerful thing. Slate's Explainer is my guilty pleasure. Somedays valuable, somedays material for useless cocktail chatter, somedays both. This weekend's Explainer about the semantics behind the Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood shootings coverage was certainly the former. While we all grieve deeply for the ...