Superman changes inside his plot armor.
Though I suppose the super speed explanation also works.
The real problem’s always been not that anyone might see his ass while he’s changing (solving that is trivial, he just keeps at least part of his uniform on under his clothes); it’s that people might notice Clark Kent disappearing and Superman appearing in the same spot. I’m pretty sure the comics tried to address that several times.
When I was a kid phone booths looked like this:
So it was kinda hard to understand why Supes needed them 
My father taught me to drive with an automatic. He didn’t want me distracted by shifting when I didn’t know anything else about driving. After I passed my test he taught me on a manual. The problem was the car that was automatic was the size of an aircraft carrier. The stick shift car was an early model Civic that you could parallel park inside a shoe box. The drivers test was interesting.
My knee and your knee must have been talking to each other. I had an epiphany while in stop and go traffic with my last manual. I suddenly realized I was done with it. Never had a desire to have a manual since then.
I drove a Honda Insight for about 14 years, and I quite liked the Stop-Start feature because it worked the same as your Prius. This was ages ago, so when people rode in my car for the first time they’d kinda freak out when the engine would stop at a street light/stop sign.
If there were more than a split second delay, I’d hate it.
Regarding “who” versus “whom”: A newspaper columnist (William Safire, I think, although I could be wrong) once offered the following advice:
"Whenever you are certain that “whom” is correct . . . You are wrong.
The rule I learned is that being the subject of a clause trumps being the object of a preposition (or anything else) so “to whomever” is correct if it stops there, but “to whoever quacks…” would be correct.
On the question about “time” vs. “distance,” I said it varies, but really I use time more. It takes me 1.5 hours to get to the airport. Seems more relevant that '“65 miles.”
I agree.
Miles seems more vague than time in many cases when I discuss traveling.
The Phish song Bouncing Round the Room contains the lyrics
And faintly bouncing round the room
The echo of whomever spoke.
It bugs me whenever I hear it because I’m 90% sure that it’s incorrect. I think it would bug me less if I were 100% sure that it’s incorrect.
Whom makes people sound like a stuffy English butler. Mind you sometimes it is nessesary.
I’ll say it’s an hours walk even though that’s really too subjective. If it’s an hour’s walk for me it might be 40 or 80 minutes for the other person, but I don’t have a good grasp of how far things are away unless I’m looking at a map.
Use “who” if you can match it up with a verb. “Who spray-painted that huge dick on the wall?”
Use “whom” if you can’t match it up with a verb. “Whom are you accusing?” (The verb “accusing” goes with “you,” not “who(m).”)
But yeah, I would contend that “who” is fine if “whom” is correct but sounds overly stuffy, as in “Whom are you accusing?” It’s not as if using the technically incorrect word is going to confuse anyone.
In the prepositional phrase “to who(m)ever quacks,” we bracket “whoever quacks” as a subordinate verbal clause, where “whoever” is the verb’s subject. We do not bracket it as “to whomever,” which is what it would be in the absence of a subordinate verbal clause.
“Whom should I send this to?” “To whomever.”
When confronted with the who/whom dilemma, answer the question that is being asked.
If the answer is “he”, use who.
If the answer is “him”, use whom.
Who/whom is coming tonight? Answer: He is coming tonight (so who is correct).
For who/whom are you waiting? Answer: I am waiting for him (so whom is correct).
whommm
Knock-knock
Who’s there?
To
To who?
No, no. It’s “to whom.”
I’ll try that because I could never follow the other rules. Brain overload.
No, it’s whom. Object of the preposition “of.” Even though this is one way to express genitive (possessive) in English, it’s still a prepositional phrase.
Trey Anastasio did attend Princeton Day School, after all…
I tried this with Inna. Unfortunately, she had never heard of a knock-knock joke before, so it was kind of a wasted effort, lol.
On the other hand, she found this very useful. As did I. Thanks!
“Of whomever” is a prepositional phrase. But is “of who(m)ever spoke” a prepositional phrase? I think it’s the same as Johanna 's analysis above. “Whoever spoke” is a verbal clause with “whoever” as the subject.
Good question! I would diagram it so the prepositional phrase – "of ____ " – takes precedence, even though within that object there happens to be a clause with its own subject and verb.
I asked Google to translate “I will give this to whoever sings” into Latin – notice I favored your nominative (subject, like “who”) solution here – and it replied with “Hoc dabo cuicumque cantat,” with accusative (object, like “whom”). That’s the -um- in the *cuicumque," I’m pretty sure.
I know, English isn’t Latin – L’état, c’est moi* and all that – but it is a data point.
(*18th-19th-century English grammarians insisted that English should follow Latin’s example, hence their attempt to force speakers to say the unnatural “The state, it is I,” while French didn’t labor under such pretense.)