Good Questions: Hangnails, Legal Settlements, American Accents
Every Friday, we tackle a bunch of viewers' burning questions. This week, Heather Brown explores hangnails, legal settlements and American accents.
"My thumb was throbbing and I'm like this is ridiculous," said Tricia from Eagan after waking up one night earlier this week. So she asked: Why do hangnails hurt so much?
Jamie Davis, a dermatologist with Uptown Dermatology, says nails can split even microscopically. So when you pull on that split or snag it on something, it can rip further. Then that hangnail will slide back under the nail and into living tissue. Our fingers are a very tender area with lots of nerves that send pain signals to our brain. Davis says you should never pull at a hangnail but rather cut it, let it heal and watch out for infection.
On Tuesday, Target agreed to pay $3.9 million to settle a lawsuit that claims the retailer charged higher prices than advertised. So Ed from Maple Grove wants to know: Where does that money million go?
According to Andy Perez, the deputy Marin County district attorney, the county's weights and measures division discovered the pricing issues at Target. So when the district attorney took the case on behalf of the state, the settlement division is determined by law.
Perez says the bulk of settlement ($3.3 million) will go to California prosecutors' offices and be used to enforce consumer protection laws. A smaller potion ($350,000) will go toward a trust fund for prosecutors who don't have the resources to enforce these laws and the rest ($250,000) will go toward the case's investigative costs.
Nick from Shorewood was watching the Grammys last weekend when he noticed the British artists appeared to sing with American accents. So he wonders why?
"When we're singing, we do a lot of things that we don't normally do when we speak," said University of Minnesota speech scientist Ben Munson. "We're trying to match the tempo and the melody of the song we're singing, and sometimes that just erases some of the features of our dialect because part of our dialect is the tempo and melody of how we speak."
He also says when we're singing, we're paying extra attention to what we're saying, so we end up with a hyper-formal accent that tends to erase some of the dialect, too.