[lit-ideas] Re: Homage to Robert Paul

But seriously...
Now any damn fool (Quick, find one besides me! No, not beside me, besides me!) knows that this sentence should have been written:
Besides, electric blankets, as *have* been discovered since the film was made, are bad for one's health.
I was never 'taught' grammar. I go by what philosophers call 'intuition' and ordinary people might call flying by the seat of my pants. Over the years I've learned how to make the who/whom distinction and other life-and-death choices: but mostly I judge sentences by how they strike my sensitive ears and Eric's sentence doesn't sound right. Surely 'as *have* been discovered' should be 'as [it] *has* been discovered, the 'it' perhaps being optional. I don't really like the sound of this fix either and agree with Eric author that 


...the thought could have been better expressed:
Since the film was made, studies have shown that electric blankets are bad for one's health. 

     or
Validating Andre's comment, subsequent scientific studies have shown that electric blankets induce an additional health risk among those who use them.
I wonder about the 'it,' as in 'it has been discovered.' There must be an official name for it (other than 'pronoun'). I think of it as the the vacuous 'it,' found in e.g. 'it looks like rain,' 'il fait froid,' 'it isn't clear whether Newton or Leibniz invented the calculus,' and so on.
Tonight, in Senior Symposium, we're discussing Jimi Hendrix. I agreed to cover for one of my colleagues in first-year humanities this week and part of next while she attends a conference, so tomorrow I'll be talking about Plato's Republic with teenagers. There must be a subtext here. There usually is. 

Robert Paul
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