Slate's Explainer Podcast

What Is the Most Disloyal Dog Breed? An answer to the Explainer's 2008 Question of the Year. By Daniel Engber Three weeks ago, the Explainer released the annual list of questions we were either unable or unwilling to answer in 2008. Among this year's entries were brainteasers like "Why do women like soup?" and "If someone with DNA from the Stone Age were born today, would they be normal?" In keeping with Slate tradition, we then asked readers to vote for the unanswered question that most deserved a response. More than 30,000 votes came in by the time the polls had closed. Many of our astute readers also wrote in to say that some of the questions on the list had been answered elsewhere. Indeed, our top vote-getter���Why do cockroaches flip over on their backsides when they die?���was explained 25 years ago by the Explainer's arch-nemesis, Cecil Adams. (Answer: They don't always die that way.) The second-place question���Why don't humans have a mating season?���has also been thoroughly investigated, by Jared Diamond. (Answer: We have sex year-round so fathers have a reason to stick around.) Same goes for No. 3 in the standings, concerning a dimly remembered photograph from Life magazine that shows a descendent of George Washington. The image can be found here, and several articles have been written on the question of Washington's lineage. So, by process of elimination, we bring you the fourth-most popular question on the list, and our official Explainer Question of the Year for 2008: What is the most disloyal dog breed? The answer: Nobody knows. The conventional wisdom among dog fanciers holds that each of the 161 breeds now recognized by the American Kennel Club has a distinctive temperament reflecting its history and original purpose. The terriers, for example, were once bred to hunt vermin; thus they're thought to be hostile to other animals. Working dogs that were originally bred to guard property might be seen as especially loyal. But recent work suggests that the personalities of modern dogs may have little to do with their breed's history. A researcher at Stockholm University named Kenth Svartberg analyzed the behavioral profiles of more than 15,000 animals and derived several essential canine traits: A dog is more or less playful, curious/fearless, and sociable. Then he studied a few dozen breed types and rated them according to those traits as well as on their level of aggression. Svartberg turned up two interesting facts. First, like many other researchers, he found tremendous variability among dogs of a particular breed. So even though German shepherds scored higher marks for playfulness than, say, poodles, you'll still find plenty of individual poodles that are more playful than a given German shepherd. Second, he discovered no significant differences in traits among the broader breed groups���terriers, working dogs, herding dogs, and sporting dogs. For instance, the terriers taken as a whole were no more aggressive than the other breed groups, and the working dogs were no more sociable or fearless. The recent history of dog ownership may explain why we don't see distinctive personalities in these groups today. Whereas dogs were once bred for a specific task, now they tend to be bred for physical traits (that make for better show dogs) or for a family-friendly temperament (that makes for better household pets). It's nevertheless possible to identify personality differences across specific breeds. (There may not be a temperament common to all terriers, but each individual terrier breed has its own predilections.) So which breeds are most disloyal? That depends on how you define the term. Loyalty is not a trait measured by any mainstream dog personality assessment���if it exists at all, it's a complicated mixture of other traits. In Svartberg's system, for example, you might argue that a loyal dog is one that's generally affectionate (high playfulness) but aggressive toward strangers (low sociability). By that logic, a friendly and playful Labrador retriever would be construed as disloyal since it's prone to lavish affection on everyone who comes near it. According to Svartberg's data (PDF), a pinscher, a Bernese mountain dog, or an English springer spaniel might be the most disloyal since each ranks very low on playfulness, with moderate sociability. Of course, you'll get a different Judas breed for every definition of disloyal and for every method used to assess the dogs. Animal behaviorists Lynette and Benjamin Hart conducted a large-scale survey of small-animal veterinarians and created a table of breed rankings for 10 personality traits. In their system, a "disloyal" dog might be construed as one that ranks high for "aggression towards owner" (e.g., chows, Rottweilers, and Akitas) and low for "territorial defense" (e.g., whippets, golden retrievers, and basset hounds). Once again, since there's no definition or measure of loyalty, there's no accepted answer to the question. Bonus Explainer: How do you measure a dog's personality? Give the owner a questionnaire, or test the dog directly. There are many standardized instruments for assessing canine temperament; click here (PDF) for a review of the literature. Kenth Svartberg uses something called the "Dog Mentality Assessment," used by breeders with the Swedish Working Dog Association. Here the dog must endure 10 trials as it walks down a wooded path. These include the sound of a gunshot, the sound of a metal chain being dragged across a piece of corrugated metal, and the sudden appearance of a humanlike dummy. (The dummy is pulled off the ground with ropes that are slung over tree branches.) In the most peculiar segment, the dog is rated on its "reaction to two slowly approaching persons covered in white sheets ('ghosts'). ��� Over the head the functionaries have white plastic buckets with holes for the eyes."

Self-Mutilation for Dummies Is there a right way for Shiites to lash themselves on Ashura? By Brian Palmer Thousands of Shiites marched in Karbala, Iraq, on Tuesday to mark the Muslim holiday of Ashura. According to a report in Reuters, men "cut their scalps with daggers and whipped their backs with chains." Can a Shiite self-mutilate any way he wants? In a sense. A subset of male Shiites injure themselves on Ashura to represent their grief over the martyrdom of Hussein, grandson of the prophet, at the hands of the Ummayad army in 680. These people engage in violent rituals such as pounding their chests with their fists, lacerating their scalps with a knife or machete, or self-flagellation with a zanjeer���five blades connected to a wooden handle by steel chain. But none of these forms of expression is sanctioned by mainstream religious authorities; most prominent Shiite clerics object to all forms of self-mutilation, since it has no basis in early religious history and appears barbaric to outsiders. Annual processions mourning the death of Hussein became common in the eighth century, but self-mutilation did not become part of the ritual until the 15th century. A piece of apocrypha explains the practice: According to some, Hussein's sister Zainab, overcome with grief at the sight of her brother's severed head, banged her head bloody against her saddle post. Variations in method and degree of brutality exist. Some older Muslims accept self-flagellation but feel it has become too showy and gruesome: The modern zanjeer blades have two sharp edges rather than one, drawing much more blood than the traditional versions. Some participants shun the blades altogether and use the chains alone. Many South Asian Shiites hold razors between their fingers while slapping their chests. Individual mourners have developed altogether novel practices, including hanging weights from a body piercing. Not all Ashura mourning rituals are violent. The less painful traditions include prolific weeping, wearing black, reciting mournful poetry, passion plays, somber music concerts, and fasting. In South Asia, it is traditional to build an ornate casket and carry it to the sea. Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran issued a fatwa against self-mutilation in 1994, and Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most prominent cleric, has issued statements suggesting ambivalence about the practice. Some flagellation enthusiasts rejected the pronouncements entirely or claimed they prohibited only the cutting of the scalp with swords. Others accepted the fatwa and redirected their efforts toward more socially productive acts like Ashura blood drives. Over time, most clerics have muted their criticism, as many Shiites' devotion to the practice has been too strong to break.

How Many Albinos Are in Tanzania? More than you might think. By Juliet Lapidos Three men armed with machetes killed an 8-year-old albino boy in Burundi last week and are believed to have smuggled his limbs to Tanzania, where witch doctors use albino body parts for potions. At least 35 albinos were killed in Tanzania in 2008, prompting police officials to set up an emergency hot line and a program to distribute free cell phones to all albinos. How many albinos are there in Tanzania? A whole lot. Albinism, a genetic disorder characterized by lack of melanin pigment in the skin, hair, and eyes, is listed as a rare disease by the National Institutes of Health���meaning it affects fewer than 200,000 Americans. Around the world, between one in 17,000 and one in 20,000 people are albinos. The prevalence in parts of Africa, however, is far higher than the global average. Albinos make up about one in 4,000 people in South Africa and perhaps one in 5,000 in Nigeria. According to a 2006 review published in the journal BMC Public Health, the prevalence in Tanzania is one in 1,400, but this estimate is based on incomplete data. Since Tanzania's total population is more than 40 million, that would suggest an albino community of about 30,000. A census is under way, however, and the Albino Association of Tanzania believes the total figure could be more than 150,000. Albinism may be more prevalent in some geographic areas because of inbreeding. A study published in 1982 notes that albinism is less common among the South African Zulu and Xhosa tribes (one in 4,500) than the Swazi and Sotho-Tswana tribes (one in 2,000), which have no taboo against cousins marrying. In Zimbabwe, about four-fifths of albinos belong to the majority ethnic group, the Shona. Since the Shona discourage consanguineous relationships, this prevalence may be the result of the founder effect, wherein a small number of people from a larger population form a new community, resulting in the loss of genetic variation. But the extraordinary rate of albinism in Tanzania is not yet fully understood. In any case, albinism is especially dangerous in sunny climates, like Tanzania's, because lack of melanin predisposes albinos to severe skin damage from UV exposure. Albinos frequently suffer from sunburns, blisters, and solar keratosis as well as visual problems like myopia. Bonus Explainer: How do you count albinos? Look to the children. Researchers distribute surveys at schools and conduct interviews with administrators to get a sense of the albino population among the pupils, then extrapolate to the rest of the population. Hospital maternity wards are sometimes targeted, too, to count the number of albino babies born. And Albino Associations conduct outreach programs to register the local population officially.

Uh ��� Mind if I Sit Here? What's going to happen to the Minnesota and Illinois Senate seats? By Nina Shen Rastogi The first session of the 111th Congress will convene in Washington on Tuesday. Several dozen freshman senators will be seated in tomorrow's swearing-in ceremony, but seats in two states���Minnesota and Illinois���remain contested. (Three more senators���Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, and Ken Salazar���will soon leave their positions for the Obama administration.) What's going to happen with the empty seats? Either they could go unfilled or the Senate might choose to seat someone while reserving the right to boot him out later. At tomorrow's session, the chair of the Senate���i.e., Vice President Cheney���will formally present the credentials for all those seeking to be seated as freshman senators. These take the form of a paper document, asserting either the candidate's election or his appointment, signed by the state's governor and countersigned by its secretary of state. Typically, the credentials are collectively accepted without being read aloud; at that point, the senators-elect are administered the oath of office in alphabetical order, in batches of four. Earlier today, the Senate parliamentarian declared that Roland Burris of Illinois���who was appointed by scandal-tainted Gov. Rod Blagojevich���lacks the proper credentials, since the Illinois secretary of state has refused to countersign his certificate of appointment. Al Franken, the Democratic candidate from Minnesota, has just been certified the winner in a hotly contested, very close recount by the state's Canvassing Board, but Minnesota law requires a waiting time of seven days before the governor and the secretary of state can sign his certificate. (That gives opponent Norm Coleman an opportunity to file a petition in the state court appealing the election results.) So Franken, too, lacks the proper paperwork. For either candidate to be seated tomorrow���which now seems unlikely���another senator must propose a resolution calling for his credentials to be considered despite the fact that they're irregular. That would happen after all the other senators-elect had taken their oaths and would pass only with the support of a majority of all "present and voting senators." A resolution on Minnesota might call for the Senate rules committee to investigate the legality of the recount. In the interim, the senators may leave the seat unfilled, but they could also choose to seat Franken "without prejudice"���meaning that, if the committee eventually finds he wasn't the proper victor, Franken can't complain if he's removed from office. The same goes for Burris, should the Senate resolve to consider his credentials in the absence of a properly signed certificate. In the event that a Senate seat remains vacant, business proceeds as usual. According to Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution, the Senate requires the presence of a quorum, or a majority of its sworn, living membership, in order to conduct its business. So if both the Minnesota and Illinois seats go unfilled tomorrow, it would take just 49 members to reach a quorum. Several pieces of key American legislation have passed with a skeleton Senate. The 13th Amendment, for example, which formally abolished slavery, made its way through Congress during the tail end of the Civil War, when both the Senate and the House were refusing to seat members from rebel states. That meant there were 52 active senators, with 20 vacant Southern seats, when the amendment passed in January 1865. (The final vote was 38-6.) Before the 1913 passage of the 17th Amendment, which established voters' rights to directly elect their senators, senators were elected by state legislatures. This sometimes led to hopeless deadlocks, during which times the seats in question remained unfilled. In the most extreme case, Delaware went without a senator for four years, beginning in 1899.

What Do Timekeepers Do? Listen to radio waves; drink caf�� au lait. By Brian Palmer On New Year's Eve at 6:59:59 p.m. ET, an "international consortium of timekeepers" will add one second to the world's clock. How do you get to be an official timekeeper? Earn a Ph.D. in astronomy and move to France. Tweaks to the official clock are announced by the Earth Orientation Center, a Paris-based subunit of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. The IERS was established in 1987 by two professional associations comprising thousands of astronomers and geodesists (people who measure the Earth and its movements) around the world. It has no dedicated staff or payroll, and it exists merely as a group of government agencies, universities, and foundations that have agreed to share data on the position of celestial bodies and ensure that our clocks are consistent with the Earth's rotation. Duties are divided among the member institutions: As the parent institution of the EOC, the Paris Observatory is responsible for deciding when to adjust the world's clocks. The task of data collection is shared among other facilities around the world. So if you wanted official control over adding a leap second, you would have to convince the Paris Observatory board of directors to make you the director of the EOC. Even then, you'd have little discretion in the matter���the decision to push the second hand is automatically triggered when the world's clocks fall behind the Earth's actual rotational speed by more than 0.9 seconds. (All the director does is send out the official memo.) If you're interested in the day-to-day work of monitoring the Earth's rotation, you'd do better to seek employment at the U.S. Naval Observatory or other IERS member institutions where the data is actually collected. If you had the right credentials���e.g., a degree in astronomy or geodesy, with a focus on the behavior and orientation of the Earth���you might get hired for the job. Timekeepers calculate precise and universal clock values with an array of radio telescopes located in Hawaii, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and other locations, and focused on distant galaxies, called objects. Every day, astronomers at each telescope fill a series of hard drives with exact data on the radio signal from those quasars and ship them via common carrier to the other IERS institutions. Each institution compares the signals recorded at all the telescope sites and uses the differences to compute the speed of the Earth's rotation. Their calculations normally agree to within a few microseconds. The system requires the close cooperation of scientists around the globe. Astronomers formed the first transnational society to observe polar motion in 1895, called the International Latitude Service. In 1919, the International Time Bureau was established in Paris and became responsible for adjusting a universal clock. (Until then, those decisions were left up to individual countries.) The bureau retained this authority until it was replaced by the IERS in the 1980s.

How Many Civilians Are Dead in Gaza? Figuring out who's who among the casualties. By Juliet Lapidos Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip for the fourth day straight on Tuesday. Gaza officials said that, as of Monday, 364 Palestinians have been killed, and the United Nations noted that at least 62 were civilians. How did the U.N. determine which of the victims were combatants? Gender and age. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency came up with the figure by sending emissaries to visit hospitals and other medical facilities. Under the Geneva Conventions and subsequent international law treaties, civilians are those who do not belong to the armed forces, militias, or organized resistance movements. But in Gaza City, UNRWA counted only female victims and those under the age of 18. North of the city, the agency attempted to get a more complete count by including adult men who were not wearing dark-blue police uniforms and whom community members identified as noncombatants. At a Monday press conference, an U.N. staffer clarified that the count was only meant to give a credible minimum figure rather than a hard total. Nor did the agency intend to suggest that all men killed in Gaza City were combatants. Making clear distinctions between civilians and militants is difficult since Hamas (which is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Israel, and other countries) engages in civic activities (like running schools) as well as military operations. Likewise, it's possible that some of the female victims and older children were Hamas combatants. As a rule, the U.N. does not tally civilian casualties, relying instead on local governments for information. The agency made an exception in Gaza due in part to persistent questions from journalists who wanted to gauge the impact of the Israeli offensive on ordinary Palestinians.

Stuck on Santa What should you do if your costume fuses with your skin? By Nina Shen Rastogi A disgruntled divorcee wearing a Santa Claus costume killed nine people last week when he arrived at his former in-laws' house and began shooting a semiautomatic handgun. The attacker set a fire before fleeing the scene but was burned badly in the blaze. The police found his body after he committed suicide and discovered that part of his costume had "literally melted to his body." What should you do if your Santa suit fuses to you in a fire? Don't try to pull it off. It's possible for synthetic fabrics to fuse with burned human skin during a fire, especially when the blaze is intense enough to cause second- or third-degree burns. But the word fuse can be misleading: Your skin won't actually liquefy along with your clothing. (Flesh cooks under extreme heat; it doesn't melt.) Instead, a fabric can melt onto you like hot candle wax���when it cools off, it will be stuck to your skin. While you can safely peel off melted wax, it can be dangerous to rip off a fused piece of red-and-white polyester; if you're not careful, some healthy tissue will come off with the fabric and burned skin, and you'll leave the area vulnerable to infection or nerve damage. Instead, just run the burn under cool tap water to make sure it doesn't get any worse, and then head to the emergency room. There, doctors may be able to remove your burned epidermis and adhered clothing by sloughing it off with a clean towel. A disposable Santa costume is one of the worst disguises you could wear if you're plotting an act of arson. Not only does baggy, ill-fitting clothing increase your risk of catching fire, but bargain costumes���like the economy option at MySantaSuit.com���are often made with polyester. Like many synthetic fibers, polyester takes longer to catch fire than cotton or linen, but when it does ignite, it melts. When the gluey substance reforms, it can stick to your epidermis. Melting fabric can be extremely dangerous, because it can cause scalding burns above and beyond direct fire damage. For that reason, the Marine Corps has banned some polyester- and nylon-based athletic wear in Iraq, where soldiers are in constant danger of fire exposure due to roadside bombs. (Pure cotton, on the other hand, quickly turns to ash, which crumbles and blows away from the body.)

Happy Birthday, Dear Yeshua, Happy Birthday to You! Was Jesus a common name at the beginning of the first century? By Brian Palmer On Thursday, Christians will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Was the Christian Messiah the first to have that name, or were there a lot of Jesuses running around back then? Many people shared the name. Christ's given name, commonly Romanized as Yeshua, was quite common in first-century Galilee. (Jesus comes from the transliteration of Yeshua into Greek and then English.) Archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of 71 Yeshuas from the period of Jesus' death. The name also appears 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four separate characters���including a descendent of Aaron who helped to distribute offerings of grain (2 Chronicles 31:15) and a man who accompanied former captives of Nebuchadnezzar back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2). The long version of the name, Yehoshua, appears another few hundred times, referring most notably to the legendary conqueror of Jericho (and the second most famous bearer of the name). So why do we call the Hebrew hero of Jericho Joshua and the Christian Messiah Jesus? Because the New Testament was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic. Greeks did not use the sound sh, so the evangelists substituted an S sound. Then, to make it a masculine name, they added another S sound at the end. The earliest written version of the name Jesus is Romanized today as Iesous. (Thus the crucifix inscription INRI: "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum," or "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.") The initial J didn't come until much later. That sound was foreign to Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Not even English distinguished J from I until the mid-17th century. Thus, the 1611 King James Bible refers to Jesus as "Iesus" and his father as "Ioseph." The current spelling likely came from Switzerland, where J sounds more like the English Y. When English Protestants fled to Switzerland during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I, they drafted the Geneva Bible and used the Swiss spelling. Translators in England adopted the Geneva spelling by 1769. In contrast, the Old Testament was translated directly from the original Hebrew into English, rather than via Greek. So anyone named Yehoshua or Yeshua in the Old Testament became Joshua in English. Meanwhile, the holy book of the Syrian Orthodox church, known as the Syriac Bible, is written in Aramaic. While its Gospels were translated from the original Greek, the early scribes recognized that Iesous was a corruption of the original Aramaic. Thus, the Syriac text refers to Yeshua. Bonus Explainer: What was Jesus' last name? It wasn't Christ. Contemporaries would have called him Yeshua Bar Yehosef or Yeshua Nasraya. (That's "Jesus, son of Joseph" or "Jesus of Nazareth.") Galileans distinguished themselves from others with the same first name by adding either "son of" and their father's name, or their birthplace. People who knew Jesus would not have called him Christ, which is the translation of a Greek word meaning "anointed one."