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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...

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,...

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...

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...

What Do Timekeepers Do? Listen to radio waves; drink café 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...

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...

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...

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...

Explainer's Christmas Roundup Your Christmas-related questions, with answers from our archives. By Sophie Gilbert It's the most wonderful time of the year for some, the most confusing for others. With the holidays fast approaching, Explainer recaps your seasonal questions. Before the kids ask-is it really possible for a virgin to give birth? Yes, in theory. However, a number of rare events would have to occur in close succession, and the chances of these all happening naturally are virtually zero...

The Questions We Never Answered in 2008 Digging through the bottom of the Explainer mailbag. By Daniel Engber The Explainer has completed another year of valuable community service. Over the last 12 months, we've told you how to interrogate a small child and given instructions for turning a human skull into a sweet bong. Regular readers learned how to survive a 47-story fall and why you can't survive falling into a black hole. And we had the final word on whether terrorists really bump fists to...