Slate Articles

Don’t Burn After Reading

Brian Palmer — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:15:00 GMT

Violent protests have raged outside Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan for two days after local workers found the burned remains of more than 100 Qurans in a pile of garbage from the base. What’s the proper way to dispose of a Quran?

Bury it, erase it, or store it indefinitely. The Quran does not include instructions for its own disposal, and Mohammed never appears to have addressed the issue. Islamic scholars, however, offer several options. According to a recent essay by Jonas Svensson, a Swedish professor of Islamic studies, the most venerable method seems to be to wrap the text in cloth and store it indefinitely in a safe place. During the 1972 renovation of an ancient mosque in Yemen, workers found piles of parchment—presumably unwanted holy texts—dating to the seventh century. Similar discoveries have been made in mosques in Tunisia and Syria. Today, Muslims in some areas, such as Quetta, Pakistan, place their linen-swaddled Qurans in caves dug into the side of rock quarries.

Ritual burial is another widely accepted practice. The grave should be in a holy place, such as the grounds of a mosque or a Muslim cemetery, where the book won’t be trampled upon. As in the case of storage, the Quran should be wrapped in cloth—often linen, but there’s no requirement—to protect it from impure soil. The most fastidious scholars demand that Muslims place the book in a niche dug into the side of the grave, oriented toward Mecca.

A less common practice is to desanctify the book by removing the text from its pages. Some medieval scholars recommended wiping off the ink and disposing of the paper by ordinary means. A more modern and practical alternative is to tie the book to a stone, then drop it into a stream to symbolically achieve the same effect.

Burning isn’t a popular choice, because fire is associated with the devil as well as the early rival religion Zoroastrianism, but some scholars find it acceptable. Saudi religious authorities place burning on par with burial, as long as it’s done ritually on mosque property. They point out that Uthman ibn Affan, a friend to the prophet and early caliph, sanctioned the burning of nonconforming Qurans after compiling the official version. Other scholars view burning as a last resort, for example, in an emergency situation to prevent the book from being defiled. After burning, the ashes should be buried or scattered over water.

Quran-handling regulations extend far beyond disposal. Depending on their chosen sect, Muslims are forbidden to touch the Quran during menstruation, allow the book to touch the ground, leave it open after reading, use it as a pillow, or take it into impure places such as the bathroom. (As with any religious mandate, not all Muslims adhere to these rules, even if they acknowledge their legitimacy.) The physical text of the Quran is considered not just sacred, but also mystical and powerful. Some Muslims wear verses as amulets for protection or dissolve ink from a Quran in water and drink it to cure illnesses.

Other religions may not imbue their holy texts with quite the same degree of sanctity, but most have rituals for disposal. Many Jewish authorities require the faithful to place sacred writings into a repository to await mass ritual burial. For some, the dictum goes beyond the Torah itself to include any text containing the name of God or brief quotations from the holy book. A common disposal method in Hinduism—though it is a vast religion with widely varying rituals—is to consign the Mahabharata or other sacred text to a holy river such as the Yamuna or the Ganges after a brief prayer. Christianity is somewhat unique in that it has no long-standing rituals for disposing of worn-out holy texts. Recently, however, some Christians have adopted practices from other religions, such as a respectful burial.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks D. Max Moerman of Barnard College, Jonas Svensson of Linnaeus University, and James Watts of Syracuse University.

Ash Wednesday Do’s and Don'ts

Anna Weaver — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:36:45 GMT

Tonight’s Republican presidential debate falls on Ash Wednesday, and Catholic candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich may appear on the debate stage with noticeable ash marks. Once you've put on ashes for Ash Wednesday, how long do you have to keep them on?

It’s up to you. Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church, so Catholics can choose whether to go to church and where the ashes would be placed on their foreheads. They're also permitted to make their own decisions about when and how to remove the ashes. Many Catholics leave the mark on all day but wash it off before bedtime. Ashes also tend to flake off by themselves, or get rubbed away by absentminded forehead brushings. (Services can happen at any time of day, so it's at least conceivable that Santorum and Gingrich might receive the ashes after their early-evening debate in Arizona.)

For Catholics, the ashes are considered a sign of penitence and mortality. They are rubbed in with a prayer that says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In the United States, the dark smudge is supposed to take the shape of the cross, or a smudge vaguely resembling a cross depending on the precision of the person giving you ashes, but customs vary around the world. In Europe, ashes are sprinkled on the top of a person’s head. (One consistent tradition is for Ash Wednesday ashes to come from burning last year’s Palm Sunday fronds. The ashes are often combined with oil for sticking power, and sometimes bought from religious suppliers when churches are short on palm fronds.)

Despite its being an optional observance, Ash Wednesday Masses and services are among the busiest in the Catholic Church’s liturgical year. Several mainline Protestant churches including the Episcopal, Methodist, and Lutheran churches distribute ashes as well.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Jesuit Father James Martin of America Magazine.

How Dangerous Is Asthma?

Brian Palmer — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:22:19 GMT

New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died on Thursday while covering the unrest in Syria. He apparently had an allergic reaction to a horse and succumbed to an asthma attack. How dangerous is asthma?

It’s rarely fatal, if you have access to health care. In 2010, 3,355 Americans died from asthma attacks (PDF), for an age-adjusted death rate of one person per 100,000 population. That’s a fairly low rate, especially considering how widespread the disease is. About 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, placing it in the top 10 chronic diseases by prevalence. To put the fatalities into perspective, the death rate for asthma is far lower than the death rate for accidental poisoning (9.9 deaths per 100,000 population) or alcohol-induced fatalities (7.5), and slightly lower than the death rate for accidental drownings (1.2) and workplace injuries (1.6). Among natural causes of death, asthma has about the same population-wide death rate as laryngeal cancer.

Eighty percent of asthma fatalities could have been prevented with ordinary medical treatment in the form of long-term control medications or emergency interventions like nebulizers or intravenous drugs. In many such cases, the victim is a child who fails to take his medicine properly. Adults may succumb to an asthma attack if they forget to carry an inhaler or nebulizer and are unable to get to a hospital quickly. The remaining 20 percent of fatalities involve severe asthmatics who don’t respond to treatment or can’t take any of the common medications due to adverse drug reactions. Among this group, exposure to allergens can easily be fatal. Animal allergies cause particularly severe reactions, as they seem to have in the case of Anthony Shadid.

Asthma fatality rates rise and fall over time for various reasons. There was a sharp spike in deaths among asthmatics in Great Britain and New Zealand during the 1950s and 1960s, which has since been linked to broad spectrum medications that damaged the hearts of sensitive patients. From the 1970s to the late 1990s, there was an increase in both asthma cases and fatalities in the United States. In 1998, the fatality rate reached two deaths per 100,000 population, twice what it is now. Most experts believe lifestyle changes caused the surge—more time spent indoors, increased exposure to allergens and dust mites, and possibly an uptick in the inhalation of airborne pollutants. As concern over asthma grew, asthma treatments improved, emergency rooms got better at dealing with asthma attacks, and the death rate began to decline.

We’ve come a long way in terms of asthma awareness. Until the 20th century, many people believed that asthma was never fatal. This misconception—coupled with the fact that asthma in the poorer classes was often misdiagnosed as bronchitis—helped to make asthma a fashionable disease of the 19th century. Prominent intellectuals like Marcel Proust were emblematic of the disease, and Europeans came to think of asthma as the mark of good breeding and intellectual superiority. Many went to their doctor hoping for an asthma diagnosis, along with other modish diseases like hay fever, gout, and tuberculosis.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Mark Jackson of the University of Exeter and author of Asthma: the Biography.

Should You Donate to a Candidate or a Super PAC?

Brian Palmer — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:22:11 GMT

Wealthy activists who want to donate to their favorite politicians beyond the $2,500 annual limit are turning to Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited funds as long as they don’t coordinate with a specific candidate. But what about ordinary people who only have $50 or $100 to donate? Is it more effective to give directly to a candidate or to a Super PAC that supports him or her?

It depends. Any candidate would tell you it’s better to give directly to his or her campaign, since the strategists working inside the campaign would know better than anyone what the boss needs to win. In addition, political candidates are entitled by law to buy advertising time at the lowest available rate, so your $50 donation could have more buying power if it’s in your candidate's own hands. You also have more control over your money when you donate to a candidate. For example, if you send a check to Romney and write “Romney 2012 primary” on the memo line, the campaign cannot hold it for the general election or pass it along to other candidates. These restrictions are somewhat illusory, of course, due to the fungibility of money. But, at the very least, you’ll feel like you have some say.

There are some circumstances under which donating to a Super PAC might be the way to go. For example, if you really want the Republicans to retake the Senate, you’re probably better off donating to a conservative Super PAC like Club for Growth Action than to any individual candidate. (Democrats might give to the House Majority PAC.) Super PACs can quickly shift their expenditures to support the candidates who need it most—the ones who are underfunded and in competitive races.

If you want to go negative, then donate to a Super PAC. When your money is used to launch a vicious attacks ad, your candidate can point to the rule against coordination and disavow the advertisement. Most observers think these denials of involvement stretch credulity, and candidates have taken heat for the content of Super PAC advertisements. But these arguments haven’t slowed or softened the attacks.

A Super PAC’s complete legal independence from the candidate can be a problem for picky donors. There’s little to stop a Super PAC from spending your money on causes or candidates you don’t believe in. This is especially true in the primaries, when your favored candidate may drop out of the race, leaving the Super PAC with a decision to make—they can return whatever funds are leftover or find somewhere else to spend the money. When Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race, the Super PAC Americans for Rick Perry, which had raised $193,000, became the Restoring Prosperity Fund. The group will advocate on behalf of conservative candidates for congress. The 9-9-9 fund still appears to accept donations through its website, even though Herman Cain dropped out of the race on Dec. 3.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Richard Briffault of the Columbia Law School. Thanks also to reader Alan Crocker for asking the question.

How Do You Rig a Straw Poll?

Will Oremus — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:20:43 GMT

After finishing second to Mitt Romney in a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., presidential candidate Rick Santorum insinuated on Sunday that Romney had gamed the vote. “I don’t try to rig straw polls,” Santorum sniped. How, exactly, does a candidate rig a straw poll?

By paying for his supporters to attend. Straw polls, by definition, are nonbinding, so they have fewer rules than do real elections. And unlike opinion polls conducted by national organizations such as Gallup and Pew Research, a straw poll isn’t supposed to be a random sample of the population. Instead, those polled at events such as CPAC and the Ames Straw Poll are simply the people who happen to show up. That means the candidate who turns out the largest number of backers will win. One easy way to get out the straw vote is to buy up a bunch of tickets, then hand them out for free to your supporters. Paying for their transportation to the event can’t hurt. And wining and dining them once they’re there is always a nice touch. Since the CPAC straw poll typically involves about 3,500 people, you might only need to pay for a few hundred voters to tilt the poll in your favor.

Rigging, however, is in the eye of the beholder—usually the loser. “Buying” might be a better word. Straw poll rules vary, but in the case of CPAC and other major events, there’s nothing to prevent a candidate from shelling out cash to gin up support. In fact, that often works to the advantage of the organization running the poll, since it means more people attend the event.

Perhaps the most famous straw poll in American politics is the one held by the Iowa Republican Party in Ames, Iowa, in advance of GOP presidential primaries. That one doubles as a fundraiser for the state party, since anyone who wants to vote must buy a $35 ticket, and the number of tickets is not capped. Campaigns have long recognized that their best chance of winning is to buy up a pile of tickets, give them away to likely backers, and then pay for their transportation to Ames. In 1995, reports that candidates were shuttling people in from other states led organizers to restrict the poll to Iowa residents. Still, spending surged four years later, when Steve Forbes and George W. Bush splashed out $2 million each, chartering luxury buses and hosting musical acts such as Ronnie Milsap and Crystal Gayle. Bush won the poll, and Forbes came in second.

As for CPAC, registration is $75 and up for adults. (It’s cheaper for students—just $35 each—so campaigns might be inclined to target the college crowd.) There are no limits on attendance, so if Romney was trying to stack the vote (as Ron Paul had done in past years), there would have been nothing to stop Santorum from doing the same.

In any case, it’s debatable whether paying supporters to turn out for straw polls is money well-spent, since they have no concrete impact on the election. Rick Perry skipped this year’s Ames vote and vaulted to the top of the polls soon after. Michele Bachmann won and was scarcely heard from again. It’s a violation of federal law to buy votes in a national election with direct cash payments. Still, presidential candidates—especially Democrats—routinely give volunteers “street money” or “walking-around money” to cover expenses during get-out-the-vote efforts.

Bonus Explainer: Why are they called “straw polls?” Because straw is flimsy and shows how the wind is blowing. Sources differ on the phrase’s precise origin, but William Safire’s political dictionary traces it to a 17^th-century scholar named John Selden, who said, “Take a straw and throw it up into the air—you may see by that which way the wind is.”

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Tim Hagle of the University of Iowa.

The Shape of My Heart

Keelin McDonell — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:45:00 GMT

Valentine's Day is once again upon us. In 2006, Keelin McDonell attempted to track down the origin of the holiday's heart-symbol to explain how it got its familiar shape. His article is reprinted below.

It's Valentine's Day, and as usual, people are presenting their loved ones with heart-shaped cards, candy, and trinkets. How did the heart shape become the symbol of true love?

Nobody's quite sure, but it might have to do with a North African plant. During the seventh century B.C., the city-state of Cyrene * had a lucrative trade in a rare, now-extinct plant: silphium. Although it was mostly used for seasoning, silphium was reputed to have an off-label use as a form of birth control. The silphium was so important to Cyrene's economy that coins were minted that depicted the plant's seedpod, which looks like the heart shape we know today. The theory goes that the heart shape first became associated with sex, and eventually, with love.

The Catholic Church contends that the modern heart shape did not come along until the 17^th century, when St. Margaret Mary Alocoque had a vision of it surrounded by thorns. This symbol became known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus and was associated with love and devotion; it began popping up often in stained-glass windows and other church iconography. But while the Sacred Heart may have popularized the shape, most scholars agree that it existed much earlier than the 1600s.

Less romantic ideas about the heart-shape's origin exist as well. Some claim that the modern heart-shape simply came from botched attempts to draw an actual human heart, the organ which the ancients, including Aristotle, believed contained all human passions. One leading scholar of heart iconography claims that the philosopher's physiologically inaccurate description of the human heart—as a three-chambered organ with a rounded top and pointy bottom—may have inspired medieval artists to create what we now know as the heart shape. The medieval tradition of courtly love may have reinforced the shape's association with romance. Hearts can be found on playing cards, tapestries, and paintings.

Hearts proliferated when the exchange of Valentines gained popularity in 17^th-century England. At first the notes were a simple affair, but the Victorians made the tradition more elaborate, employing the heart shape in tandem with ribbons and bows.

Bonus Explainer: Why do we single out Feb. 14 to celebrate romance? It's said to be the day St. Valentine, a Roman priest during the third century, was executed. Legends about Valentine vary. Some say he was killed for illegally marrying Roman soldiers; others claim it was for helping Christians escape punishment at the hands of the pagan emperor. Just before his death, it's believed that he sent an affectionate note to the beautiful daughter of his jailer—the very first Valentine.

Got a question about today's news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Professor Eric Jager of UCLA.

Correction, Feb. 15:This piece originally misspelled the name of the ancient city-state that traded in the plant silphium. It is Cyrene, not Cylene. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Did Early Christians Practice Birth Control?

Will Oremus — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:06:25 GMT

After a backlash from Catholics, President Obama on Friday softened his stance on contraceptive coverage in health insurance plans for the employees of religiously affiliated universities and hospitals. Have prohibitions on birth control always been part of Christian dogma?

Not explicitly. The Bible never mentions artificial birth control, although it was certainly practiced in some cultures, even in pre-biblical times. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, described crude contraceptives as early as the fifth century B.C., writing, “If a woman does not wish to become pregnant, give to her in a drink of water moistened copper ore in the amount of a vicia bean, and she will not become pregnant for a year.” That’s actually one of the less repulsive recipes of the time. Another was a supposedly abortion-inducing suppository that included five dismembered Spanish fly beetles, cuttlefish eggs, and sweet wine. A century later, Aristotle prescribed cedar oil and olive oil as spermicides to prevent overpopulation. Modern scientists doubt the efficacy of these methods, but no one has tried testing them. If all else failed—as it surely did quite often—there was infanticide. The Ancient Greeks got around their moral qualms by practicing exposure (i.e., they left newborns to die in the wilderness), allowing a slight chance that the Gods could rescue the infant.

Perhaps the first direct pronouncement against contraception in Christian teachings comes from St. Clement of Alexandria, who in 191 A.D. wrote, “Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted.” Clement based this verdict on several passages from the Bible, including God’s famous command in Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply.” He also cited the story of Onan, who was punished with death for spilling his seed on the ground.

Modern scholars trace St. Clement’s antipathy to birth control to the Stoics, a school of Greek philosophers whose thinking heavily influenced Christian theology. They counseled that indulgence, including sex for pleasure, led to unhappiness. St. Augustine, in his fifth-century Letters, also drew on Stoic thought when he forcefully denounced all forms of contraception. In his view, sex was a sin even for married couples who were sterile, because they couldn’t produce children.

Such frank discussion of contraception receded from church teachings in medieval times, perhaps because the practice was less common. Birth rates were high, yet population control wasn’t an issue, thanks to high infant mortality rates and short life spans. Besides, general knowledge of the ancients’ birth-control techniques had faded along with other knowledge in the Dark Ages.

The issue resurfaced following the industrial revolution, when the advent of rubber condoms, coupled with urbanization and other social forces, spurred a resurgence of birth control. But as late as the turn of the 20^th century, the Catholic Church worried that denouncing contraception would have the unintended consequence of informing people of what it was. Better, the thinking went, to leave them ignorant.

The first official papal pronouncement against contraception didn’t come until 1930. And while Protestant faiths, beginning with Anglicans, took an increasingly lenient stance toward birth control, the Catholic Church reaffirmed its opposition to the practice with Pope Paul VI’s humanae vitae in 1968.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks David Hunter of the University of Kentucky and Leslie Tentler of the Catholic University of America.

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How Did Washington State and Washington, D.C., Get the Same Name?

Brian Palmer — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:06:45 GMT

The Washington state Legislature approved gay marriage Wednesday. When Gov. Chris Gregoire signs the bill into law, her state will become the second Washington to recognize gay marriage since Washington, D.C., did so in 2009. Why do we have two Washingtons?

Because it’s better than having two Columbias. The commission tasked with delineating the new national capital in 1791 named it the “Territory of Columbia.” (Federal statutes vacillated between calling the area a “territory” and a “district” for decades, with the latter becoming the official title in 1871.) When settlers in northern Oregon asked the government to establish an independent “Columbia Territory” in 1852, Congress faced a problem. Speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives, Kentucky Democrat Richard Henry Stanton noted, “We already have a Territory of Columbia.” The confusion could intensify, he added, if the new territory were to add a city called Washington or Georgetown. Congress agreed to grant the settlers independence from Oregon, but named their new state Washington to honor the first president.

Contemporary statesmen would have argued that Washington, D.C., was a city, not a territory or state, so the duplication of the name wouldn't be such a big deal. There were already lots of localities that shared names with states, such as Florida, N.Y., and Georgia, Vt., not to mention cities that have the same name as their own state, like New York City and Delaware City. By the mid-19th century, there were already dozens of place names that included the word Washington, and there are at least 120 today. (The first was Fort Washington—now known as Washington Heights—established in New York during the Revolutionary War.)

The name of the Washington Territory became a public issue again when the territorial government petitioned for statehood in the 1880s, although duplication was only one element of the discussion. Prominent lawyer David Dudley Field II—most famous for the reformation and codification of the country’s arcane court procedures—kicked off a nationwide renaming movement with a wonderfully colorful speech to the American Geographic Society in 1885. Field argued that native names invariably sound better than the settlers’ alternatives: “What a name is New York for this queen of Western cities! Compare it with that which the Indian gave it, barbarian as we call him, Manhattan or Manahatta. Who for its euphony and its significance would not wish the old name back again?” Field singled out the place names Tombstone, Wild Cat, Rawhide, and Dirt Town, among a few others, as “disgusting” and suggestive of “semi-barbarous” residents.

Field also pointed out that naming places after prominent people has led to duplication and confusion. He noted, “I make my boast that I am an American ... but the Brazilians and the Peruvians claim also to be Americans, and the claim cannot be denied.” Field urged the government avoid this mistake by converting the Washington Territory into the state of Tacoma. (Field also objected to the cardinal directions in the names of North and South Dakota, which were petitioning for statehood at the same time, and sought to change the name of the New Mexico Territory to “Sonora.”)

Residents of the Washington territory resisted Field’s proposals for name reform. Washingtonians—those from the state, not the city—thought Field’s argument was bunk. One letter-writer pointed out, “it would be a stupid postal clerk, indeed, who would fail to distinguish” between Washington, D.C., and Washington state. These arguments, paired with sheer inertia, carried the day.

By establishing a state of Washington, Congress belatedly fulfilled a century-old wish of the late Thomas Jefferson. In 1784, a Jefferson-chaired committee suggested that Congress divide the Northwest Territory into 10 states, for which Jefferson suggested names. Most of modern-day Ohio was to be called Washington state. (Washington, D.C., didn’t exist at the time, so the name wouldn’t have been duplicative.) Incidentally, if Congress had accepted Jefferson’s naming scheme in its entirety, modern-day Michiganders would be living in either Metropotamia or Chersonesus, depending on their location. People in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois would be residents of Assenispia.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Jennifer Kilmer of the Washington State Historical Society.

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How Many Kids Are Sexually Abused by Their Teachers?

Brian Palmer — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:14:00 GMT

Los Angeles police are investigating a teacher aide at Miramonte Elementary School who allegedly sent love letters to an 11-year-old student. The student’s mother discovered the letters in 2009, but she says police and school officials didn’t take the matter seriously until last week, when two other teachers at the same school were arrested for sexually abusing students in separate cases. Is sexual abuse in schools really as common as these reports make it seem?

Possibly. The best available study suggests that about 10 percent of students suffer some form of sexual abuse during their school careers. In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Association of University Women, surveyors asked students between eighth and 11^th grades whether they had ever experienced inappropriate sexual conduct at school. The list of such conduct included lewd comments, exposure to pornography, peeping in the locker room, and sexual touching or grabbing. Around one in 10 students said they had been the victim of one or more such things from a teacher or other school employee, and two-thirds of those reported the incident involved physical contact. If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault. This number would include both inappropriate romantic relationships between teachers and upperclassmen, and outright pedophilia.

These statistics are uncertain, however, because no one has ever designed a nationwide study for the expressed purpose of measuring the prevalence of sexual abuse by educators. The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services can’t agree on whose domain teacher sexual misconduct falls into, and Congress has shown little appetite to spend money on the issue. In the study described above, surveyors asked participants if they had ever experienced sexual improprieties at school, then asked students who reported abuse to identify the perpetrator. Since the study was intended to measure student-to-student sexual misconduct, the original investigators didn’t focus on teacher-offenders. A third-party academic later used the raw data to suss out the prevalence of teacher sex abuse. A few smaller or less methodologically rigorous studies have also addressed the question, with wildly inconsistent results. One looked at college sociology students and estimated that nearly half had experienced sexual harassment by a teacher. Another surveyed 4,000 adults, with 4.1 percent reporting inappropriate sexual contact with a teacher during their high-school years. But the sample included only urbanites, and white respondents were overrepresented. A third study used responses to a questionnaire published in Seventeen magazine and estimated that just 3.7 percent of children suffer sexual abuse from their teachers.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Charol Shakeshaft of Virginia Commonwealth University.

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Good news! The Explainer is about to deliver a much-needed bundle of explanation to one lucky reader’s doorstep. We’ve selected five finalists from our reader-submitted, explanatory squabbles, one of which will be resolved in a special "House Call" edition of the column next week. Help decide which dispute is most deserving of the Explainer’s attention by voting on Facebook before Tuesday. Arguments, prepare to be resolved! Ignorance, prepare to be vanquished! Explainer away!

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How Do You Win the Claw Game?

Forrest Wickman — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:34:24 GMT

An Australian 3-year-old climbed inside a coin-operated claw game at a family restaurant Sunday, and proceeded to hand out the game’s candies and toys. Similarly frustrated players have busted into claw machines in Wisconsin and Minnesota over the last few years. If you’re playing by the rules, what’s the best way to grab a prize with the claw?

It depends on the machine. Claw games can be adjusted to make the prizes either easier or harder to grab. The difficulty is controlled by setting the length of time allotted for each attempt and the number of attempts given for each quarter spent. Operators can also change the strength of the claw’s grip. Given these variables, claw-game experts recommend spending a few minutes on the sideline while others play. Once you have a sense of the machine’s idiosyncrasies, ask a partner to stand on one side of the machine to help you align your claw on the depth axis. If the prize is a plush toy or stuffed animal, aim for the chest, which allows for the firmest grip. If the claw has a weak grip, try knocking objects sideways into the prize chute. Experts differ as to whether it’s easier to win with a three-pronged or a four-pronged claw.

There are other ways that a claw-game operator can tweak the odds. In some machines, the prizes are crammed together such that it requires more force to pull them out. According to the British TV show Brainiac, some claw machines (or “fairground grabbers,” as they’re known in the United Kingdom) are programmed so that they only maintain a firm grip on every fifth or 10th play; they’re guaranteed to drop the prizes the rest of the time. Whatever their methods, claw-machine operators lean toward settings that allow a ratio of about $3 worth of prizes doled out for every $10 in revenue.

While claw games have been compared to kiddy slot machines by critics, the law considers them to be to be games of skill, as opposed to games of chance. In several states, so-called “Chuck E. Cheese laws” ensure that children’s arcade games won’t be tagged with regulations designed for casinos. (Even under these rules, claw games are illegal when they don’t give players a fair shot.)

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Explainer thanks Robert Jarvis of Nova Southeastern University.