The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowments in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) announced in that it issued 350,000 “fatwas” in 2010 — not the “death to” fatwas, but rather, Quranic interpretations governing everyday life.
The Authority ruled last year, for example, that car raffles are bad; that vuvuzelas are acceptable if kept under 100 decibels; that afternoon naps are prohibited because time should be better spent; and that half-sisters may shake hands with their brothers, even if their mother is Christian.
Again,
that’s all
good
to know
Georgia Tech scientists tested the “oscillatory shaking” they witnessed by wet mice and various-sized wet dogs as they shook water off — finding an inverse ratio between size and speed, from 27 cycles per second by a mouse to 5.8 by a mid-sized dog.
Their original hypothesis was that speed would decrease according to “torso radius,” but they forgot to factor in the length of the animals’ fur.
Cursing
duck
brings
them
together
Every Dec. 24 in Sweden, at 3 p.m., a third to a half of all Swedes sit down to watch the same traditional television program that has marked Christmas for the last 50 years: a lineup of historic Donald Duck cartoons. According to a December report on Slate.com, the show is insinuated in the national psyche because it was the first big holiday program when Swedes began to acquire television sets in 1959.
Entire families still watch together, repeating their favorite lines.
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