Are we in the End Times?

Are we in the End Times? I dunno'. Sooner or later this world is coming to an end. It might be in the next five minutes or in the next five million years. For each of us the world comes to an end in about 80 years or so. It is then that we get to play the game that the girl wanted her brother to play in that "Addams Family" movie: Is there a God? Since it is a game that sooner or later we all get to play, whether we want to play it or not, it might be a good idea to figure out how to play it ahead of time, just in case there is a God. 

Survey: 77% of Israeli Arabs prefer Israeli rule to Palestinian

From this article:

"...77% [of Israeli Arabs] prefer to live under Israeli rule rather than Palestinian, according to a recent poll by the Statnet research institute....

Of the percentage of Arabs who prefer to live under Israeli rule: 70% were Druse, 57% Christian, and 49% Muslim. And those that preferred to live under the Palestinian Authority: 2% were Druse, 5% Christian, and 18% Muslim."

Russia and China to hold naval exercises in Mediterranean and Pacific in 2015

This could be interesting.

Israeli President Opposes Proposed "Jewish-Nation State" Law.

This article gives me hope.

Israeli president opposes proposed law to give 'national rights' to Jews only.

Isn't Israel already a Jewish Nation-State?

I thought that Israel would have already had some sort of language in its founding documents making clear the Jewish nature of the state of Israel.  And according to Dr. Mohammed Wattad, yes it does.

Experimenter Bias and Shocking Videos

A couple of posts ago I linked to a couple of videos of a reporter waving an ISIS flag at Berkeley campus.  I thought it was, and still think it is, an interesting experiment.  But what strikes me as perhaps the biggest flaw in the experiment is possible bias on the part of the experimenter. He is a reporter who probably is trying to make a name for himself. The best way to do this is by filming very interesting videos. And one way to do this is to film what appear to be results opposite of what we would normally expect. Thus, showing video of people not reacting to his waving an ISIS flag would be the result he would want to attain. And this could be easily achieved. Even if 95% of the people who walked by stopped to express negative comments about his actions, all he has to do is edit them out and show only the 5% who did not react. I'm not saying that this is what he actually did. It could be exactly what he claims happened - no negative reactions whatsoever. The problem is, since he would have a motive to make an interesting video, unless we know him to be a person of high ethical character, we should be careful about the conclusions he wants us to draw about his experiment.

What we do know is that some people at Berkeley tweeted negative reactions to the ISIS flag-waving.

Negative Reaction to Pro-Palestinian Demonstration on Campus

A friend of mine suggested that people didn't react negatively to the pro-ISIS demonstrator, because they figured he was joking.  Meanwhile, he suggested that there are negative reactions to pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses.  I found one that seems to prove his second point.  There is at least one negative reaction to this Pro-Palestinian Demonstration at the U. of Michigan.