A depressing poll from Palestine

September 3, 2014 • 6:11 am

I keep hoping that Israel and Palestine will sit down at the table and finally negotiate a two-state solution, but that favorable end seems further away all the time. And that’s especially so given the results of  a new poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) headquartered in Ramallah.

The poll was taken between August 26-30 of this year, that is, during the first four days of the ceasefire after cessation of hostilities.  As the organization notes:

This press release covers public perception of the war, who came out a winner, the ceasefire agreement, targeting of civilians, evaluation of the performance of various Palestinian actors during the war, and war impact on reconciliation. It also covers Palestinian elections, the internal balance of power, the June kidnapping and killing of the three Israelis, and others. Total size of the sample is 1270 adults interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error is 3%.

Here are some of the depressing results. The main one is that Hamas has gained terrifically in popularity.  While one might explain that as a result of recent hostilities, one might also think that Palestinians are tired of Hamas and its recalcitrance, and would prefer the more moderate Abbas regime that could negotiate more successfully for peace. Some readers have maintained that Hamas doesn’t represent a majority of Palestinians, even in Gaza. That doesn’t seem to be the case: Hamas is a big favorite among all Palestinians, even more so in the West Bank! (Note that residents of both Gaza and the West Bank were surveyed.)

The bulleted points are taken verbatim from the survey, but it’s much more extensive than this.

  • 60% say that Hamas does not launch rockets from populated areas, but 30% say it does. 49% think it is justified for Hamas to launch rockets from populated areas and 46% disagree with that. Percentage of those who believe that launching rockets from populated areas is unjustified increases to 59% among Gazans while standing at 38% among West Bankers. [JAC: I think it’s generally agreed by others that Hamas does launch rockets from populated areas]
  • Only 30% believe that Hamas should warn Israeli civilians in the specific targeted areas before launching its rockets; 68% believe it should not do so.
  • About two thirds (64%) believe that Iran, Turkey and Qatar combined have given the Gaza Strip the ability to remain steadfast against Israeli attacks and to be able to continue to launch rockets during the war; only 9% believe Egypt too has contributed to that. Iran comes on top with 28%, followed by Turkey (21%) and Qatar (15%); 25% select other countries or actors.

Qatar has long been known as an enabler of terrorists, but Turkey?

  • In an evaluation of the performance of the various Palestinian actors during the war, Prime Minister Rami al Hamdallah comes at the bottom, with 35% giving him a positive rating. The PA comes next with 36%, Abbas with 39%, the reconciliation government with 43%, and the PLO with 44%. On top comes Khalid Mish’al with 78% approval and Hamas with 88% approval. The approval rating for Abbas rises to 49% in the Gaza Strip and drops to 33% in the West Bank. By contrast, Khalid Mish’al’s approval rating drops in the Gaza Strip to 70% and rises to 83% in the West Bank.

Khalid Mish’al, of course, has been the head of Hamas for a decade.

  • If new legislative elections were held today with the participation of all factions, 78% say they would participate in such elections. Of those who would participate, 46% say they would vote for Hamas and 31% say they would vote for Fatah, 7% would vote for all other third parties combined, and 17% are undecided. Two months ago, vote for Hamas stood at 32% and for Fatah at 40%. Vote for Hamas in the Gaza Strip stands in this poll at 44% and in the West Bank at 47%. Vote for Fatah in the Gaza Strip stands in this poll at 36% and in the West Bank at 27%.
  • The public is divided over the two-state solution: 49% support it and 50% oppose it. In our last poll two months ago, 54% supported this solution and 46% opposed it.

I wish more people were on board with the two-state solution. Without it, the killings and attacks will go on indefinitely. But even 54% is pathetic.

  • A majority of 53% believe that armed confrontation is the most effective means to establish a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel. Only 22% believe negotiation is the best means to establish a Palestinian state and 20% believe that popular non-violent resistance is the most effective route to statehood.
  • 57% of the public say that they supported the June 2014 kidnapping of the three Israelis in the West Bank when that incident took place. Support for the kidnapping reached 67% in the Gaza Strip and only 45% in the West Bank.
  • Similarly, a majority of 54% supported the killing of the three kidnapped Israelis and 42% opposed it. Support for the killing reached 69% in the Gaza Strip and only 42% in the West Bank. 52% of the West Bankers opposed the killing of the three kidnapped Israelis.

I have no equivalent survey for Israel, and you should look at the entire long panoply of the results from Palestine. But the bullet-points above are depressing. I understand that passions might well have been inflamed by the recent hostilities, but continuing support for Hamas, for firing rockets at Israeli civilians without warning, the sanctioning of kidnapping and killing civilians, and so on—this is not a step on the road to peace. And, as I noted, I have no similar results from Israel to compare to these figures.

Now that ISIS is on the ascendancy, however, I worry far more about that. All it takes is one renegade state to sell them a nuclear weapon, and it’s all over. I’m not worried about nukes in Palestine, but if they were in the hands of ISIS, all bets are off.  There’s just no light at the end of the tunnel: just a long, dark tunnel with no visible exit.

A trippy xkcd celebrates a book launch

September 3, 2014 • 5:13 am

Turtles all the way down!

Today’s xkcd, by Randall Munroe, celebrates the issuing of the author’s new book.  This is a screenshot, but if you click on it you will go to the site, and then begin scrolling up (or down; it varies among machines and browsers)—forever.  (Note: it doesn’t work with some browsers, but I’ve found that Firefox works fine. And remember that it’s a figurative and literal book launch.)

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Be sure, if you have time, to look at some of the funny panels, like this one:

Screen Shot 2014-09-03 at 7.10.38 AM

And keep going once the book-rocket is in space: you’ll eventually land in a Chopraverse!

Here’s the book, which came out yesterday. You can buy it on Amazon.

Screen Shot 2014-09-03 at 6.06.56 AM

 

Reader’s wildlife photos

September 3, 2014 • 3:57 am

JAC: Today Former Dean Cobb contributes some urban wildlife. There’s a quiz (no prize, but warm congratulations if you solve it) in the next-to-last photo.

by Matthew Cobb

Here are some photos I took in a very urban setting – the quad of the Michael Smith Building at the University of Manchester, on the corner of Dover Street and Upper Brook Street, at the heart of the world’s first industrial city. The dragonfly is a male Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum. He was hawking around looking for prey and a mate – sadly no sign of any females about – and settled first on a log and then on a table, where I was able to get close and above all stabilise my iPhone so I could get a nice close-up. Does anyone know what the dark marks on the leading edges of the wings are for? Many dragonflies have them…


The Michael Smith Building has a large quad, half of which has been landscaped with indigenous wild plants, and seven British fruit trees, as well as some plants that we have saved from around the campus. The pond is a crescent shape, with an adjoining wetland area that is protected from human interference. My office is the third window from the left. The window sill is full of stegosaurs.

The raised beds are each divided into three, and different lab groups have planted them up. We recently deepened the pond and discovered that as well as water boatmen (aka backswimmers), loads of crustaceans, snails and dragonfly/damselfly larvae, we also have newts living in there (we had no idea).The quad is also home to a small population of frogs, which has come from frogspawn we initially put in the pond. This year the frogspawn was entirely ‘home grown’.

Last year during Welcome Week (aka Fresher’s Week or Into Week) we had a Bioblitz with the new Zoology and Plant Sciences students, and made a list of all the plants and animals we could find. That was when we first realised that the frogs were living happily in the quad – we found six lurking under various logs. We’re having another Bioblitz in a couple of weeks with this year’s crop of students. I’ll let you know what we find.

Each year blackbirds nest in the quad, and visitors include wagtails and blue tits, as well as the usual magpies and crows and the odd set of passing mallard that briefly pootle around on the pond before heading off somewhere more appropriate. Occasionally we discover an explosion of feathers, as a sparrowhawk has had breakfast in there. The quad isn’t very bird friendly, however, as it is very deep so the birds have to circle round a couple of times before they can get out.

Until recently I was Associate Dean for Social Responsibility in our Faculty, which meant I could do lots of interesting things, including showing the public what on earth we get up to in what is otherwise a rather anonymous building. So on one side I installed this four-storey high double helix (this unites what virtually all of our 200 lecturers study):

photo 1

On the main road side (Upper Brook Street), we put this double helix, containing a DNA sequence that has a link to Jerry and me. A non-prize for any reader who works out what that link is. There’s a clue in the slogan about ‘the rhythm of life’.

photo 2

The site of the building used to have a rather unattractive school on it:

In the 19th century Frederick Engels, the co-author of the Communist Manifesto, had a house on Dover Street – Engels managed his family’s cotton mills in Manchester, becoming extremely rich as a result. Karl Marx (who lived in London) stayed in the house on a visit and left some stuff there. On 25 January 1865, Marx wrote a letter to Engels about the International Workingmen’s Association they were setting up (now known as The First International – there were three more). In the PS he wrote:

P.S. I left a pair of winter boots (shoes) at your house in Dover Street, ditto new pair of knitted stockings, and probably the 2 silk handkerchiefs as well. I only mention it so that you can drop a word to your landlords ‘some time or other’ so that they know that an eye is kept on them.

Given Marx and Engels’s politics, it’s quite appropriate that our Common Darter is such a lovely red colour.

Wednesday: Hili dialogue

September 3, 2014 • 2:46 am

Hump Day!: supposedly the day on which workers are least productive. We will see. Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili fends off a discussion of philosophy:

A: Can we talk about existentialism?
Hili: I’m not such a snob.
A: But could you stop existing on our kitchen table?

10624899_10204193405462661_2714803859701463931_n In Polish:

Ja: Czy możemy porozmawiać o egzystencjalizmie?
Hili: Nie jestem aż taką snobką.
Ja: A czy możesz przestać egzystencjować na naszym stole kuchennym?

Most viewed and commented-on posts

September 2, 2014 • 12:55 pm

Ah, the albatross is weighing heavily on my neck, so you must live for the moment with persiflage.

Out of curiosity, I found the posts that have been viewed most often since this website began in January of 2009. Here’s the list, limited to those posts that got more than 50,000 views. (Naturally, the site itself was viewed most often.).

It’s an eclectic mix, and of course  (and sadly for me) the most-viewed posts were ones not involving any intellectual effort (or even much effort) on my part: they were “gee-whiz” posts. The Mother Teresa post is an exception (although I just called attention to a study debunking her), probably because it both offended Catholics and pleased secularists, and it was re-posted in several places. The treehopper post got a lot of attention because those insects are plenty weird, and reddit picked it up, and, well, you know people are always curious about the size of the paternal apparatus:

Title Views
Home page / Archives More stats 13,210,562
A new exposé of Mother Teresa shows that she—and the Vatican—were even worse than we thought More stats 549,308
The surreal treehoppers More stats 229,089
There’s a bacterium on a diatom on an amphipod on a . . . you know the rest More stats 201,144
A gynandromorph cardinal: one half male, the other half female More stats 146,975
Geographic variation in human penis size More stats 136,208
Deepak Chopra embarrasses himself by offering a million-dollar prize More stats 96,344
The longest cell in the history of life More stats 93,085
Mason Crumpacker and the Hitchens reading list More stats 80,658
More children killed by religiously-based medical neglect More stats 70,704
Fly with ant-mimic wings More stats 65,268
New work on an ancient mammal More stats 63,222
Kentucky Republicans realize that they screwed up: students will have to learn evolution! More stats 61,976
Robin Williams, depression, and Stephen Fry More stats 61,202
02-Guggenheim-Museum-Bilbao-Spain-1 More stats 60,452
A most bizarre and mysterious cocoon More stats 58,870
Sans commentaires More stats 57,799
Amazing T. rex illusion (make your own) More stats 57,365
A Sokal-style hoax by an anti-religious philosopher More stats 55,241
Against all reason, Alabama outlaws sex toys More stats 54,111
So you think you have snow? More stats 54,086
Adam and Eve: the ultimate standoff between science and faith (and a contest!) More stats 51,206

And here are the posts that drew the most comments, supposed based “on the 1000 most recent comments,” a statement that mystifies me. At any rate, I’m glad to see that some of them are about ideas rather than internet drama.

Post Comments
Dawkins decries taboos in discussions about society 664
Once again: did Jesus exist? 564
Robin Williams, depression, and Stephen Fry 465
Michael Robbins uses a book review as an excuse to bash atheists—again! 391
Sam Harris on the Israel/Palestine conflict 364
Science pub quiz questions wanted 347
The schlockiest songs of all time? 330
I had a dream 305
Hamas kidnaps and kills three Israeli teenagers, Palestine fires rockets at civilians 294
Do believers see scripture as literally true? 291
How does philosophy help science? 287

* Based on the 1000 most recent comments.

 

Evolution now officially part of British primary-school curriculum

September 2, 2014 • 11:30 am

From the British Humanist Association comes an announcement about the advent of an evolution curriculum in British primary schools, so that evolution education, as of this year, begins at age 10 or 11 instead of age 14-15:

Today sees a new national curriculum in English schools come into force, and for the first time this includes a module on evolution in primary schools. The module on evolution and inheritance is part of the year six programme of study (ages 10-11). The British Humanist Association (BHA) has long campaigned for such a change, and has welcomed another of its goals being realised.

In 2011 the BHA launched the ‘Teach evolution, not creationism!’ campaign, with support from four organisations including the British Science Association and the Association for Science Education, and from 30 leading scientists including three Nobel prize winners, Sir David Attenborough, Richard Dawkins and Michael Reiss. That campaign had two simple goals: to see new rules introduced to ensure that creationism and intelligent design ‘may not be presented as scientific theories in any publicly-funded school of whatever type’, and to see evolution added to the primary national curriculum instead of being taught from year ten (ages 14-15).

The first of those goals was realised in June 2014, and the second has now been realised as well. The current year six will be taught the old programme of study, with the new programme of study being taught from September 2015.

Here are the official guidelines taken from the link above:

Screen Shot 2014-09-02 at 7.10.21 AM Screen Shot 2014-09-02 at 7.10.30 AM

And not a word about “critical thinking about the theory” or “teaching the controversy”!  I could carp a bit about adaptationist story-telling, and stipulate that “students might think about how to test their hypotheses,” but, all in all, this is great, and far, far better than standards in the U.S.

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Why do the dots disappear?

September 2, 2014 • 8:10 am
This is one of the most baffling illusions I’ve ever seen. Take a look at the gif below.  First, look at any yellow dot as the figure moves. The yellow dot remains present and stationary. If you concentrate on all three yellow dots, they remain there as well.
But now concentrate on the central green dot. You will see one or more of the yellow dots disappearing and then reappearing sporadically. They are not—this is an optical illusion. The dots remain and your brain simply doesn’t register their presence from time to time. Weird, eh?

anigif_enhanced-16656-1408614979-1

An article by John Whitfield in Nature News, “A brain in doubt leaves it out,” explains the phenomenon:

Yoram Bonneh, of the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, and colleagues have been showing people a swirling pattern of blue dots superimposed on some stationary yellow dots1. [JAC: for some reason the reference isn’t given.]

The yellow dots seem to wink in and out. But the erasing happens in the mind, not the computer. Nearly everyone tested saw the effect.

The brain seems to have internal theories about what the world is like. It then uses sensory input – which tends to be patchy and disorganized – to choose between these. In some sensory situations, different theories come into conflict, sending our perceptions awry.

The illusion, which Bonneh’s team calls motion-induced blindness, catches the brain ignoring or discarding information. This may be one of the brain’s useful tricks, a deficiency – or perhaps both, says Bonneh.

The researchers suggest this may (and I suggest that it certainly must) happen in daily life:

The researchers speculate that this phenomenon could happen in everyday life without us noticing it. A highway at night, with drivers staring dully at a mass of moving lights, might recreate the kind of conditions used in the experiments, says Bonneh, causing objects – the tail lamp of the car in the next lane, for example – to temporarily vanish.

Jack Pettigrew, a neuroscientist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, believes that the illusion results from a tussle for supremacy between the left and right halves of the brain.

He has found that applying a pulse of magnetism to the brain to temporarily disrupt its function affects the occurrence of motion-induced blindness. When the pulse is applied to the right hemisphere (leaving the left dominant) the dots disappear; zapping the left brings them back2.

The left hemisphere seems to suppress sensory information that conflicts with its idea of what the world should be like; the right sees the world how it really is. Some people with paralysis caused by injuries to their right hemisphere will deny that they are disabled.

My only question is why it takes motion to generate this illusion. Is that because motion is associated with visual confusion?

Source of gif: Professor Michael Bach at the University of Freiburg, via reader Grania. Bach has a page with 113 of these damn things!