Spiritual Sunday If I want to generate a spirited ethical discussion in a class, all I have to do is ask my students whether altruism derives from a higher moral sense or from enlightened self-interest. It is one of those questions that theologians, philosophers, biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others can debate for hours. They draw […]
Tag Archives: Scott Bates
7 Reasons We Help Others
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Seven Charitable Chimpanzees", Altruism, Ethics, Spirituality Comments closed
Happiness Is a Warm Gun (Shoot, Shoot)
Following the Columbine High School shootings, outrage against permissive gun laws led, not to tougher gun laws, but to pushback by the National Rifle Association. The NRA went on to help George W. Bush squeak by Albert Gore in the 2000 elections and has since become so bold that the 2006 Congress was afraid to extend […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ballad of the National Rifle Association", guns, violence Comments closed
Revolution in Tunisia–A Good Thing?
While I want to be optimistic about the recent Tunisian overthrow of its dictatorial ruling family, I also appreciate Anne Appelbaum’s pessimistic assessment in a Washington Post column. Her caution brings to mind one of my father’s witty animal fables entitled “The Revolutionary Mice.” You can read it below. Appelbaum succinctly expresses her concern thus: […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "The Revolutionary Mice", politics, Revolution, Tunisia, William Blake Comments closed
Epiphany from a Camel’s Point of View
Scott Bates’s version of the epiphany focuses on a camel’s point of view. This camel doesn’t end up in Bethlehem but his work is no less holy.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Fable of the Third Christmas Carol", Epiphany, Religion, T. S. Eliot Comments closed
A Roc for Christmas (Annual Bird Count)
Sports Saturday I don’t know whether bird watching is officially considered a sport but, what with Christmas falling on a “Sports Saturday,” let’s say it is. That way I have an excuse for writing about the annual Christmas bird count. Every year, between the middle of December and the first week in January, bird watchers […]
Midwinter Transformation: A Poem
A cold snap has hit the American east coast, including Maryland, and we are experiencing what Christina Rossetti calls “bleak midwinter,” with temperatures moving down into the teens. To cheer myself up, I turn to one of my father’s Christmas poems. My father has been writing these poems annually for years. He sends them out […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bird Watcher's Christmas Dinner", Christmas, Nature Comments closed
An ABC of Children’s Books
As we enter the holiday season, you can expect a number of posts on children’s books. I have mentioned several times how one of my father’s great joys when we were growing up was reading us the books he had loved as a child. We got extra reading around the Christmas season. Here’s a poem […]
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The Divine Comedy, Doggerel Version
For a change of pace as we enter the Christmas season, I share here a light, witty, and very smart poem by my father on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The poem grew out of research that he was doing on Guillaume Apollinaire, the French poet who has been his scholarly subject. Don’t worry if you don’t […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Dante Dance", Add new tag, Christmas, Dante, Divine Comedy Comments closed
Fixing the House that Jefferson Built
I offer my apologies to my regular readers for having written a series of very long posts this week. To give you some relief, I offer up a political poem by my father, who is a master of light verse. As he did in a poem that I ran in a previous post (you can […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "House that Jefferson Built", Environmentalism, Nature, politics Comments closed
