Big Brother IS Watching You: Edward Snowden and Government Surveillance
Bob Bates — In 2013, the US government charged Edward Snowden with violating the Espionage Act for releasing National Security Agency (NSA) information, specifically [...]
Articles by Bob Bates
About Bob Bates
A Life in the Neighborhood
Bob Bates — The brown wooden door opens and Mister Rogers enters, looking directly into the camera. Stepping over to the closet, he slips out of his jacket, hangs it [...]
In the Midst of the Sixth Extinction
Bob Bates — In May 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), an international panel of more than 450 [...]
The Persistence of White Power Movements in America
Bob Bates — The topic of Kathleen Belew’s recent book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard University Press, 2018), [...]
American Fighter Pilot: A Tribute to a Veteran and Gentleman
Bob Bates — Toward the end of World War II in the turbulent skies over France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany, thousands of rounds of German ground artillery exploded [...]
A Difficult Learning Curve: Starbucks in Context
Bob Bates — During the morning of April 12, 2018, in a Philadelphia Starbucks coffee shop, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were arrested for trespassing while awaiting [...]
Labyrinth of Enigmas: The JFK Assassination
Bob Bates — When Jack Ruby died in prison on January 3, 1967, barely three years after he ended Lee Harvey Oswald’s life with one fatal shot to his gut, any [...]
Daniel Ellsberg’s Doomsday Papers
Bob Bates — Daniel Ellsberg is universally known as the “man behind the Pentagon Papers.” However, with the publication of his new book, The Doomsday [...]
Current Status of Global Warming and Climate Change
Bob Bates — In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius calculated that increases of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere contributed to the [...]
Baseball and the World Series: Context and Contests
Bob Bates — Two months after the first “World’s Series,” Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight at Kitty Hawk. Baseball’s only rivals [...]
Uncovering Enigmas of the Universe
Bob Bates — Over a century ago physicist Max Planck, functionally an intellectual mentor of Albert Einstein in making scientific breakthroughs with prodigious consequences, [...]
Innocence Lost: From Babes to Bloodshed
Bob Bates — In his book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (2013), Paul Bloom, psychology professor at Yale University, reports on the work he has conducted [...]
Jeanie’s Hope
Bob Bates — Mark Richardson’s moving essay entitled “My Mom, Baseball, and Me,” published previously on Wise Guys, is my motivation for posting this [...]
Creation: A Process Continuing
Bob Bates — The age of our universe is about 13.8 billion years old. Our solar system began forming about 4.5 billion years ago, with planet Earth being a part of this [...]
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Bob Bates — In his epic tour de force, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams has his all-knowing, all-wise Grand Computer named Deep Thought delve [...]
The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery
Bob Bates — One of the most provocative books I’ve read that deals with religion is Richard Elliot Friedman’s The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (1995). [...]
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Bob Bates — Sociologist Matthew Desmond’s widely acclaimed book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), a study of the city of Milwaukee, pounds [...]
How Much Is Enough?
Bob Bates — Most thinking humans for a long time have known an effective societal problem-solving process: (1) identify needs, (2) identify ways these can be met, (3) [...]
