Michael Bates: July 2021 Archives
Phil Silvers Interview, CJCL Radio, 1983 by RadioGuy
"One of the hosts read an article that Silvers, a one-time huge movie, TV and Broadway star, was feeling depressed after a stroke and felt forgotten. So one night, after getting in touch with his agent, he managed to get the actor's home phone number and the fallen star agreed to do a rare radio interview looking back at his life.
"It was supposed to be a half hour chat. But when the phones went crazy with fans, Silvers got so into it and felt so much love from the audience, that they cancelled all the following programming and just kept going. (Despite saying his stroke prevented him doing the Sgt. Bilko yell, he finally does do it towards the end.)
"What started at midnight ended up running until 3 in the morning Eastern time and probably could have gone longer."
Top hits from the Contemporary Christian Music genre, by decade and by year, 1978 to the present day.
About - Educational Guidance Institute
Educational Guidance Institute, headed by Dr. Onalee McGraw, uses classic movies to teach character and values. On Dr. McGraw's blog, you can read essays on the lessons taught by great films like Twelve Angry Men, On the Waterfront, and Roman Holiday.
"Since our founding in 1986, the Educational Guidance Institute (EGI) has implemented character formation programs for highly diverse groups of young people. Our program history includes public school classrooms, after school programs, special events in detention homes, pilots for college students and young adult groups, and parent-teen events in communities and churches. EGI uses the great classic films of Hollywood's Golden Age to teach enduring values that are both timeless and deeply relevant to the generation of today. These stories touch the deepest longings of the human heart."
EGI offers study guides, each covering a series of seven films around a common theme. For example, "Liberty and Justice for All: Classic Movies and the Things that Matter Most in a Free Society" covers Key Largo, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront, No Way Out, The Big Country, and Bad Day at Black Rock. "Men of the West: Classic Western Heroes and the Examined Life" includes High Noon, Shane, Bad Day at Black Rock, 3:10 to Yuma, The Big Country, The Magnificent Seven, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
In an essay on The Best Years of Our Lives, Dr. McGraw writes, "The greatest films of the Golden Age give us a vision of human nature through Classic Realism. With films made in this mode, moral choice drives the characters and events in the story. While we have different sensibilities and worldviews, we can view and discuss these films together, seeing essential truths with the same lens."
In an essay reprinted from Word on Fire magazine, Dr. McGraw writes, "The isms on the one side of this centuries-long debate--like materialism and fatalism--deny our powers of free will and moral choice; those on the other side, subjectivism and radical individualism, insist we have the power to define ourselves and reality. The beauty of classic cinema elevates us to a higher plane as we engage each other, moving to understanding, solidarity, and moral action.
"The greatest of the classic films presuppose a moral universe where our power to know, love, and do the good is at the center of the drama. From the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, this art form occupied the center stage of our popular culture."
PowerPoint presentation with US map represented as individual states that can be colored and outlined separately. (Just beware what you're clicking.)
New England Baptists drop 'Southern,' keep the faith - The Boston Globe
A snarky take on Southern Baptist rebranding in the North, from 2014:
"Two years ago, messengers (that's Baptist-speak for delegates) voted to allow churches to call themselves Great Commission Baptists instead of Southern Baptists, to help counter any negativity born of regional prejudice....
"New England Baptists have long been prescient trend-setters perched on the bleeding edge. While baptisms decline precipitously in the South, Southern Baptists have been quietly planting churches in the heart of Yankee land. There are now 148 new Southern Baptist-affiliated churches that weren't here in 2002. Some are not only stealth Southern Baptists, but even dropping that hoary "church" thing.
"'We have a church in Putnam, Conn., that's called Green Valley Crossing, and a church in Amherst called Mercy House,' the Rev. Jim Wideman, director of the Baptist Convention of New England, told me. It's kind of like Kentucky Fried Chicken, he said. Everyone knows the chicken there is fried, but because 'fried' has become a bad word in our health-conscious society, the company changed its name to KFC. (A smart move that also lost the equally dubious 'Kentucky.')
'No one is ashamed that we are Southern Baptists,' Wideman told me, 'but there are a few people who would say, "Oh, it must be for people who are here from the South," and we want to remove any barriers to the opportunity to share the Gospel.'...
"[The Southern Baptist Convention] can learn a lesson from New England Southern Baptists -- who expect to add another 35 churches by the end of the year -- and the genius that is KFC: There is no marketing challenge that can't be overcome by a little obfuscation. Fried chicken is optional, but it helps."
Controlling Nature with Virus Research - Tablet Magazine
Norman Doidge: "Perhaps the biggest problem with the military metaphor, is how it causes us to narrow our focus almost exclusively on 'eradicating the virus,' and 'cases of the infected.' This causes us to miss other important ways of dealing with it, that might help us survive it. Public health officials in the 'the eradication mode' almost never mention how we can boost our immune systems with vitamins D and C, and zinc, exercise and weight loss. Not their focus. And the narrow focus on eradicating the virus is now causing serious 'collateral' harm and death...
"Antibiotic overuse has also occurred, I would argue, because of the military metaphor in medicine, and the eradication mentality. Pathogens are the enemy, and we have a weapon, so we must use it, to eradicate them. Initially we used these drugs for serious illnesses, and then eventually for more and more trivial ones, and often preemptively, as in a dentist's office. Their overuse is dangerous for many reasons, not least of which is that we are filled with many different kinds of organisms, some of which are very good for us, and which even support our immune and other systems, and while antibiotics can indeed kill off 'the enemy pathogens,' they also kill off these good bacteria. The problem is also that 'the bad bacteria' can develop mutations, and evolve, and the more they are needlessly exposed to antibiotics, the more opportunity they have to develop a means of resisting the antibiotics we have. There are now a number of deadly illnesses that we could once treat, that we no longer can. This is a crisis that did not have to occur--a classic case, of the irresistible immoderation generated by the conquest of nature delusion."
Doidge discusses and links to the work of Janelle S. Ayres on COVID-19, Type 2 Diabetes, and metabolism.
The War on Reality - Tablet Magazine
An essay by California public school teacher Alex Gutentag:
"Clearly, quarantining the healthy did exactly the opposite of what was sold to the public: It increased non-COVID-19 excess deaths while leaving elderly and immunocompromised people completely unprotected. While some may excuse the destructiveness of lockdowns as a simple error, the sheer volume of reversals public health officials have made during the pandemic paints a picture of bureaucrats intentionally misleading the public in order to cover up their failures or pursue agendas unrelated to public health....
"The PCR testing protocol for COVID-19 was based on a paper by Christian Drosten, which was peer-reviewed and published within just two days in a journal on whose editorial board Drosten sits. The method was created 'without having virus material available,' using instead a genetic sequence published online. The PCR test amplifies genetic material of the virus in cycles but does not determine whether a case is infectious. A higher number of cycles indicates a lower viral load. The cycle threshold for PCR tests used in the U.S. was usually limited at 37 or 40, highly sensitive levels. In July 2020, Fauci remarked that at these levels, a positive result is '"just dead nucleotides, period.'... It is also likely that 85%-90% of tests that are positive at a cycle threshold of 40 would be negative at a cycle threshold of 30....
"Basic civil, human, and economic rights were violated under demonstrably fraudulent pretenses. The sacrifices we thought we were making for the common good were sacrifices made in vain. Unlawful lockdowns demoralized the population and ruined lives. The tragic reality is that this was all for nothing. The only way to prevent these events from recurring is to exhaustively investigate not just the origin of the virus, but every corrupt and misguided decision made by politicians, NGOs, public health organizations, and scientific institutions made since its fateful emergence."
