More and more evidence is coming to light that Dr. Wakefield was on the right track when he researched the connection between the MMR vaccine and intestinal inflammation in the vaccinated children. Was Dr. Andrew Wakefield Right After All? Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism But how did Dr. Wakefield first get into the sights of the UK vaccine industry and how was the campaign against him mounted? Martin Walker, the author of "Dirty Medicine" and a number of other books on health, closely followed the case that eventually resulted in Dr. Wakefield's exile from the UK. He describes how it all happened and how the vaccine manufacturers were able to bring down the full weight of government and the courts against both Wakefield and the many parents who were suing for recognition of the damage vaccines had done to their children. "As a campaigner of 40 years, I think that what surprises me most about Dr Wakefield’s case, is how easily and how completely we were defeated by the pharmaceutical companies, how over a thousand parents and children were written out of history together with their adverse drug reactions. Part of this defeat for the parents, the children and the doctors concerned was grounded in an unfortunate understanding that pharmaceutical company executives were decent people and humanitarians. In fact the pharmaceutical companies, their corporate structure and their relentless pursuit of profit, their fraudulent practices represent one of the last remaining shibboleths, in our society which need to be completely reformed, democratised, divested of vested interests and made public from top to bottom." We do learn from experience. That is why we should pay attention to how this case went so wrong and why the campaign to ruin those researchers and to leave the damaged children by the wayside was mounted in the first place. So it won't happen again. Here is Martin Walker's essay....

We have previously published articles by the Australian AIDS-and-biology researcher Cal Crilly, and here is yet another installment. Cal is someone who digs into scientific studies. He does biological detective work and finds gems that hide in plain view, things we don't normally understand and that even the experts do not see as they are not trained to put discordant facts together and question basic assumptions. What this new article tells us is that retroviruses - the same kind that are thought to cause immune deficiency or AIDS - are useful and necessary for our immune system to function correctly. That of course tends to leave the hypothesis of a viral causation of AIDS in grave trouble. I say 'hypothesis' because no one has proven, or even come close to a coherent explanation for, the mechanism of AIDS causation by HIV. How does a retrovirus that is by nature a benign particle, cause devastation of the immune system? Here we have several scientific studies published in the world's finest journals, which attest to the fact that retroviruses are part and parcel of the human organism, that they are needed to provide certain defensive capabilities against invaders, and that they are not pathogenic. So we might ask ourselves why HIV tests (thought to indicate the presence of a retrovirus) are still performed, and why doctors are still recommending the use of toxic anti-retroviral drugs to kill what, rather than a foreign invader, appears to be part of normal human metabolic processes. Cal Crilly lays it out for you, citing and linking the sources......

After conducting "one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever undertaken", the European Food Safety Authority has released its verdict on 10 December 2013. The agency came to the conclusion that aspartame and its breakdown products are "safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure". The EFSA press release says that this was an important step forward in "strengthening consumer confidence in the scientific underpinning of the EU food safety system and the regulation of food additives". So the message seems to be that we should all just move on to other things. Leave aspartame alone and better yet - drink some of that "diet" Coke. But should we really? Could perhaps the power of money and influence behind big food have had a determining effect on that decision? We cannot be certain what exactly caused the EU regulator to give aspartame a clean bill of health rather than to acknowledge the sweetener's widely known dangers. Fact is - they disregarded every single study that showed aspartame to have adverse effects. Prof. Erik Millstone of the University of Sussex Science and Technology Policy Research Unit believes that EFSA has arrived at its conclusion by opportunistic interpretation of the studies that were reviewed. Most of the industry funded studies were given straight A's, while independent studies were - without exception - given an 'F' rating. Millstone says that "The EFSA Panel opportunistically accepted at face value almost all of the studies suggesting that aspartame is harmless, while entirely discounting every single study indicating that aspartame may be harmful, even though the quality, power and sensitivity of many of the studies that were discounted were markedly superior to those of the contrary studies deemed reliable."...

Just some cheerful words to chew on while our politicians wear their enamels off congratulating themselves about the Iraqi election:

“The collapse of the rival giant [the Soviet Union] has exaggerated America’s apparent strength because it has so much more economic muscle than any single rival. But for many decades America’s share of the world’s economic output has been in decline. Think of a see-saw. America at one end is now easily outweighed by any substantial grouping at the other, and most of those powers are on friendly terms with each other. America’s modesty in 1945 understated its muscle, just as Bushite vanity overstates it today. He has over-reached. His country is overstretched, losing economic momentum, losing world leadership, and losing the philosophical plot. America is running into the sand.”

Maybe I’ve been hanging out in France, where declinism (both French and American) never goes out of fashion, for too long, but that assessment seems more convincing than this disappointing “We are so great—right now” rebuttal by Victor Hanson. And the CIA seems to concur (though admittedly in more neutral language):

“The likely emergence of China and India … as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.”

It’s almost comforting that such invidious fluffy-minded sludge as this is floating around, as it seems, like religion, to keep the middle-brows hypnotized by “beautiful sentiments” which are so vague as to keep them from actually getting together and doing anything. It’s sort of weird to hear this weakly Marxist social-democratic pap which used to be shouted from the rooftops now being whispered in a low monotonous whine. The author avows his fealty to Jeremy Bentham, not Marx, and calls it utilitarianism not Marxism, but there are many illegitimate fathers along this line of thought.

The root of the idea is that, now that neuroscience has supposedly made it possible to actually identify what makes us happy, the idea of happiness has become quantifiable, and hence a program of providing the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people has become objectively possible. However, the author does not make the slightest effort to apply these wonders of modern science to actually determining what the alleged sources of human happiness are. The neuroscience tack is really just a defensive ploy to ward off the eternal charges that utilitarinism is simply a euphemism for an authoritarian imposition of values. As for espousing his positive program for what constitutes human happiness, it is simply the usual liberal middle-class canards, with not surprisingly a socialist edge: more time to spend with family, a decent wage for everyone, blah blah blah. But he seems to make two pretty criminally unsubstantiated assumptions: one is these sources are essentially the same for everyone, or at least could be under certain conditions, and the other is that they do not inherently conflict with anyone else’s.

I say under certain conditions could be, because in evaluating our current society he seems to privilege envy of other’s material well-being as the principal determinant of happiness. His theory is that above a certain level of material subsistence people are motivated primarily by status-seeking and the desire for a high rank within their social group. Therefore, the increasing wealth of the society will not increase happiness because people measure their well-being relative to the group, not by their absolute prosperity. This is always been a flaw in the concept of the “war against poverty”; I’m not sure it’s much of an argument for socialist economic redistribution. But actually if you read his section on the value of income taxes carefully, he doesn’t even seem to be arguing that they are useful insofar as they can be redirected to the less prosperous, although he does evidently believe that a certain amount of money contributes more to the happiness of a poor person than to a rich one’s. Rather, he seems to think that taking money away from the properous is valuable in and of itself, because it will supposedly make them less focused on the “rat race,” more family-oriented, etc., etc. In short he seems to be advocating a net impoverishment of society.

All of which may be consistent with the program of a good little socialist, but does not necessarily accord marvelously with his own evidence about the supposedly quantified happiness of humanity. The research that he cites non-specifically supposedly indicates that people’s feeling of happiness has not risen in the last half-century, but he does not cite anything which indicates that it has necessarily declined. He cites rising rates of depression and crime as presumably implicit indicators of greater unhappiness, but he does not seem to acknowledge the possibility that in our hyper-medicated and surveillance-based society perhaps people simply report depression and crime more. In any event, if roughly similar numbers of people today as in the ‘50’s report themselves happy (and we believe them), despite the increase in prosperity, that might perhaps indicate that happiness is not fixed to material well-being. Which may be consistent with his general point, but not with his idea of increasing happiness by manipulating income levels.

And even if it did, it seems rather difficult to countenance any social program predicated upon appealing to one of humanity’s most depraved instincts, namely envy. The author acknowledges that his ideal of taxation is mainly motivated by the desire to pander to people’s envy, but he seems to think that their envy will be sated by the loss of prosperity of those around them and that after that point there will be no more. So the envy of the less prosperous will be satisfied by the losses accrued by the more prosperous, which will somehow not be counter-balanced by the chagrin of the more prosperous at the prospect of seeing their status diminished. Very logical.

One of the more egregious presumptions of utilitarians is that non-utilitarian social systems somehow aren’t concerned with seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people. On the contrary, that’s the defining problem of practically every social and political theory I can think of, and they all either seek or claim to have found the answer—whether such a solution exists, I have my doubts, but that’s why I’m a skeptic about politics. This is a handy trick by utilitarians: they say “I believe in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Which is practically begging the question: “As opposed to whom?” It’s useful because it tends to conceal the fact that their real agenda is generally somewhat more specific, and tends to consist in the autocratic notion that one or two measures of social living can be authoritatively determined to be the sources of happiness, and then divided up in a centralized fashion. Those that are the most insistent on the idea of liberty are generally those that are the most skeptical about the possibility of the notion of happiness being either quantitatively defined or generalizable. In other words, only indviduals can determine their own sources of happiness.

For the author, on the other hand, the fact that certain stimuli trigger certain areas of the brain at the times when test subjects profess pleasure has solved the problem of determining happiness. Of course, as mentioned, he never really bothers with the results that those studies have yielded. Somehow the fact that he considers envy to be a principal element of human happiness does not place very severe limits on the harmoniousness of individual happiness. Nor does it constitute a tyranny of the majority, because he claims that in an ideal utilitarian society the happiness of the most unhappy would be considered of pre-eminent importance. Of course, at the beginning of the article he cited the equal importance of each individual’s happiness as the fouding tenet of his theory, but I’m sure it all sorts out in the end.

Among social factors responsible for unhappiness, he cites divorce and unemployment as of pre-eminent importance. Of course, rates of both divorce and unemployment in the crassly materialistic and religious United States are much lower than in the much more overtly utilitarian-embracing Europe, but it would be a bit embarassing for him to admit this after avowing that all traditional value-systems outside of utilitarianism and “individualism” are dead.

Personally the question of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people doesn’t exactly compel me constantly, although the issue of personal happiness tends to impose itself intransigently. I would have thought that evolutionary biology would have provided an adequate explanation of this, as well as the recurrence of what we call altruism. But such an idea of course suggests that happiness, whatever that is, is not really the point of our little existences, and that the more imperious competitiveness of life will ultimately subvert all of these little trifles of pleasure and pain. But in the meantime, we have these debased statistical notions of happiness to amuse us in an idle hour.

It seems to me that if one’s “objective” measure of happiness is electrical stimulation in the cerebral cortex, the most efficient utilitarian solution to the problem of human happiness would be strap everyone onto hospital gurneys and stimulate the “happiness” part of their brain all day long. If one does not wish to be this deterministic about it, perhaps one should allow more latitute to individuals to discover their own conception of happiness. Personally, I have found happiness generally to be an idea for the unhappy and something rarely spoken of by the happiness; mention of practically guarantees that it is not present in the environment where it is uttered. I don’t deny that what you might call love is the real bridge between personal happiness and moral obligations, and the only true means by which the desires of oneself and of others are united, but such a sentiment can never be mandated; it is entirely resistant to intellectual compulsion. Utilitarianism, which sometimes does a decent job of faking morality, is nevertheless ultimately predicated on the pleasure principle, and hence is wholly inadequate to uniting the moral and the pleasurable except when love truly pertains. In that case, of course, political theory is entirely superfluous, which is why this is all a waste of time.

p.s. I don’t claim that people’s behavior necessarily reflects what really would make them happy, but presumably it does at least reflect what they consciously value. Hence, if I were the author I would have been a bit skeptical of using the results of “surveys” of what people claim to value when the results don’t correlate with their behavior, i.e. they claim that spending time with family is most important, but they spend a disproportiante amount of time working (at least according to him). So either people are not really being forthright (consciously or unconsciously) in responding to surveys, or there is not actually a problem of priorities. In either case, he’s way over-valuing surveys as a guide to what will make people happy.

I just got an email from my hosting company…apparently the old Movable Type comment script is causing some sort of server malfunction, so they’ve disabled all comments on this site.

Since I refuse to pay for the new version of MT, I may end up doing what I’ve been thinking about for a while: namely, switching to WordPress or some other alternative. Which seems to be the thing to do these days, anyway. Fortunately, spring break is coming up next week, so I may actually have some free time to wrestle with it.

In the meantime, feel free to email any comments you may have.

Over at Catallarchy, Micha Ghertner discusses “How To Tell You’ve Won An Argument;” namely, when your opponent concedes that his position is less coherent than your own, you’ve won. Now, I don’t want to dispute his point, but rather to question how relevant it is. I’ve touched on this before, but I’m a bit dubious of the notion that the “correct” position is the one that wins arguments between advocates of two different positions.

Obviously, in the first place, there’s nothing to prevent both arguers from being wrong; the relative lack of coherence of one of their positions means, at best, that the other’s position is “less” wrong (assuming that even makes sense and assuming that coherence is a measure of correctness).¹ But this is somewhat superficial (and besides, already mentioned and acknowledged in the comments to Ghertner’s post); more importantly, I want to cast doubts upon the parenthetical assumption I made above, that coherence is some sort of infallible metric for measuring correctness/validity.

In fact, Ghertner (perhaps unconsciously) alludes to this very issue when he quotes Wittgenstein’s famous seventh proposition from the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Within the context of the Tractatus (as an attempt to construct or at least describe a perfect language), this supports the notion that being right and being coherent are synonymous, but Wittgenstein himself later rejects this perspective and, to me, the more apropos quotation is: “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (Philosophical Investigations, I§1). That is, no argument (and certainly none about abstract principles) is completely coherent; we always run up against that whereof we cannot speak and therefore must be silent. The question is simply at what stage in the investigation we enter the realm of unsupported assertion.

And even if we scale back our expectations and choose to embrace the position that manages to maintain coherence as far back as possible, there’s still no guarantee that we’re on the right track. Although much of the world can apparently be explained without the need to stipulate a deity, this doesn’t really make it any less likely that theism is right. In the words of Chuck Klosterman:

Math [or, perhaps more fittingly in this context, logic] is the antireligion, because it splinters the gravity of life’s only imperative equation: Either something is true, or it isn’t.

In fact, if we really want to get all Wittgensteinian about this (not that we necessarily should), we might even begin to question those positions which do appear to be coherent:

In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. (PI, I§426)

Anyway, getting back to whatever semblance of a point I was trying to make, when someone admits that their position is incoherent, that does indeed mean that they’ve lost the argument, but I just wonder how important that really is. Giving up your high-paying job and live-in girlfriend to go back home and take care of your sick mother isn’t going to win a lot of arguments if we’re taking logical coherence as the criterion of victory (seriously, think about it), but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean that coherence is totally irrelevant to what is right/correct, either (and, I should point out, in the above example helping your sick mom isn’t necessarily the right thing to do; as is almost always true, it depends on the circumstances), but let’s not give argument-winning more importance than it merits. Or, as some smarmy new-age intellectual might put it, in the pursuit of knowledge, our goal shouldn’t be to win arguments, but, rather, to discover truth.

---

1. Since I’m quoting Wittgenstein anyway, I might as well include the relevant quote for this as well:

The law of the excluded middle says here: It must either look like this, or like that. So it really—and this is a truism—says nothing at all, but gives us a picture. And the problem ought now to be: does reality accord with the picture or not? And this picture seems to determine what we have to do, what to look for, and how—but it does not do so, just because we do not know how it is to be applied. Here saying “There is no third possibility” or “But there can’t be a third possibility!”—expresses our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture: a picture which looks as if it must already contain both the problem and its solution, while all the time we feel that it is not so. (PI I§352)

Wo Vorschriften als ebenso belastend wie sinnlos empfunden werden, neigen manche Normadressaten zu wenig kooperativem Verhalten, wie heute im

Lochen, Heften und Ablegen sind selbst für einen kleinen Beamten keine ernsthafte Herausforderung. Einen wahren Extremsport scheint hingegen das korrekte Inkraftsetzen eines Bebauungsplans darzustellen, zumindest in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Jedenfalls finde ich in der

Aus einer Entscheidung des OVG Greifswald (Az. 3 M 117/05):

EssentialPIM Pro is a visual appointment and information manager for a multi-user environment, that allows you to organize your daily, weekly or monthly schedule, assign tasks to other users and more....

Bitwarden for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Android is a cross-platform password management solution. Bitwarden is intended to be the easiest and safest way of storing your logins and passwords and keeping them synced between your devices. Your data is fully encrypted before it ever leaves your device, ensuring that you are the only one to have access. The stored data is protected with AES-256 bit encryption, salted hashing, as well as PBKDF2 SHA-256. [License: Open Source / Freemium | Requires: 11|10|8|7|Android|Linux|macOS | Size: Size Varies ]

Everyone on the Internet fears the day that Google will enter their market. Today the fear was tangible for Rollyo and Swicki. The Financial Times reported that Google will launch tomorrow (Tuesday) "...a customisable search engine that users can carry on their own blogs and other websites..." and compares the new service to Rollyo.

Matthew Ingram carries the photo of a shark on his post about this development. Ingram points out that when Google entered the calendar market, competitor Kiko gave up and sold themselves. He asks whether or not this was the right decision -- pointing to Paul Graham's post at the time "Google Does Not Render Resistance Futile."

I find myself agreeing with Paul and Rex Hammock puts his finger on it when he writes:

There’s a social networking aspect of Rollyo that probably won’t be a part of the Google product, however the Google product will likely offer publishers, including bloggers, an instant way to monetize narrow search in the Adsense program they’re already participating in.

For all of the things that Google has done right in technology, they have done very little well in the category of social. It isn't too late for them to learn but if history is any guide, they will miss the importance of the social network in search as well.

And frankly having a strong competitor forces you to do the two things which you most need to do in any case when you are a small business -- innovate constantly and be 500% better than your larger competition. Then Google can educate the market about why the market needs your product and then you can deliver on the market's expectations. That is what YouTube did.

The list of short english words written in Devanagari.

egrep -x '.{1,2}' eng_words.txt

ऑनऑफऑलटीटूडेडॉदफीलॉसन

Displaying Color in LO but Printing as White Page + Black Text:

1. Format > Page Style > Area > Color to assign the BG color you want.
2. Go to File > Printer Settings > Options.
3. Uncheck "Page background" and Check "Print in black".
4. Press "Save".

This will cause all files to print black text with no background color. You can also use "Save" + "Delete" button from Tools - opetions - Libreoffice - Application Colors.

The settings for Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids > Options > Minimal number of characters for hyphenation. These settings are over-ridden by any formatting in the document itself.

The line divisions can be improved by running Tools > Language > Hyphenation as a final touch on the document. This tool not only works interactively, giving you more control, but also generally does a better job than the on-the-fly hyphenation, if run when the document is complete.

The Characters at line end and Characters at line begin fields can sometimes be manipulated to improve hyphenation by playing one off against the other. Working by itself, the Maximum consecutive hyphenated lines field can also make a difference. adjusting the settings on the Text Flow tab. The number of letters at the end and start of the line should be 1–4. The typographical convention is not to allow more than two lines in a row to end with a hyphen.

If you use a font that the recipient is unlike to have, select Files > Proprties > Font > Embed fonts in the document before exporting to PDF. Note that embedding will vastly increase the file size if you you have a large number of fonts.

You wouldn't be blamed for assuming Coralie Clément is a contemporary of Françoise Hardy or Jane Birkin's; her coquettish and sultry, whispered vocals, suave touches of bossa and samba, and splashy dabblings in yé-yé make her sound like Brigitte Fontaine buffing out her scratches and sanding down her bristly edges.

Her debut LP, Salle des pas perdus, is a collaboration with her brother Benjamin Biolay, who wrote and arranged it, only further reinforcing her throwback nature. For a time during the 90s, Momus did a lot of his own Serge Gainsbourg-styled team-ups with elegant yet wryly sassy chanteuses—the Kahimi Karie songs, the Poison Girl Friend songs, the Laila France songs—and this record plucks at the same heartstrings.

The subsequent albums are interesting and possessed with the same sort of low-key charisma, with Toystore perhaps being the most aggressively different: in place of gentle strings and unhurried horns are skippy ukuleles, tinny tambourines, frothy farfisas.

Ed Ball was one of the most significant presences in—and busiest contributors to—the British indie rock scenes of the 70s, 80s, 90s: He ran labels, Whaam! Records and Artpop! Records most notably; he was intimately involved with Alan McGee's Creation Records, home to many of his own recordings, too; and he fronted or toured with perhaps nine dozen different groups. Hyperbole aside, he was certainly active.

I mostly knew him as a member of the cult-fave group Television Personalities, Dan Treacy's band, and for his own, the Times, a garage act normally done up in paisley flowers or melted down into acid-trip lava-lamp ooze.

In the late 70s, however, he had a short-lived project called Teenage Filmstars, and he released a few rinky-dink mod singles under that name. In the early 90s, after a string of Times LPs, he revived it, and made perhaps the best album of his career, Star. On it, he lost the toothy, sunshine-and-lollipops affect that had become his trademark and slid into a fuzzy, distorted chasm of feedback, echo and delay all the way down. It's a triumph of early-days shoegaze, a disoriented morass of strained noise, stretched and squeezed like putty, and yet it's unrelentingly melodious, like what could've been if My Bloody Valentine had made Loveless a record of only big-hooks songs like "Soon."

DVD Talk Collector Series

The Specials:

The title of this DVD goldmine for fans of Robin Williams' stand-up and improv work can be described with a word that Williams used frequently in his acts over the decades: Redundant. After his singular success in stand-up, film, and TV, everyone should know at this point that the Comic Genius description comes prepackaged with the name. It was for me when I first came to San Francisco for grad school in late 2002, but I mostly knew of Williams' genius through his film roles, a cornucopia of comedic and dramatic work that showcased his immensely versatile talent.

But I didn't know much about his stand-up work, coming from a country where his HBO specials weren't available. A San Francisco native who became a beloved figure of the city as his fame rose; he represented the perfect welcome for me as I bought his 2002 Live on Broadway special on DVD on my first day in th...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

It's been fits and starts but it now appears that CBS/Paramount is fully committed to releasing the final seasons of the 20-season Gunsmoke. Through the grapevine this critic is hearing that the label is planning on combining later seasons into single, rather than two-volume sets, which might be a little easier on everyone's pocketbook.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then return to where I left off which, at present, is still Gunsmoke during its prime, black-and-white years. Reviewing the later, color (and hour-long episodes) I initially expressed mild disappointment that they weren't as taut as the 30-...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

It's been fits and starts but it now appears that CBS/Paramount is fully committed to releasing the final seasons of the 20-season Gunsmoke. Through the grapevine this critic is hearing that the label is planning on combining later seasons into single, rather than two-volume sets, which might be a little easier on everyone's pocketbook.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then return to where I left off which, at present, is still Gunsmoke during its prime, black-and-white years. Reviewing the later, color (and hour-long episodes) I initially expressed mild disappointment that they weren't as taut as the 30-...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

(Note: Reviews of Gunsmoke: The Sixteenth Season and Gunsmoke: The Seventeenth Season are identical. In preparing them I watched at episodes and the extras from both sets. Give me a break.)

Despite the steady decline of the DVD format, CBS/Paramount deserves a lot of credit for seeing the 20-season run of Gunsmoke (1955-1975) through all the way to the finish line. For the show's last five seasons, it appears that the label has decided to release full- rather than half-season sets, a wise decision, and they've even added a most welcome supplement.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then ...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

(Note: Reviews of Gunsmoke: The Sixteenth Season and Gunsmoke: The Seventeenth Season are identical. In preparing them I watched at episodes and the extras from both sets. Give me a break.)

Despite the steady decline of the DVD format, CBS/Paramount deserves a lot of credit for seeing the 20-season run of Gunsmoke (1955-1975) through all the way to the finish line. For the show's last five seasons, it appears that the label has decided to release full- rather than half-season sets, a wise decision, and they've even added a most welcome supplement.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then ...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

(Note: Reviews of Gunsmoke: The Eighteenth Season and Gunsmoke: The Nineteenth Season are identical. In preparing them I watched at episodes and the extras from both sets.)

Nearing home plate, CBS/Paramount's Eighteenth and Nineteenth of 20 season sets of Gunsmoke (1955-1975) nearly finishes off the classic series. Many wondered if the label would complete the series before the DVD format went kaput, so their determination to see it through deserves our gratitude.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then return to where I left off which, at present, is still Gunsmoke during its b...Read the entire review

Highly Recommended

(Note: Reviews of Gunsmoke: The Eighteenth Season and Gunsmoke: The Nineteenth Season are identical. In preparing them I watched at episodes and the extras from both sets.)

Nearing home plate, CBS/Paramount's Eighteenth and Nineteenth of 20 season sets of Gunsmoke (1955-1975) nearly finishes off the classic series. Many wondered if the label would complete the series before the DVD format went kaput, so their determination to see it through deserves our gratitude.

I've been reviewing Gunsmoke sets since the First Season was released in July 2007. The program was so prolific, upwards of 40 episodes per season in its early days, it's been impossible to watch everything in broadcast order. As new sets have been released, I typically watch 7-8 representative episodes then return to where I left off which, at present, is still Gunsmoke during its b...Read the entire review

In this series, David Legge looks at how the Minor Prophet, Habakkuk, teaches us to be 'Confident in the Chaos' around us. In these times of uncertainty and confusion, there are some clear principles that will not only help you to survive but enable you to thrive by faith! This first instalment is entitled 'The Paradox of Faith'. If you are questioning 'What on Earth God is doing?' in your life or in the world, then you'll glean some helpful truths from this message. Your questions and faith in God are not mutually exclusive. You can bring your questions to God and He will be your Answer! This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Sometimes we don't understand what's happening in our world and in our lives. We wonder how God can allow certain things, let alone use bad things for our good! In Part 2 of 'Confident In The Chaos', learn how Habakkuk responds to God's 'Mysterious Ways' and how you also can posture yourself in faith. This encouraging message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In 'Confident In The Chaos' Part 3, we learn to 'Stop, Look And Listen'. Habakkuk learned to get to grips with his questions and confusion by bringing them to God. He had to get quiet and listen for God’s voice. We need this discipline especially at this present moment in history. Only faith in what God speaks to our hearts will bring us through as overcomers! This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In part 4 of 'Confident In The Chaos', 'The Judged And The Just', we discover part of the answer to Habakkuk's questioning of God and His ways - 'The just shall live by his faith' (2:4). The way we remain confident in the chaos is to believe God. This is also the way to be 'right with God', be saved from judgement and to stay in close fellowship with God - by faith. In this episode we go to the very heart of the Gospel - how Jesus took our sin and we receive God's righteousness through faith in Him. Why not share this message of Good News with someone you know who needs Jesus? This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Part 5 of 'Confident In The Chaos' brings us 'A Trinity Of Positivity'. In the midst of the darkness of the 'woes' of judgement against Babylon, the LORD, through Habakkuk, shines some welcome light to help His people have confidence in the chaos they were facing. Find out what these three encouragements are, which will help you through your own chaos in these difficult days. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In Part 6 of 'Confident In The Chaos' Habakkuk has 'A Prayer And Vision For Revival'. In chapter 3, Habakkuk gives us an example of how to pray for revival in the darkest of days. He gives us hope to pray, believing that He wants to bring blessing in His goodness and mercy. Learn how to pray with confidence for a great awakening in these difficult last days. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In Part 7 of 'Confident In The Chaos' Habakkuk exhorts us to 'Choose Joy!'. In these closing verses of Habakkuk we see the power of joy, even in the worst of circumstances - how joy is not rooted in our circumstance, but in our faithful God. See with us how Habakkuk's journey from doubt to faith, and chaos to confidence, ends. In these strange and perplexing days we are living through, we face some similar scenarios to Habakkuk, not least a global economy in dire straits. How do we respond? How do we survive? Can we actually thrive to be 'Confident in the Chaos'? Habakkuk gives us an emphatic - YES!! This encouraging message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Part 5 of our series on 'The Holy Spirit' asks: is there a difference between the Holy Spirit in the Old and the New Testaments? Does He do the same things now as He did then? What can New Testament believers expect that's different in how the Spirit relates to us today? These are all questions we seek to answer in this new study, entitled 'The Holy Spirit In The Old Testament'. Join us for this helpful message, which is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Part 6 of our series on 'The Holy Spirit' begins our look at 'The Work Of The Holy Spirit'. The Holy Spirit is the critical prime mover in the work of redemption. He established salvation for us but now He is also the One who applies salvation to us. In the next two studies, we will see how the Holy Spirit personally works in our lives to conform us to the image of Jesus. This episode will look at the Spirit's work of 'Conviction and Regeneration'. Why not share this message, which is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Part 7 of our series on 'The Holy Spirit' continues our look at 'The Work Of The Holy Spirit'. The Holy Spirit is the critical prime mover in the work of redemption. He established salvation for us but now He is also the One who applies salvation to us. We are learning how the Holy Spirit personally works in our lives to conform us to the image of Jesus. Last time we considered the Spirit's work of 'Conviction and Regeneration', in this episode we will look at the Spirit's work of 'Empowerment and Sanctification'. Why not share this message with others? It's available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

'Patience' is a virtue we have mixed emotions about. We wish we had it but we don't want to need it. Often we need it when facing a trial of some sort. In Part 15 of our series on 'The Holy Spirit' we learn where we can find such patience, how we grow in it and the amazing advantages patience brings to our lives. This is a much-neglected characteristic the Spirit brings into our lives. Listen and learn more in 'The Fruit Of The Spirit - Patience'. This episode is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

Have you ever prayed for more gentleness? Have you ever heard teaching on 'how to be gentle'? Do you imagine God as gentle? When you think you are hearing God speak to you, is it with a gentle tone? We trust this next video on 'The Fruit of the Spirit - Gentleness', will answer these and other questions for you. 'Gentleness' or 'meekness' is a much neglected and tragically undervalued attribute that we and others would so benefit from if we experienced it through the Holy Spirit's power. Indeed, this is how we would better influence the people around us to be Christians. As Jesus put it in Matthew 5:5 'Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth'. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format and in HD video on our YouTube Channel (https://youtube.com/PreachTheWord)...

In 'Revival Now', David Legge asks and seeks to answer the question: What might revival look like in the 2020s? Or, to consider it another way: What is the revival we need for today? Of course, there are common features to every revival, and yet there are always distinctives to every one. We can never second guess God in how He will move again - yet we do have desperate needs in our age that only God can meet. In this series, David looks at how we need a new move of God's Spirit to meet the contemporary needs in the church and our world in this present moment. In Part 1, we explore how the church and we as Christians need to get our focus back on Jesus. He must be the pre-eminent one and the centre of all we do and are. What idols have distracted us from the centrality of Christ? How can we give our Lord His rightful place in our lives and churches? This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

In Part 2 of 'Revival Now' as we contemplate the type of revival we might need in our day, David now considers how we need 'A New Prayer Movement'. What kind of praying is needed for revival? In this age of innovation, what 'old paths' of prayer might we need to rediscover in what God is doing anew? Be inspired to pray for revival through this message! This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

In Part 3 of 'Revival Now', we ask: what is the holiness that we are called to as Christians? It has been misrepresented and misunderstood by many in the church. In this message, David first establishes what holiness is not and then goes on to consider what is this holiness and most importantly how do we get it? In a day when sin and compromise is rampant in the church, we need 'A New Holiness Movement'. In 2021 we need a revival in true holiness. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

The church very often cannot receive the message of revival because it is so bound. Like Lazarus, the church may be 'alive', but spiritually bound. Many Christians as individuals are in this position and need deliverance and freedom. In Part 4 of 'Revival Now', David talks about how we can be set free as individuals, and the incredible impact that one soul saved and set free can have, even on a whole community. We need to rediscover the message of freedom in the Gospel of the Kingdom. We need 'A New Freedom Movement'! This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

Very often in some streams of Christianity there is an emphasis upon the Word of God, as opposed to the Spirit of God, or vice versa. At times these strands are even in contention with each other. This is not the way New Testament Christianity is meant to be. It should not be a case of 'either or' but 'both and' as regards the Word and the Holy Spirit. In Part 5 of our 'Revival Now' series, David explores this disparity and how we desperately need a new movement of the Word and the Spirit: The Word with the Spirit - not the Word without the Spirit; and the Spirit with the Word - not the Spirit without the Word. There is great power when the Word and the Spirit are together. Join us for this challenging exhortation, which is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

In Part 6 of 'Revival Now' we see our need for 'A New Unity Movement'. If scriptures like Psalm 133 and the High Priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 put such a high value on unity as a key to blessing, why is it so elusive in Christianity? David suggests two reasons for this: first, the devil's agenda at all costs to divide and conquer, and second, our fear of false unity. In this message, David considers what false unity is and also why we should not be afraid of true unity in Spirit and in truth. One thing is certain, God wants the body of Christ everywhere to be united for His Kingdom cause. If that much is clear, what difference should that make to our attitudes to others and our behaviours? This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

Can we have a move of God that doesn't resemble Christ? Obviously not, but is Christ-likeness our emphasis in the church and as individuals? Do we look like Jesus? Do we sound like Jesus? In Part 7 of 'Revival Now', David Legge, using two fruit of the Spirit - Gentleness and Kindness - shows that what the church and the world most needs are Christians that look like Christ and exhibit His attributes to all, even our enemies. We will see real change in the church and society when people see Jesus in us through 'A New Christlike Movement'. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

Along with preceding prayer, the next most common external feature of historic revivals is probably the preaching of the gospel. Renewal in the church may not necessarily feature many souls being saved but revival certainly does. In Part 8 of his 'Revival Now' series, David Legge emphasises the need for the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in Holy Spirit power. We need to get back to preaching the good news of Jesus with passion and urgency. However, public preaching is only a part of what it means to spread the gospel; David also exhorts that we must be making disciples. He shares how simple disciple-making movements are spreading the flame of revival in some of the most persecuted countries on the planet and how this might well be a divine blueprint for us in the West to follow. This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...

In this concluding message of 'Revival Now' we see the need for 'A New Revival And Reform Movement', as David considers the difference between revival and reformation. From Matthew 9, he shares how revival is like the new wine God pours out from heaven, but the wineskins need to be fit for purpose to preserve and distribute the wine, otherwise the wine is spilled and wasted and the wineskins are ruined. God is wanting to reform the church again so that she is fit for purpose for the 'new thing' He wants to do among us. God is calling the church back to original New Testament Christianity, so therefore we must remove all obstacles in the way of this move of God. Perhaps that's part of what this current shaking in the church is all about? This message is available at https://www.preachtheword.com now in MP3 audio format...