[ExI] road to wellville, was: RE: morality

[efc at swisscows.email]

Thank you very much for the story and the recommendation! I am generally 
more of a book reader than a movie watcher, so I will definitely add it to 
my "to buy" list. =)

But the story does remind me of sugar filled Tony Tiger moments of my 
childhood. ;)

But that's another aspect I find very fascinating with US business life. 
Some companies have such a strong connection with Christianity. I read up 
on chik-fil-a and apparently the CEO was very strongly against gay 
marriage and spoke up, and cause a lot of controversy (according to 
wikipedia).

I received a Buck knife as a gift some years ago, and on a note in the box 
it said that Jesus was their most important board member who they turn to 
in difficult moments.

I have never experienced such a strong religious connection in any company 
I worked for in europe.

There's also this web site: https://www.weboycott.net/ and I imagine that 
there are plenty of "value driven" companies there.

Best regards,
Daniel


On Fri, 19 May 2023, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com>
> ...
>
>> ...Next post.  spike
>
>
>> ...Daniel, there is a book called Road to Wellville by Coraghessan Boyle, a
> very talented writer who produced a fine historical comedy as his rooky
> card.  The movie version was entertaining as all hell and was filled with
> carefully-researched historical accuracy.  It was about John Harvey Kellogg
> and his quirky ways, how he started the breakfast food industry...spike
>
>
> It has been nearly 30 years since I saw the Wellville movie, so I rented it
> and found my perspective has changed a lot.  I remembered the movie as much
> funnier than it is: if it is to be called historical comedy, it is dark
> comedy indeed.  Back in those more carefree days 30 years ago, everything
> was funny to me.  I read the book after seeing the film and realized the
> film contains a number of fairly big historical inaccuracies that were not
> in the book.  Kellogg didn't die in his 70s demonstrating a dive.  He died
> of pneumonia at age 91.
>
> In the book, Kellogg tried to cure asthma by having patients breathe...
> radon.  That part is historically accurate: Kellogg really did that at his
> health institution.  It is unclear how many patients he killed that way, for
> many of them would have developed lung cancer some few years later.  In the
> movie version, Matthew Broderick's love interest (Lara Flynn Boyle) was
> suffering "green sickness" which is now called chlorosis or hypochromic
> anemia.  In those days it was thought green sickness was caused by female
> virginity.  So... Boyle arranges with Broderick to cure that, but in the
> book she was being treated by inhaling radon.  When the cure makes the
> problem worse, they compensate by using more of it until Ida Muntz perishes.
> Hey, Hollywood.  They needed to sex up a good book in order to make a movie.
>
> In retrospect, I am hesitant to recommend the movie.  The book is excellent
> however, if one is interested in that kind of thing.
>
> spike
>
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