Jesus cures a crippled man

Ned's 2-second Takes

Jesus heals a crippled man

Jesus has been preaching to a small crowd in Galilee when some people carry in a young, crippled man and set him on the ground in front of the teacher.

"What's the matter with this man?” asks Jesus, “Can't he walk?" The people mostly just shuffle their feet and murmur and nod vaguely to one another.
 
So Jesus, feeling a tiny bit of GERD coming on, turns to the young man lying on the pallet and says, “Son, you’re healed; pick up your bed and go!”
 
So the man – much to the amazement of all - gets up from his bed and stands. "Thank you, Jesus," the man says, trying, unsuccessfully, to keep a plaintive, wheedling note from his voice.

“Something wrong, then?” asks Jesus, feeling pretty good about himself in spite of the GERD.
 
"No, no, Jesus. No. Really. Thank you for fixing me so I can walk again. I mean, it’s the coolest thing ever! Seriously. But all that about picking up my bed and all? I’m still a little shaky from being crippled since I was three, and that stuff’s kind of heavy."
 
"Dude," said Jesus, "It's not enough I heal you so that you can walk again, but now I have to help you move?"

Shane is the next nearest thing to a psychopath the group has. But they live in a time where psychopaths might have an advantage (Hello? The dead WALK? That's nuts right there). He's not the opposite of Rick, he's delusional. He believes he can take Rick's family away from him and make it his own (the worrisome thing is, I sort of think he can too!).

But: That might work in a tribe of chimpanzees or mandrills, but humans have a few thousand years invested in imposing order and maintaining some sort of "society" which has certain rules called "laws". Rick is clinging - perhaps foolishly - to that idea while Shane, who never seems to think of what comes next except his own gratification (hence a ready-made family is more interesting than trying to form a bond with another one of the unattached females in the group) is less hampered by these considerations (which he thinks of as niceties that have passed on, along with a cohesive civil structure with proper law enforcement and adjudication, etc. For Shane the ideal world has arrived while for Rick, his worst nightmare has come true.

This is from an article in WikiPedia. Jorge Louis Borges was one of the greatest writers I have ever read. Neruda was a great poet himself, however he was a supporter of Stalin and the Soviet Union, and the stone-cold NKVD assassin Vittorio Vidali was a good friend of his। It's no use to try and simply see Neruda as this avuncular old dear and great poet, creator, especially, of his wonderfully erotic love poems which I love myself - without running square into his shocking approval of mass murder for the State (so long as the State is the Communist State. He decried it in any Rightist State even though friends of his, other writers and poets, were in the jails of his heroes even as he spoke (but never mentioned them!).

You will have to decide for yourself whether you think this Wiki article is biased against Neruda. I have read it and I don't see any bias either way here. Nonetheless, with all this recent revival of Neruda's work and the concommitant ooutpouring of love for the poet, I believe that any 'worshipping' of any artist should be done with eyes wide open.

Here is the excerpt:

During the late 1960s, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was asked for his opinion of Pablo Neruda। After describing a brief meeting with him when both were young, Borges stated, "I think of him as a very fine poet, a very fine poet। I don't admire him as a man, I think of him as a very mean man."[43] When asked for the reasons for this, Borges continued,

"Well, he wrote a book -- well, maybe here I'm being political -- he wrote a book about the tyrants of South America, and then he had several stanzas against the United States। Now he knows that that's rubbish. And he had not a word against Perón. Because he had a lawsuit in Buenos Aires, that was explained to me afterwards, and he didn't care to risk anything. And so, when he was supposed to be writing at the top of his voice, full of noble indignation, he had not a word to say against Perón. And he was married to an Argentine lady, he knew that many of his friends had been sent to jail. He knew all about the state of our country, but not a word against him. At the same time, he was speaking against the United States, knowing the whole thing was a lie, no? But, of course, that doesn't mean anything against his poetry. Neruda is a very fine poet, a great poet in fact. And when they gave Miguel de Asturias the Nobel Prize, I said that it should have been given to Neruda! Now when I was in Chile, and we were on different political sides, I think he did the best thing to do. He went on a holiday during the three or four days I was there so there was no occasion for our meeting. But I think he was acting politely, no? Because he knew that people would be playing him up against me, no? I mean, I was an Argentine, poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us."[44]

I just want to say something about Netflix and how they have changed their features. For whatever corporate reason, Netflix, one of the first and best movie rental websites on the Net, has begun reducing some of its most popular features, especially the Friends feature which allows us to see what our Friends are renting and also allows us to send a short blurb about a film to some or all our Friends at once.

Another is the "% similar" rating with which you can see just how much you and a particular reviewer agree. This last is a very useful idea as it helps to evaluate a review in terms of your own tastes. If a reviewer with whom I share a 78% similarity in movie tastes hates a film, I can weigh their opinion more heavily than a review from someone who likes only 20% of the movies I like.

I agree with many Netflix members that Netflix is wrong in removing these features, but I know that they will not be swayed by member pressure. But the important thing I want to share here is that these features are STILL AVAILABLE on Netflix. Yes, People, they are. Netflix has not altogether erased them, they've just made them harder to reach.

Here is what you do: First, Go to the bottom of any Netflix page and you will find several colums of links (in the bottom red border of the page). On the far right you will see in bold the word, COMMUNITY. Scan down that column and find, as the last link, Friends. Yup. That's where they hid it. So, yeah, click Friends! Alors! Yes, this is the old Friends section, and those missing features are still intact including sending Notes to Friends.

If you want to send a Note like you used to do on the page with the film and the reviews of it, you can't; but you can in your Friends and Faves section. Just go to your own list of films and hit the Watched/Rated tab. Bingo! The little purple icon that says, LEAVE NOTE. They removed it from the easier to reach place and sort of tucked it away in here.

As to finding out how close or far you are from a Reviewer's "% like you", just click that reviewer's avatar/picture next to their review. It will send you to the Friends Community page and there it will tell you whether that reviewer is like you in taste or not. Simple, if frustrating.

I don't know why Netflix is doing what they're doing, but they're doing it. But at least for the time being you can still access the old features, you just have to work a little harder to do it.

The Large Hadron Particle Collider
I am usually awed by things I don't understand. Like a member of an indigenous group who has never seen a plane, I stare with my mouth open and stop breathing for about thirty seconds. Actually, I don't think most indigenes do that so let's just leave that alone. Anyway, I am totally awed by this vast and mysterious machine that dwells beneath the surface of the Earth somewhere in Switzerland. Having lived in Switzerland and gone to school there at one time, I know that a number of my classmates are also staring at this monster slackjawed and glassy-eyed. We are not alone!

Why More U.S. Expatriates Are Turning In Their Passports

I used to be - in my youth - something of a world traveler and spent several years living abroad. Then it was a point of pride and honor to be an American citizen, and you never had problem with getting money in dollars and getting a good exchange rate from banks. It seems that times have changed. Our tax system is broken in more ways than just this one issue (of taxing Americans who live abroad), and we are due for a real overhaul. But expecting anything good to come from this Administration when it comes to taxes is foolish. Obama has no regard whatever for the individual citizen and his desire to live a life of freedom, financially or otherwise. While Obama didn't get us into this mess, he will be the last person to help get us out. We're stuck. I have to say that contrary to my gut on this I sympathize with the American expatriates and understand completely their feelings and needs to separate themselves from their beloved country. It's more than sad, and I cannot say that in their spot I would do any differently.