zimbabwe

I disagree with you because in this case, it's a matter of semantic structuring. The language should be free to change, but only when it doesn't conflict with how the language functions. In this case, "lot's" would kill how parts of the language is interpreted, and changing it would offer no clear structuring for the two various "lots" usages.

There are some exceptions - I, for instance, don't mind people who use abbreviations like "u" since they make sense contextually, and while something like "lol" is overused I think you could make an argument saying "lol" has become a usable verb or even a noun in the English language ("lolled" is also very fun to say out loud).

In your case, however, I've got to disagree, though I don't know why people saw fit to downvote you that hard. Perhaps it's because you opened with a definitive-sounding statement before raising arguments in support, though that seems a bit kneejerk.

Come to think of it, that's also how I look for the good startup companies amidst all the bad: When you find the ones run by people who understand what they're doing, you find a satisfaction in their output that you don't find elsewhere. 280North comes to mind, as does Contrast.io.

The problem with English classes in a nutshell. You ruin a beautiful thing when you assign it a grade, no (or exceedingly few) exceptions.

That one comment aside: This is not only listspam, it is not at all Hacker News, it doesn't stimulate me in any way, and it's wrong. Bridge to Terabitha is about enjoying life in the face of that threat of its cessation; The Giver says that we should not accept our assigned place in society and that it's possible to be different; The Diary of Anne Frank illustrates the beauty in a single human life and reminds us that everybody is amazing (a lesson that many of us online tend to forget); and I wrote about Catcher in the Rye a few days ago, but it's not a bad thing to address alienation at a young age, because it's certainly there before most of us turn ten.

If it had been something a bit more informative (if you'd mentioned YC along with some other stuff), then you're fleshing out the link, but if the only detail you're mentioning is YC you're not offering much. There are a lot of YCombinator companies I love, and there are a handful that I think are dreadful, and so being told it's a YC company doesn't guarantee me of anything other than that you'll be voted higher.

I'm sorry if the term "wankery" offended you - I use that as a lighthearted jab. Didn't mean to sound cruel when I said that.

Fliggo looks really nice without my knowing anything about how it's funded.

I'm hoping that HN grows slowly, because it isn't trying for fame unlike Reddit, but I've got no doubts that in time it'll go the way of every other community that relied on an upvote-downvote system to keep users in line.

"Free, Libre, and Open" is probably the greater assault on language, though their dislike of commas also irritates me.

Can somebody explain how this network works? What makes it different from any other ad network? Is it just that it advertises free software?

Type-centric means using size to emphasize relevance. When everything's the exact same size your design is flawed.

You talk about "Woz-caliber" people like they're a commodity, or like you can track who's brilliant and who isn't. Fact is, if Woz didn't work for Apple, he probably wouldn't have gone on to be a huge celebrity icon. Certainly his later work never got that much attention. And the traits Woz had going for him - a strong technical mind and a rabid curiosity - are common traits. What makes Woz unique is that he worked on something cool.

If your thing isn't interesting enough to attract a programmer, then hire one. Don't expect magic to happen because it shouldn't. When I worked on boring projects, I had to deal with incompetent people who didn't care about my ideas. Once I began working on cool things, I got access to the cool programmers, and they were as into the work as I was, because it really was cool work.

99% of iPhone developers don't see these problems, and don't have their hard work rejected. Wanting the system changed is certainly a fine thing, but calling iPhone developers stupid is a stupid and meaningless insult that belies your one good point.

This is a great feature to have, particularly the Tumblr importing option. There're plenty of disgruntled Tumblr users right now looking for a way out.

I was lucky because I got a teacher who took a lot of pains to separate the book from its context, and who got us all reading books without wondering at first why we were supposed to be reading this. Teachers like that are sadly rare, though.

Some of us choose to keep the photos where we look sunburned and drunk tagged. Some of us untag everything that's not pristine. What's nice about Facebook is they make it easy to play it either way.

That's actually a really apt comparison! I think I'll borrow that in the future.

To Holden, being this pure, innocent child figure is the ultimate manner of living, and that's why he loves Phoebe so much - he sees her as this embodiment of what he wishes he was. The irony there is that Phoebe is the girl who reveals to Holden that he's got this whole catcher in the rye thing wrong, and that while he's trying to stop from growing up, this poem that resonates so much with him is about growing up. It just happens to use sex as its metaphor for growing old, which is a metaphor Catcher borrows for its plot.

Compare that to the titular scene from Catcher In The Rye:

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like — "

"It's 'If a body meet* a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."*

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

It suffers from being out of context, but basically Holden - the first talker - is talking with Phoebe about his life, and it's really immaculately done. Listen to his words. He doesn't come across as a phony-hating phony. He's just a confused guy trying to talk to his sister. The dialogue is a little dated in its construction, but it's still concise and powerful and it does pretty much exactly what it's trying to do. He mentions he wants to catch these children, but at the same time the narrator's admitting that he was wrong about this when he said it. And he doesn't come across as a douche, he comes across as a scared college student. The "douche" interpretation comes from people who skimmed the book and resented it from the beginning. I had that attitude for a while. It's not fair to the book.

In American Beauty, Kevin Spacey is an over-the-top pervert whose death was completely welcomed. In Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal is filthily melodramatic. Holden Caulfield, though, is really easy to sympathize with. He's not at all a broken, cliched character. It's hard even to call him cliched when you look directly at the soliloquy lines. Here are two samples from around the same part in the book:

The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.

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The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You'd have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn't. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. I'm not kidding.

This isn't just Salinger writing "Oh man I hate how fake people are". It's him providing this view of the world again from this frustrated kid. And he's pessimistic about it and you can read the book as saying he's wrongly pessimistic - I do - but his pessimism isn't at all melodramatic and you can read Catcher In The Rye without it catching you up at all. I read it for the story: The leave from college, the search for his family, the incident with the hooker, are all really moving and engaging bits of story, and Holden's frustration is accurate enough that you can sympathize it even when you disagree with him.

If you look at "Catcher" as a critique of Holden Caulfield, you're still doing the book a disservice. Catcher In The Rye is first and foremost a story, and if you try reading it without analyzing it you'll probably find that it holds up terrific even when it's not a part of literature. That's the part of these books that all this analysis ignores: The point is always to tell a story, and the rest of this is just the icing on top.

Of course, the fun thing about fiction that also doesn't get said enough is that the debating over what happened is part of the fun. I had one teacher who would present these analyses like they were hard fact, when in reality the only fact is what the author gives you, and the analyses can be debated with that in mind.