While I'm sure they exist, I've never met any young kids who were particularly good at telling stories. As with all things, some people have more natural talent than others, but I don't think anyone is very good right off the bat.
Think of it like any other art. Not everyone is equally good at it, but with practice, everyone gets better.
I used to be a Cub Scout (ages 7-10) leader in the UK. There were definitely certain children who could spin a yarn effortlessly. Though I can't rule out that being nurture it seems more likely to be based on a natural propensity.
Even in toddlers, with almost no language, some seem particularly adept at entertaining, which to me is a precursor for story-telling.
That's not being a novelist though, I think that's a different skill altogether. Novelists can be terrible story-tellers in person.
As a parent I've made up a few stories on the spot, it's really hard. Indeed just the telling part, with a story you think you know well (eg, for me, The Three Bears) is hard work.
Not that it is perfect, but the Fleksy keyboard is pretty good about guessing what you meant to type, even if you miss several letters. I'm able to use it without looking, but I'd never trust it entirely.
edit: I forgot to mention Minuum. It's quite similar, but compresses all the keys into a single row. Consequently, it doesn't seem to be as accurate.
Rails Tutorial is probably the single most influential training course among the Rails community -- at least anecdotally.
I have worked with dozens of Rails devs over the years and in my estimation at least 80% have done the Rails Tutorial. In my opinion, it's the single best resource for learning Rails in a way consistent with real-world best practices.
Police Google as much as you like. They can remove their results worldwide, but not the data itself.
I'm confident that there will always be a search engine available that gets around this law. Perhaps we will even see some specialized tools to show only results hidden by Google.
I think this argument is flawed. Analogy: there will always be people who steal stuff; this doesn't mean we should accept the practice, and discard any preventive measures.
I believe your analogy might be flawed. When theft is prevented, the downside is that "thieves" don't end up with more things. But when you have the right to be forgotten, you may also remove other things. For example, in an election, a candidate's running mate could easily decide "I hate this person, I want all of my work with them to be forgotten", which would severly hurt that candidate's media coverage (sure, you can still find articles about that candidate on some archives, but many voters do not work that hard to educate themselves)
But that isn't even what your parent comment was talking about. They were talking about how the whackamole game of censorship. If you put a law in place to prevent theft, it's not like thieves start coming up with places for all other thieves to come steal. On the other hand, if you censor Google Search results, there's a good chance you'll see, e.g. employers, moving to another search engine specifically for finding results people have requested to be forgotten
I think the idea isn't so much that punishment doesn't get results, but rather that those results come with side effects. Usually, this is some harboured anger, or avoidance of the parent.
Yes, punishment gets changes behavior, but it's not always a 100% positive change.
It should have been phrased better in the article.
You're projecting your own reasonable beliefs onto the article. It really was as stupid as SiVal said.
It follows the rules of political correctness: Any evidence supporting a taboo idea must the denied. Any advantages of a taboo practice must be denied.
Calling out something for "political correctness" (or any one of another dozen or so convenient shorthands for political footballs) is a lazy argument. I'm sure there are things you disagree with in the article. What are they? Why? Do you have something more to add to the point SiVal made? Personal experience? References to research? Add something constructive to the discussion.
"You don't try to suppress— “Don't give me attitude for all I've done for you!” What research shows is that it will lead to escape behavior on the part of the child. It will lead them to avoid you as soon as they get home from school and it will model negative interactions toward you."
I hate to bring up styling when it's been covered so much, but I think it is critical you make this mobile friendly.
There are a few big reasons for this:
- Since it's computer shopping, you'll probably have a fair amount of users accessing this site from a mobile device.
- Mobile users are more likely to leave your site if it looks even a little frustrating to use. Google offers several mobile friendly sites that recommend laptops.
- Google will not rank your site as high if it does not deem it to be mobile friendly.
- You said you are looking for a job as a Rails developer. It's a fair bet that any potential employer will expect mobile-compatible sites. Perhaps you don't really intend to do much front end work, but knowing more about it will benefit you regardless.
I understand that what your site offers is very special, and probably much better than hand picked recommendations. Many mobile users simply don't care. They don't want to zoom and pan to select options. Why should they stick around on your site, when they can just hit "back" and choose another result from google?
All that said, I really like what your site has going on. It seems quite functional, and the minimal design is a breath of fresh air.
There are two other things I would change, but these are just personal preference. Feel free to ignore them:
1. I would like the option to view more items per page.
2. The default, bright blue link color hurts my eyes. Something a little darker would be great.
It's true that sitting and reading isn't really going to help you live any longer. If you're going to read, however, you should at least get something meaningful out of it.
It may be different for some, but I get much more out of HN than I ever did when I used Facebook.
The brain adapts to better deal with what it is exposed to.
Of course an animal raised in an intense environment will handle it better than one that isn't, and have some difficulty with calmer environments. The reverse is also true.
It doesn't surprise me that children used to the quick pacing and interesting stories found in television and games have trouble focusing in slower environments, such as school.
It's easy to jump to the conclusion that children should be raised without television or games, but I think we should also experiment more engaging means of education.
I agree with your message about safety, but it is important to keep in mind that illegal immigrants are inherently breaking the law. We should not encourage keeping them safe from deportation.
There's a long debate to be had about immigration in general. I'd contend, though, that it's in the public interest to look past things like immigration status in certain situations. For example, suppose we're vaccinating against an epidemic. In that case, you definitely don't want anyone to be afraid to come out and get their shot for any reason.
SF doesn't keep illegal immigrants safe from deportation. It says "in these circumstances, we think it's more important that you cooperate with the city than it is for us to try to deport you, so we're going to call a temporary truce".
While your comment sounds like it makes sense at face value, I find it naive and simplistic. I think the logical outcome of a policy like that is that you end up worse off.
We all unwittingly break many laws day. Living in the US is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen. My point is that there isn't some binary division between people that break the law and those that don't.
If businesses need to be immigration police, they'll just hire illegal immigrants under the table (moreso), and be more exploitive about it.
If people are afraid to talk to the police, they won't. This breeds gangs & protection rackets, which presumably you don't want, because they increase crime.
As these problems will become worse and worse, the more we will try to crack down on illegal immigration, intensifying said problems. The tragic irony is that the solution is the cause of the problem and it is part of a nasty feedback loop.
> Living in the US is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen
I am guessing you are implying that the White Europeans "stole" America from the Native Americans. By that notion, you can keep going a few 100 years back in history and you'll eventually end up with "Living in the ___ is inherently illegal, even if you happen to be a citizen" for every place in this earth except that place in Africa where the human is supposed to have evolved and migrated.
This is a total straw man. Illegal immigrants pay their taxes. The IRS doesn't care about their immigration status, but they do care about getting paid.
Think of it like any other art. Not everyone is equally good at it, but with practice, everyone gets better.