
Making out is its own reward - jseliger
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/making_out_is_its_own_reward.html
======
nkohari
I hate to make a meta-comment, but what in the world does this stuff have to
do with Hacker News? I continually see people complaining about newsworthy but
non-technical articles being posted, and yet hundreds of comments on these
posts. Is the HN community really that sex-starved?

~~~
rglullis
Here we go...

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

~~~
davidw
What's "intellectual" about the article?

Also, how do we know that it's "good hackers" voting this stuff up?

That little clause is a wormhole to the redditverse, as people use it to
justify pretty much anything.

A much more fun game is "7 degrees of hacker news", where you try and create
the most tenuous link possible to defend the "HN worthiness" of an article.
Like saying that "Well, this is about hacking, because, see, they had
restrictions, and they learned to hack around them! See!" I'm sure others can
do better.

(Not that it's a bad article, of course... it's just not something I'd
consider germane)

------
jseliger
Note that this link comes from the discussion of Feynman - "You Just Ask
Them?" -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196928> .

~~~
wallflower
Thanks for posting the link. I just read the entire page, hundreds of
comments. Fascinating. Like very few writers - Ebert has a rare gift of making
people write back to express themselves. Everyone has personal stories.
Reading through the hundreds of responses, Ebert has made them happier by
letting them express them.

Two comments stood out.

"Let me share my favourite guidance from Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, my mentor in life:
"Life is the accumulation of all the moments we live. One who cannot live
meaningfully today cannot hope to lead a brilliant life tomorrow. No matter
what grand plans one makes, if he does not value each moment, they will be
just so many castles in the air. All the causes in the past and all the
effects in the future are condensed within the present moment of life. Whether
or not we improve our state of life at this moment will determine whether we
can expiate the evils we have caused since the infinite past and be able to
build up good fortune to remain for all eternity. The key is whether or not we
have faith strong enough to decide that this may be the last moment of our
life. The above passage, therefore, gives us the principle for changing our
karma."

Two:

"Here is an homage to the passionate kiss, in a poem by a romanian poet,
Nichita Stănescu - "They kiss". In beautiful images as well, next to the
translation <http://bit.ly/54KtKw> Wonderful kissing pictures, then and now:
<http://bit.ly/b2sWCI> ('Le Baiser de L'Hotel de Ville') ,
<http://bit.ly/bjtZAV>

Ebert: I just tweeted "They Kiss." Yes, the video plays perfectly once the
poem has been read. Such a melodic language. And I love your taste in movies
and books on your blog. "

------
ErrantX
Brilliant! Made me smile and nod a few times. Choice quotes;

 _Like many old farts my age, I don't know what to make of the sexual habits
of younger generations. I hear about Hooking Up. ..[SNIP].. Let me assure you
that Hooking Up was discovered long before it was named._

and

 _Some of the truest words I've ever written are:

It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it is to be
kissed._

~~~
enneff
That latter quote is wonderful.

------
potatolicious
I'm not sure I agree on all of his points (particularly the stuff about my
generation and sexting and so forth), but this struck me:

> _"They "go places in a group of friends." Jeez, haven't these kids ever
> heard of ditching your friends in order to...whatever?"_

This is the only way I know things. This is the only way my peers and I in my
generation have _ever_ done things. Maybe I'm not in the right subculture or
whatever, but for us dating almost entirely arises from the above... I wonder
how "dating" worked back then?

~~~
CWuestefeld
_I wonder how "dating" worked back then?_

Even before dating-via-Facebook, etc., I think things were different.

From watching Happy Days, etc., I conclude that back in the day, people used
to "date" multiple people in parallel, and were only monogamous if they were
"going steady".

But by the late 70s to early 80s (when I was of the age), this wouldn't have
been tolerated. You can only be "dating" one person at a time.

So maybe the doing-things-as-a-group thing is a work-around that's allowing a
person to interact with more potential partners than the one-at-a-time rules
would allow.

~~~
jcmhn
_But by the late 70s to early 80s (when I was of the age), this wouldn't have
been tolerated. You can only be "dating" one person at a time._

My time was a bit later, late 80s to early 90s - but at that time the general
rule as I experienced it was that above-average women and exceptionally
attractive men could get away with multiple dating partners, but it was off
limits to the majority,

