[jacquesm]

Dutch is a language of proverbs. One of them is 'High trees catch a lot of wind'. The further you stick your head out the bigger the chance that someone will try to score points of you, either by picking apart every word you wrote or by mis-interpreting if possible every little turn of phrase. This goes with the territory of being very visible, and Paul is now a fairly high tree in the tech landscape his essays offer easy hand-holds to those that wish to practice their written wrestling skills. This will likely get worse as YC goes on to more and more successes (pretty much un-avoidable with the speed the snowball has been going down-hill).

Since plenty of people reading Paul's essays are more than capable of figuring out the intent rather than taking pot-shots at the form in which that intent was cast I don't think given the choice between playing 'someone's wrong on the internet' and spending time with your kids there should even be a contest. On the other hand, action begets reaction and there isn't an essay that Paul wrote that did not have its share of discussion and picking apart so maybe simply accept that and totally ignore the responses?

Enjoy the time you have while you can, indeed, life is too short and I wished I could spend and had spent much more time with my kids. Before you know it they'll be borrowing your car keys and all those years that feel like they will last forever will have vanished.

Better make them count!