And if you have no word for blue, how can you see it?

Since then a more sober explanation has taken hold as the orthodoxy. Analysis of the way in which languages produce words for different colours has revealed that the process is surprisingly consistent, throughout the world and throughout history. In 1969, linguist Paul Kay and anthropologist Brent Berlin published Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. It offered, among others, one pertinent hypothesis. If a language had only three basic colour categories, they were almost always words for black/dark, white/light and red. If it had four or five categories, then the additional words tended to refer to green or yellow. Only once a language had six or more basic colour categories did you begin to see more complex colours given their own word. Among those was the colour that we would call blue. In the view of Kay and Berlin, Homer’s Greek didn’t have a word for blue. Colour exists on a spectrum; what isn’t obvious is how you break that spectrum down into different categories. Where does one colour stop, if you don’t have words to describe the two colours either side of the barrier? And if you have no word for blue, how can you see it?

N. Leamon & B. Jones, Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works (2021), loc.4,454

Standard deviation ... has fallen steadily year on year and decade on decade

You can see a very clear example of this in baseball. Scoring levels have stayed relatively constant in baseball for 100 years. A good batting average in the 1930s is still a good batting average. But if you look at the standard deviation (a measure of variance, of how spread out the individual scores are) of players’ batting averages by season, it has fallen steadily year on year and decade on decade. Players have collectively averaged the same, but the averages of the best and the averages of the worst each year have got closer and closer together.

N. Leamon & B. Jones, Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works (2021), loc.2,338

In county cricket, 81 per cent of balls are bowled at slower than 82 mph

In county cricket, 81 per cent of balls are bowled at slower than 82 mph, and almost no deliveries are above 88 mph. Compare that to Test cricket, where over 60 per cent of the balls bowled are over 82 mph and 17 per cent are over 88 mph. We also move from bouncers making up 4 per cent of balls bowled in county cricket, to nearly three times that many in Test cricket (11 per cent).

N. Leamon & B. Jones, Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works (2021), loc.827

You should not be allowed to remove a rule or a tradition unless and until you fully understand the reasons why it was first put in place, and all the effects that its presence has

There was once a man who had a long way to walk to work, and every day he had to go well out of his way because a large hedge blocked the most direct route. Every day he walked over a mile further in the morning, and again on his way home in the evening because the hedge was in his way. Day after day, he looked at the hedge and thought, If that hedge wasn’t there, I could save myself an hour of walking every day. Eventually he had had enough and decided to make a hole in the hedge so that he could walk the shorter route and save himself time. And that was the day that the bull who lived on the other side of the hedge killed him. Chesterton used the story to illustrate his principle that you should not be allowed to remove a rule or a tradition unless and until you fully understand the reasons why it was first put in place, and all the effects that its presence has.

N. Leamon & B. Jones, Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works (2021), loc.159

We took a Germanic language and enfolded it with Norman French and a bunch of Latin and ever since we keep building out

I miss being at home in a culture. Using English with other native speakers is what I might miss most. For nuance and verve, English wins. We took a Germanic language and enfolded it with Norman French and a bunch of Latin and ever since we keep building out. Our words, our expanse of idioms, are expressive and creative and precise, like our music and our subcultures and our street style, our passion for violence, stupidity, and freedom. The French might have better novels (Balzac, Zola, and Flaubert) and they have better cheeses (Comté, Roquefort, Cabécou). But in the grand scheme that’s basically nothing.

R. Kushner, Creation lake (2024). loc 2,808

Having a good accent is nothing. It’s a consolation prize for people who aren’t fluent

I started working in Europe, in the private sector, taking advantage of the fact I speak French, Italian, Spanish, and German. I’m fluent in all those languages, although I speak them with a strong American accent. (People think fluency is about having a good accent. It isn’t. Fluency is about how well you understand the language, and how well you are able to speak it. Having a good accent is nothing. It’s a consolation prize for people who aren’t fluent.)

R. Kushner, Creation lake (2024). loc 699

Reading in bed is a precision art

Reading in bed is a precision art – knowing the right wattage, high enough to read by, low enough to fall asleep with the light still on, choosing books not for their content but for their size and weight, knowing the right position in bed so the book won’t slide off and hit the floor and wake you again.

A. Michaels, Held (2024), loc. 1,059