Chirac, like most men who have once found a woman weak, imagined that he understood women profoundly

Chirac, like most men who have once found a woman weak, imagined that he understood women profoundly. He thought of women as the Occidental thinks of the Chinese, as a race apart, mysterious but capable of being infallibly comprehended by the application of a few leading principles of psychology. Moreover he was in earnest; he was hard driven, and he was honest. He continued, respectfully obedient in withdrawing his arm:

A. Bennett, The old wives' tale (1908), 334

In pastry-making everything can be taught except the "hand,"

Constance could make good pastry, but it was not her mother's pastry. In pastry-making everything can be taught except the "hand," light and firm, which wields the roller. One is born with this hand, or without it. And if one is born without it, the highest flights of pastry are impossible. Constance was born without it. There were days when Sophia seemed to possess it; but there were other days when Sophia's pastry was uneatable by any one except Maggie. Thus Mrs. Baines, though intensely proud and fond of her daughters, had justifiably preserved a certain condescension towards them. She honestly doubted whether either of them would develop into the equal of their mother

A. Bennett, The old wives' tale (1908), 28

You cannot eat a meal in decency without the aid of the Five Towns

They are unique and indispensable. From the north of the county right down to the south they alone stand for civilization, applied science, organized manufacture, and the century—until you come to Wolverhampton. They are unique and indispensable because you cannot drink tea out of a teacup without the aid of the Five Towns; because you cannot eat a meal in decency without the aid of the Five Towns.

A. Bennett, The old wives' tale (1908), 2

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