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Can't justify the unjustifiable.

Ok, then you admit your idea is moot, and we'll ignore it.

Glad you recognize that the past can't be changed. That said, you can learn from the past, and in the future, not waste our time with tedious argumentation.

Then take it up with the person who proposed it - Cameron.

Yeah, that loser quit. So I have to wait for the next one, who hopefully will have more sense and conduct the process much more sensibly.

Because no, he didn't consult me, I'd have set up a much more robust process in advance. Best I could do was send in correspondence, which naturally got ignored.

But the mechanism for leaving is a separate issue from whether or not they should leave, and on which a majority has spoken.

And yet all they got to do was speak, not decide. Sorry, but Parliament was not obligated to take any action.

This isn't hard either: because otherwise you're stacking the deck in plain sight to suit your preferences. You can't tell one side that they have to get 50%, and the other side they have to get 60% (or 70%, whatever) with a straight face without playing Calvinball.

I think your problem is you are upset with the prior process, for whatever reason. Well, I'm sorry you feel the previous outcomes were unfair, but I wasn't consulted on the prior events either, and I've already said my thoughts on those, that I'd have done things differently myself. But again, not consulted. So I bear no responsibility for them. Sorry, stop bothering me about it, thanks, I'll appreciate it.

But changing the rules? That doesn't convince me, no. Because you know what life is? A continuing evolving process, and even in games and sports, rules can change. So can decisions.

Politics not being a fixed set of games, obviously, it isn't as discrete a series of events. So it is even more subject to variation. It's even questionable if it has any unalterable fundamentals. Some testaments outright state otherwise.

So if the Remain faction gets what they want, a second referendum, you'd have no problem with the Leave people insisting they need 60% to stay, when only 50% was required to Leave?

Nope. 50% was not required to leave. 50% was for this non-binding referendum to have no effect. Any amount would have no effect. Parliament could have done whatever it wanted in the end. Even with a 0% outcome for leaving.

So your assertion is false, and I will not accept it under such terms.

But if you rephrase your statement though, to say, that you wish to have a referendum where government presents a clear and definitive document detailing the circumstances of leaving the European union, and requiring 66% (2/3 was the statement above) of eligible voters to have a position of keep, or we hold another referendum after another round of negotiations, I can consider that acceptable.

Your initial phrasing, no, it's in error. Can't be accepted. Pass.

If so, you'd still be wrong, but at least you'd be consistent.

Ah, there's where you're having trouble. . I was not consulted, and I doubt anybody read my thoughts, to be honest. I actually did say from the start my problems with this process. But it being non-binding, well, whatever, Parliament can still do what they want, and if necessary, later action be addressed.

So I set about addressing it, in the manner I see fit.

I'm willing to put up with Parliament negotiating on the basis of this one pol

Is there an alternative summary available where I might know what any of the nouns mean? In particular, why is it assumed that anyone knows who these companies or people are? I just about got "MLB" = "Major League Baseball".

In response to complaints about all these mysterious acronyms, EdX will host a second MOOC to explain MLB to those who have a background in R and SQL but not MLB. Topics covered include ERA, RBI, OBP, IP, and BB. See this page for a full list of course topics.

Is amazing how much can progress in life a baseball player

Also: in football,basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform,you'd know the reason for this custom.

Now, I've mentioned football. Baseball & football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park! Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet. In baseball you wear a cap.

Football is concerned with downs - what down is it? Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?

In football you receive a penalty. In baseball you make an error.

In football the specialist comes in to kick. In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve somebody.

Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice.

Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, snow, sleet, hail, fog... In baseball, if it rains, we don't go out to play.

Baseball has the seventh inning stretch. Football has the two minute warning.

Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings. Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.

In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different:

In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home! - George Carlin

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml

George Carlin - “Baseball is the only major sport that appears backward in a mirror”

Major League Players Born in Cuba

The problem is that it unbalances the game.

If everyone was taking steroids, you'd have to greatly extend the outfield so as to keep the game from becoming even more of a home run contest than it currently is. And, since steroids don't make you that much faster (as compared to how much further you can hit a ball), outfielders wouldn't be able to cover all that extra room, and batting averages would skyrocket.

There are a few problems with this. One is that we really don't know that steroids make everyone a much better baseball player. If you look at the list of players who've been suspended you see a lot of names like Matt Lawton and Mike Morse, and not too many stars. Maybe this just means that the stars can afford untraceable stuff, but we don't really know. But really, and this surprises people, there is very little proof that steroids really help a player become better, and, even if we assume they do, little explanation of how they do it. Is it pure strength? An increase in hand-eye coordination? Some people suggest they improve vision. Can they work with all people equally? If not, why, and who benefits most?

More importantly, baseball can be changed very significantly with fairly small adjustments to the rules that govern it. An adjustment in the height of the pitcher's mound after the 1968 season increased scoring by about a run a game. Juiced balls dramatically increased run scoring for one season in both 1930 and 1987. The Colorado Rockies have radically changed the offensive environment of their ballpark in large part by changing the method in which they store baseballs (they keep them in a humidor now).

There are all sorts of things that could be done to "deaden" the game. Mandate a minimum thickness of bat handles -- whip-handled bats allow incredibly quick swings. Deaden the ball if you want. Raise the mound. Enforce a larger strike zone. Force batters to stay in the batter's box, and don't let them wear Craig Biggio-style body armor so they have to worry about getting hit if they lunge over the plate. Call it a strike if they get hit over the plate, or if they make no effort to get out of the way. Limit the amount of times a pitcher can throw to first with a runner on, encouraging base stealing and making speedy, athletic players more valuable than lumbering sluggers. Etc., etc.

Bill James runs through these ideas and more in his Historical Baseball Abstract. As James says, with only small changes in the equipment and rules, baseball has been a game of 10-9 slugfests and of 3-2 bunt and steal games. It could be either one now, but Major League Baseball thinks that home runs bring profits. So that's what we've got.

No, Who's on, first base. And if you're asking what's the name of the guy who killed the electric car, What is on second.

Good choices, though I was always a fan of the Baseball vs. Football routine.

And he's right on about Hockey:

Hockey comes to mind. People think hockey is a sport. It's not. Hockey is three activities taking place at the same time: ice skating, fooling around with a puck, and beating the shit out of somebody.

RIP man.

I read the other comment as pointing out that the hitting streak only happened once in our universe, so the fact that it occurs easily in the study raises some questions about the study. Of course, in that case, one possible answer is that it has happened again:

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats-streak.shtml

After the streak ended, he started a new 16 game hitting streak. That means he hit safely in 72 of 73 games.

During the streak Joe DiMaggio had a batting average of .408, a slugging average of .717, he faced four (4) future hall of fame pitchers, and he played in the 1941 All-Star Game (he went one-for-four, scored a run, and drove in a run). Source is http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats3.shtml

During Joe DiMaggio's streak, Ted Williams actually had a higher batting average. William's batted .412 and finished with a .406 average for the year.

Joe DiMaggio had a 61 game hitting streak while playing for the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League in 1933.

Sounds like something Yogi Berra would say. As in "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."

win/loss record is a terrible way to judge a pitcher's performance

Perhaps, but you won't see any pitchers in the Hall with a 41% win ratio. In fact, only one pitcher (unless the site I looked at is incomplete), Rollie Fingers, is below 50%.

And I REALLY don't think Rollie made it for his 37 or so starts.

For example like USA that always wins the WORLD Series of Baseball, right?

Wrong.

For example like USA that always wins the WORLD Series of Baseball, right?

Wrong.

At every major league game there is an Official Scorer. A fan could not guarantee properly recording the permanent record of a game without having access to the pressbox in which the official scorer sits. For those not really familiar with baseball, there are a lot of judgement calls on the part of the Official Scorer, such as errors, field's choices, sacrifice flys and bunts, etc. etc.. Because baseball is not a sport with continuous action, but rather many, many discreet events, it is REALLY full of stats compared to other sports. Major League Baseball pays these guys (independent contractors) $135 per game. Elias Sports Bureau is the company that collects the data from the scorers (via fax) for MLB and makes it into a database, so they obviously get paid something too.

Felipe Alou is the father of Moises. Close, though. Matty is Felipe's brother, and along with a third brother, Jesus, all played in the majors. All three played in the outfield together for the Giants in 1963. The opposing team was quoted as saying, "They're everywhere"

Sigh. I have had that exact conversation. (Reading the role of "Helpdesk", of course!)

I suppose it's more evidence that history repeats itself. It's the same old joke, but with a new subject.

They work on who getting to third base.

Brilliant!

No, What's on second.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor4.shtml

It physically could never have happened with the exact set of details in his account! Does that mean that Canseco got the year wrong, that he's (as seems to be the case with the HR in Detroit) confusing someone else's story with his own or that he made the whole thing up?

Back to the PH for David Cone, as it's a particularly simple example -- was there no such pinch-hit appearance in that series or is his "lie" simply that he got the game wrong?

Doing the research myself, since someone's got to -- yup, Canseco pinch-hit for Cone in Game 4.

I suspect it means that Google's algorithm is better, still. The baseball almanac site has a tremendous quantity of baseball trivia, statistics, and anecdotes. Records on the site date back to the nineteenth century.

The Major League Baseball site (Google's second result, by the way) is certainly an important result, too, but I wouldn't be surprised if the real baseball addicts found the almanac site more useful, and linked to it more often.

I note that Google (correctly) returns the Major League Baseball site as the first result for searches for 'major league baseball' or 'mlb'.

Incidentally, it seems that Microsoft is continuing to update their index and/or tweak their algorithm. The current top results are now to The Baseball Archive, Baseball Prospectus...and so forth. The Major League Baseball page is actually on the second page of hits, after a number of significantly less relevant results....

Of note--if you click on a result, you get bounced through msn.com servers first. I presume that they're using that information to refine their search algorithm.

ask Harvey Haddix, who pitched a perfect 12 innings, only to lose in #13.

That's the great thing about baseball. Watch enough games and you'll eventually see something that you've never seen before.

I don't know's on third.

here's the whole Abbott & Costello skit

Baseball Almanac

Sounds like this explanation to me.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.