0bvious things you’ve only just realised (2019 edition)

[Ferris]

"By Jove!" = minced version of "by Jehovah!"

[NoSleep]

Jove's actually the name of the boss of the Roman gods, though.

[Ferris]

Jove's actually the name of the boss of the Roman gods, though.

Is it, by Jove!

[phantom_power]

Unsavoury is its own sort of antonym. It means not savoury, i.e. sweet. It also means not very pleasant i.e. not sweet

[NoSleep]

It means "not tasty" with the emphasis on "unpleasant". You can savour sweet things.

[Paul Calf]

Ahh, but therein lies the beauty of baseball. All players from the 1890s to now have the same stats recorded in (largely) the same level of detail, so you can say objectively that Babe Ruth was better than any other outfielder in history. There's no waxing lyrical over the flow of "that" England side, and inter generational arguments about whether Kane or Best was the superior player.

The Bambino holds the record for career OPS (a staggering 1.164) and career SLG (an equally ridiculous .690). Players today rarely do that for a single career year, you might get one who manages it once every 4 or 5 years from memory - Ruth maintained it across 22 seasons, and these are cumulative stats so that's incredible. He did lots of other "non-stats" stuff (first dinger at Yankees stadium is the one I can think of) which people like.

30 teams with 25-40 men on the roster (depending how you calculate it) for 130+ years and this guy was (and still is) the best. That's astonishing. See also - Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Hank Aaron, Roger Maris etc etc etc. These guys were just objectively better than everyone else. That's why people bang on about them (as I have above). It really is fascinating.

Doesn't it depend on the quality of the players he played against? For instance, I doubt Don Bradman's batting average of 99.94 would stand if he were to play against the spin of Shane Warne and Murali or the pace of Wasim Akram and Brett Lee.

[Ferris]

Doesn't it depend on the quality of the players he played against? For instance, I doubt Don Bradman's batting average of 99.94 would stand if he were to play against the spin of Shane Warne and Murali or the pace of Wasim Akram and Brett Lee.

You're completely right of course, it does. What we should really say is no other player was as dominant in their era than Ruth was in his because that is certainly true.

There's arguments to be made about how much that matters and whether Ruth would still be competitive in the modern game (much like your Bradman analogy above). I've read a few articles on it - the consensus seems to be that all players get around 5-10% better per decade although it is up for debate really because there's no real way to measure it (but that hasn't stopped people from trying). It also matters because the ability of players is exponential - the difference between a mediocre hitter and a good hitter and a great hitter isn't the same so everyone getting 10% better wouldn't dull an exceptional player as much as you would think, if that makes sense.

I suspect Babe Ruth would be a great (but not exceptional) hitter if he was to play today, but that's based on supposition and feeling which is not good sabermetrics.

It's easier to say he's he greatest ever, and add an asterisk if people like you (correctly!) ask for clarifications in what exactly that means.

[olliebean]

The Bambino holds the record for career OPS (a staggering 1.164) and career SLG (an equally ridiculous .690). Players today rarely do that for a single career year, you might get one who manages it once every 4 or 5 years from memory - Ruth maintained it across 22 seasons, and these are cumulative stats so that's incredible.

Christ, sports fans are nerdy.

[Ferris]

Christ, sports fans are nerdy.

You'd probably record a slashline of .190/.230/.340 lmao

[touchingcloth]

Is it, by Jove!

It is, and one of the most lovely passages written in English has it:

and how he fell⁠
From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements; from morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day

[touchingcloth]

Ahh, but therein lies the beauty of baseball. All players from the 1890s to now have the same stats recorded in (largely) the same level of detail, so you can say objectively that Babe Ruth was better than any other outfielder in history. There's no waxing lyrical over the flow of "that" England side, and inter generational arguments about whether Kane or Best was the superior player.

The Bambino holds the record for career OPS (a staggering 1.164) and career SLG (an equally ridiculous .690). Players today rarely do that for a single career year, you might get one who manages it once every 4 or 5 years from memory - Ruth maintained it across 22 seasons, and these are cumulative stats so that's incredible. He did lots of other "non-stats" stuff (first dinger at Yankees stadium is the one I can think of) which people like.

30 teams with 25-40 men on the roster (depending how you calculate it) for 130+ years and this guy was (and still is) the best. That's astonishing. See also - Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, Hank Aaron, Roger Maris etc etc etc. These guys were just objectively better than everyone else. That's why people bang on about them (as I have above). It really is fascinating.

Does having the same stats recorded in the same level of detail make it different from any other sport? Surely we  know how many runs Ian Offside scored for Tranmere Crickets in 1920 or how what footballs tally Ian Wicket racked up for Manchester Footie from 1912-1918.

[touchingcloth]

I don't know if it counts as obvious, but watching a lot of Comedians in Cars lately has made me realise just how little about cars I know.

This is an 88 G Fock with a twin four flat six straight eight with a 53 turbo. Ok.

A turbo is a component that makes it faster, a spark plug makes the petrol on fire and the carburettor is the third component cars have.

When he talks about horse power I realise that I have no idea:
- what that means. Does it measure speed?
- what a normal one is. They seem to run the gamut from tend to hundreds, but I have no idea what my own cars are or if it matters
- if brake (break?) horsepower is the same, or if it isn't how it differs or, again, if it matters
- if I put the wrong fuel in on accident or "for a laugh" whether my car would not work at all, work almost as normal, work barely at all, blow up, or something else entirely
- what I'm supposed to do with information the rev counter is giving me
- what I would do if any of the lights on the dashboard apart from the beams or handbrake one came on
- what the old clutch there really does

In short, I know what to do to keep the thing trucking* on but more from rote learning like someone memorising their times tables than from first principles.

* I know it's not actually a truck!!!! That was a rhetorical device!! Lol!!!

[Ferris]

Does having the same stats recorded in the same level of detail make it different from any other sport? Surely we  know how many runs Ian Offside scored for Tranmere Crickets in 1920 or how what footballs tally Ian Wicket racked up for Manchester Footie from 1912-1918.

What a handsome and interesting question - I'll answer it in full in the baseball thread

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,66189.150.html

[gilbertharding]

I don't know if it counts as obvious, but watching a lot of Comedians in Cars lately has made me realise just how little about cars I know.

This is an 88 G Fock with a twin four flat six straight eight with a 53 turbo. Ok.

A turbo is a component that makes it faster, a spark plug makes the petrol on fire and the carburettor is the third component cars have.

When he talks about horse power I realise that I have no idea:
- what that means. Does it measure speed?
- what a normal one is. They seem to run the gamut from tend to hundreds, but I have no idea what my own cars are or if it matters
- if brake (break?) horsepower is the same, or if it isn't how it differs or, again, if it matters
- if I put the wrong fuel in on accident or "for a laugh" whether my car would not work at all, work almost as normal, work barely at all, blow up, or something else entirely
- what I'm supposed to do with information the rev counter is giving me
- what I would do if any of the lights on the dashboard apart from the beams or handbrake one came on
- what the old clutch there really does

In short, I know what to do to keep the thing trucking* on but more from rote learning like someone memorising their times tables than from first principles.

You don't actually want answers to any of these, do you?

Horsepower is a pretty good thing to ask about. It means all kinds of things.

Between the wars, British (and French) cars were taxed on the basis of what they called Horsepower - but rather than basing this on the actual amount of work an engine was capable of, they used a mathematical formula based on the geometry of the engine's pistons - and so as technology improved the Rated Horsepower (which might be a number like '8' for a family car) would bear no relationship to the amount of power the engine could actually make...

...which brings us to Horsepower which in Britain equates to about 745Watts (a Watt is a unit of work, which is energy over time). 745W is supposed to equate to the power output of a horse - hence the name. Brake Horsepower is supposedly the amount of power available before you have allowed for all the inefficiencies and losses involved because of friction and such (but mainly, I suspect, used by people to make them sound more knowledgeable than because they know what they're talking about).

There are different standards for measuring this in different countries (predictably there are Imperial, Metric and American horse powers) so it's not that useful, except as a shorthand.

A decent modern family car gives about 150bhp. The top of the range Ferarri makes about 700bhp.

I've no idea if knowing (or even 'knowing') something about what's going on in there might make you a better driver (in terms of making your car perform more efficiently, rather than necessarily faster) than someone with no clue or interest. I mean, presumably you generally get where you want to, when you want to, and your cars last the usual 150k miles plus?

I'm not a mechanic or an engineer, or a petrol head (really) but I am interested in machines, and have fixed my own cars, and I like to think being able to visualise and 'feel' what's going on makes driving better, even if I'm not a better driver. But then, it won't be long before the only things which know how to drive will be the machines themselves.

Anyway - where is Buzby?

[Endicott]

Also, cars haven't had a carburettor for about 25 years.

[Zetetic]

There are no "decent" cars.

[Endicott]

They're either shite, or shit hot amirite?

[touchingcloth]

It's interesting that 150hp is a "decent" family car. Some of the fancy looking ones I've seen Jerry drive have been closer to (under, in fact) 50.

I've just googled and my small Suzuki has 64 horses powering it, and my 89 Renault 4 has 34. The idea of driving something 10 times their combined power frankly terrifies me.

Knowing that a horsepower is 750watts puts into perspective just how much energy petrol contains and is needed to push a car around, especially as I have been obsessively measuring home energy usage recently.

At full tilt my 64hp car must use about 64 x .75 = 48kW, so 20 mins of motorway driving would use the roughly 15kWh my house uses daily for everything. And we don't have mains water, so that includes the usage of pumping all of what we use from a well.

Though doing more sums it's not all that surprising. 20 mins of motorway driving would cost about £2.20, which is just about exactly what we pay in electric bills.

COOL

[Pseudopath]

There are no "decent" cars.

But there are "superb" ones:

[Replies From View]

Cars are always pretty terrible.  But after spending all that money you try not to think about it and even start to hallucinate that your car looks "nice" and has "some decent qualities".

Well it doesn't and it hasn't.  There.  Taught you something today!

[touchingcloth]

I like those cars with eyelashes round the headlights. I like to make love to them.

[Replies From View]

I like those cars with eyelashes round the headlights. I like to make love to them.

Fairly sure those are giraffes.  Look:

[olliebean]

It's interesting that 150hp is a "decent" family car. Some of the fancy looking ones I've seen Jerry drive have been closer to (under, in fact) 50.

I've just googled and my small Suzuki has 64 horses powering it, and my 89 Renault 4 has 34. The idea of driving something 10 times their combined power frankly terrifies me.

Knowing that a horsepower is 750watts puts into perspective just how much energy petrol contains and is needed to push a car around, especially as I have been obsessively measuring home energy usage recently.

At full tilt my 64hp car must use about 64 x .75 = 48kW, so 20 mins of motorway driving would use the roughly 15kWh my house uses daily for everything. And we don't have mains water, so that includes the usage of pumping all of what we use from a well.

Though doing more sums it's not all that surprising. 20 mins of motorway driving would cost about £2.20, which is just about exactly what we pay in electric bills.

COOL

Christ, car people are nerdy.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It's interesting that 150hp is a "decent" family car. Some of the fancy looking ones I've seen Jerry drive have been closer to (under, in fact) 50.

I've just googled and my small Suzuki has 64 horses powering it, and my 89 Renault 4 has 34. The idea of driving something 10 times their combined power frankly terrifies me.

Knowing that a horsepower is 750watts puts into perspective just how much energy petrol contains and is needed to push a car around, especially as I have been obsessively measuring home energy usage recently.

At full tilt my 64hp car must use about 64 x .75 = 48kW, so 20 mins of motorway driving would use the roughly 15kWh my house uses daily for everything. And we don't have mains water, so that includes the usage of pumping all of what we use from a well.

Though doing more sums it's not all that surprising. 20 mins of motorway driving would cost about £2.20, which is just about exactly what we pay in electric bills.

COOL

The relationship between input muddies this a bit. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your suzuki doesn't use twice the amount of fuel for the same journey.

According to wikipedia, at their maximum efficiency, petrol cars are 25-50% efficient, leaving quite a loose relationship between input power and energy used to actually move the vehicle, before getting into variances based on some of the work generated is also lost as friction, noise, air turbulence, and work used to turn engine equipment and appliances such as mechanical (water and oil) pumps and the alternator and the associated electrical gubbins.

[touchingcloth]

The figures I found were hp rather than bhp, which from gilbertharding's post would mean all of those inefficiencies are already accounted for, no? It's just about possible that the Suzuki uses double the fuel for the same journey because the point at which it starts to feel like the speed is getting uncomfortable (which isn't fast in any sort of absolute terms - I am a pussy) is significantly higher, but you're right in that it probably doesn't in actual fact use double. So I don't know, back to being a car dunce.

[gib]

Cars haven't had a carburettor for about 25 years.

[Icehaven]

0

[touchingcloth]

Cars haven't had a carburettor for about 25 years.

They have. The clue's in the name.

[Norton Canes]

Not exactly 0bvious but I like that 'Tardigrades' is 'Grade' in 'TARDIS'.

[touchingcloth]

Not exactly 0bvious but I like that 'Tardigrades' is 'Grade' in 'TARDIS'.

I know TARDIS is in Dr Who (though seeing you type it in all caps makes me suspect that an obvious thing I've only just realised is that it is an acronym), but is Grade?