Think of the concept of blowing gently on a small fire to make it grow. They steady stream of fresh o2 from your breath gives it more oxygen than the air around the fire.

Yeah, I guess I was kinda stupid there. You also blow on fires when they are first starting, so I should have realized that it doesn’t necessarily put it out.

For what they pay then you'd think so. But the reality is, they are trying to hit a small sphere with a small cylinder. If they swing too early the ball goes one way, if they swing too late it goes the other way. So as a batter, you need to have your timing just right. But then you have to contend with the pitcher changing the speed at which the ball travels. That's just to make sure you're hitting to one side of the field or not.

THEN you have to control the bat where it HITS the ball above or below the axis of the ball. One makes it pop up, the other makes it go down.

Now that I'm thinking about this I'd love to see Boston Dynamics build a batting robot. Maybe a whole team!

The CO2 doesn’t help, but it’s not the reason it goes out. A candle can be extinguished by a fan or wind blowing regular air with normal oxygen richness just the same.

Yes that understanding is incorrect. Your breath is not all CO2 and contains enough oxygen for combustion.

No, the air you breathe out is only about 5% carbon dioxide. It still contains about 15% oxygen, compared to about 20% oxygen in regular air

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The flame in your example need 3 things: fuel, oxygen and heat.

The fuel comes from the candle wax or lighter fluid or whatever, the oxygen comes from the air and the heat initially comes from the flint in a lighter or the friction of striking a match etc.

When you blow, or move air rapidly in some manner, on a flame you move the heat off the fuel for long enough for the reaction to stop.

In part by chance, of course. For some reason other European countries took to soccer more than to cricket or rugby, for example, even though they are all British sports. So while rugby and cricket are popular in Commonwealth nations, soccer spread throughout Europe and then to present or former European colonies.

Perhaps it’s because all you really need to play soccer is a ball. Perhaps it’s because you can play soccer with relativity few people. Perhaps it’s because it was considered a working class sport. But for whatever reason, it was embraced both inside and outside the British Empire, giving soccer broader appeal than cricket or rugby.

On thing that makes association football popular is that it can be played with relatively little equipment, in almost any place.

You basically just need a ball. You can mark goals with some jumpers, stones, chalk or whatever, and you can play in a field, a park, a street or a backyard. You can play with 2, 5, 10 or 20 players.

By comparison, it's hard to play sports like tennis, golf, pool, hockey etc without more equipment and a dedicated playing area.

It's therefore easy for kids to play and learn

Hang on. My understanding was that blowing out a candle suffocated it (your breath was all CO2). Is that understanding incorrect?

It's the same as blowing out a candle. You are separating the burning gases from the fuel faster than it can burn more. At the point that there are no more burning gases touching the fuel, the flame is out.

Your hands coming together rapidly displaces air, pushing it in a focused direction towards the flame. If you watch on high speed cameras, the flame is extinguished before the clap. The wick has no air to combust the fuel anymore.

Can hitters not control where they hit? Seems more sporting to let the shift happen and let people adapt to the skills required to exploit the shift.

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They are only banning the extreme shift. The fielders can still shift quite a bit but the SS/2B will so longer be able to move so far as to be on the ‘wrong’ side of the 2B bag. If one of those guys is playing right behind the 2B, that’s still a decent shift.

They do this in other sports. NBA has had a couple of ‘illegal defense’ type rules. The NFL is always tweaking what pass defenders are allowed to do.

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It’s basically when someone acts or believes something contrary to their other values and then internally ignores or rationalises the contradiction somehow.

Like, claiming to love all people equally and then saying something discriminatory and trying to justify it in line with loving all people equally.

Thanks buddy

Wow that guy even looks like a weirdo, it's not a good vibe.

Thanks! I can see why people would get angry that they are removing some strategy to make the game more exciting.

It’s when you have conflicting views that distress you.

Example: you love animals, and also love meat. If you think about where your meat comes from, you may be distressed because an animal died. But you still love animals and meat, even though they “contradict” each other.

Another example: you are a pacifist but also extremely nationalistic. If you are drafted into a war, you’re going to want to fight to defend your country, but also don’t want to fight, as it involves killing.

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> Which means there are fewer base runners. Which means less scoring.

FYI

Base runners can be counted. "Scoring" cannot be counted.

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