[gentoo-dev] Re: Democracy: No silver bullet

["Duncan" <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Wernfried Haas <amne@gentoo.org> posted
20060826101703.GA32678@superlupo.rechner, excerpted below, on  Sat, 26 Aug
2006 12:17:03 +0200:

>> Quit assuming I mean anything, you're batting zero for two right now.
> 
> What's the problem? I wasn't sure how you meant it, so i assumed you
> meant it that way. As for batting zero for two, i never heard that
> phrase before and have nfc what it means, but somehow that whole
> statement doesn't seem very friendly to me.

It's an allusion to baseball.  I'm /not/ a sports fan, but I do live in
the US, where baseball among others is popular sport and this phrase has
entered the popular culture from there.

The term "batting average" refers to a statistic in baseball, commonly
given as a three or four digit decimal fraction of one (Ty Cobb hit .3664
lifetime average, the record according to Wikipedia, with no pro player
hitting a seasonal .400 since 1941, see the reference below), that is the
ratio of actual hits to "at bats".  "Batting zero" refers to the zero
(.000) baseline one gets if they have no hits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batting_(baseball)#Success_in_batting

"Batting X for Y" then refers to the number of hits (X) for a given number
of at-bats (Y) in a specific game or season.

Within the US culture, then, "batting zero for X", where X is an
increasingly large number, is a reference to a poor record of successes
against tries.

Google says there's 11,000 indexed English pages referencing "batting
zero":

http://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=%22batting+zero%22

... altho only 141 referencing "batting zero for":

http://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&q=%22batting+zero+for%22

Taking a look at those will give you an idea of the usage, but here are a
three samples from the first page of returns on that 141:

* By my count, the Bush administration is batting zero-for-twenty.

* There was one stretch where I was batting zero for five on investment
banking jobs,

* Prior to this trip, United through Chicago was batting zero-for-ten (.000
for baseball fans) with regard to connecting me through O'Hare [airport]

That's the cultural context, then.  It's simply saying you've tried twice
and failed twice.  Yes, it's negative, unfortunately so given spyderous'
musings in the OP about useless flaming, but not unacceptably so in the
generic, particularly as zero for two isn't /so/ bad, compared to the
references above (0:3, 0:5, 0:20), or even compared to the original
baseball allusion, where 1/3 or .333 isn't all that shabby and you've yet
to take your third try.

You may however also wish to reference "strike out".  A batter gets three
tries.  The third strike without a hit and he's "out".  (The following
reference redirects to "strike zone", but that covers it.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_(baseball)

Again, I'm not a sports fan, but sports are part of the "cultural
literacy" in much of the world, and baseball is one such sport here in the
US, so it's something we know even if we /aren't/ particularly interested
in it.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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