Whitey Grandad

No, it's nothing to do with the butterfly effect, more a philosophical consideration, maybe Determinism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

They weren't related to my post and I thought we had dealt with them earlier.

Try this: http://www.lottery.co.uk/statistics/ Are these results significant?

No, it didn't affect the draw in any way, but we were eliminated yesterday so we shall never know who we might have drawn in the next round because we're not in it.

That has nothing to do with chaos theory. People have a tendency to be predictable, ask Derren Brown.

My son did some work with the Met Office and asked them about global warming. They said they would be happy with getting the weather right for the next four days let alone forty years.

Only for systems which are inherently unstable.

Very impressive considering she can't see her own feet, and she's carrying a cameraman on her head at the same time! Still, it's good practice for the old 4-inch beam

Of course I can. You can't say if it did or didn't cause the storms, hence my quoted aphorism.

As an example of a flawed theory. When I was at school we were taught the phlogiston theory and also that life was created from rotten meat because that's where flies came from. These are all 'what ifs'. You can think of life as one big experiment with only one outcome, you can't go back and run the experiment again. There have been studies of identical twins who were separated at a very early age. It turned out that they all ended up in similar lifestyles.

You see, this disproves your theory. Nobody's lives are affected by Saints winning or losing. Nobody who matters anyway.

It's not accepted!!!

There are alternate possibilities but they aren't the reality until it happens. The clue is in the 'sometimes', but the tide will come in again tomorrow, I can guarantee that.

Not sending off Gerrard was worse.

There are no alternate realities, just this one. Sometimes an event is inevitable no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

That was never a penalty, just a coming together. They keep showing replays from the wrong angle.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will,-- Hamlet.

That doesn't prove anything. He wasn't, so he was, so I am. Anyway, my grandad's were too old for either war. These are all conjectures. There is only one past, so there is only one future for that past. Up to now, at least.

Could be worse

We don't know that and we can't prove it either way. Maybe everything turns out the same way every time?

That's because it's a load of billhooks.

In France it's only news if they don't dip their wicks.

Butterflies don't have an effect on anything. Anyway, it's all pre-ordained.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or something.

Aren't the numbers fixed at the start of the third round, or something?