ARM Club 1/ARM_CLUB_CD.iso/contents/sillies/silly8/L/Laws

Text File | 1993-12-04 | 10KB | 308 lines

                     The laws of the universe.
                    -------------------------
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
"Murphy was an optimist."

Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.

Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.

Scott's second Law: When  an error has been detected and corrected, it  will be found to have been right in the first place.

Corollary: After  the  correction has been found in error, it  will  be      impossible  to  fit  the original  quantity  back  into the equation.

Finagle's first Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will
always  be someone  eager to
(a) misinterpret it,
(b) fake it, or
(c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.

Finagle's third Law:
In  any  collection  of  data,  the  figure  most  obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake

Corollaries: 1.
Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2.  The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to
hear, will see it immediately.

Finagle's fourth
Law: Once  a job is fouled up, anything done to improve  it  only makes it
worse.

Issawi's Laws of Progress: The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily
worse.

The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.

Ginsberg's Theorem:
1.  You can't win.
2.  You can't break even.
3.  You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every  major  philosophy  that
attempts to  make  life  seem meaningful  is  based  on  the  negation  of
one  part   of Ginsberg's Theorem.

To wit:
1.  Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can
    win.
2.  Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break  even.
3.  Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can  quit the game.

Ehrman's Commentary:
1.  Things will get worse before they get better.
2.  Who said things would get better?

Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield
negative results.

Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Sturgeon'sLaw:
90% of everything is crud.

Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost oferrors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.

Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly
manifests their lack of progress.

Lubarsky's
Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.

Shaw's Principle:
Build  a  system that even a fool can use, and only  a  fool will want to
use it.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You  cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to
butter.

Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side  down is directly
proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.

Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at  the  most inconvenient possible time.

Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely  proportional  to the number and
significance of any persons watching it.

Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.

Lowery's Law:
If  it jams -- force it.
If it breaks, it needed  replacing  anyway.

Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.

Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.

Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.

Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.

Maier's Law: If  the
facts do not conform to the theory,  they  must  be  disposed of.

Corollaries: 1.  The bigger the theory, the better. 2.  The experiment may
be considered a success if  no  more  than 50% of the observed measurements
must be  discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory.

Williams and
Holland's Law: If  enough  data  is collected, anything may  be  proven  by
statistical methods.

Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled
conditions of pressure, temperature,  volume,  humidity, and  other
variables,  the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Hoare's Law of
Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling  to
get out.

Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some
damn fool discovers  something  which either abolishes the  system  or
expands it beyond recognition.

Meskimen's Law: There's  never time to do it
right, but there's always  time to do it over.

Heller's Law: The first myth
of management is that it exists.

Johnson's Corollary: Nobody  really  knows
what is going on anywhere  within  the organization.

Peter's Law of
Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look  after
themselves.

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working
group tends to  increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

Parkinson's Fifth Law: If  there is a way to delay in important decision,
the  good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Zymurgy's Law of
Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense.

Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets.

H. L. Mencken's Law: Those
who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.

Martin's Extension: Those who
cannot teach -- administrate.

Jone's Law: The  man  who  smiles when things
go wrong  has  thought  of someone to blame it on.

Rule of Feline
Frustration: When  your  cat  has fallen asleep on  your  lap  and  looks
utterly  content and adorable, you will suddenly have to  go to the
bathroom.

First Law of Bicycling: No  matter which way you ride, it's uphill
and  against  the wind.

Boob's Law: You always find something in the last
place you look.

Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.

Skinner's
Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That  quantity which, when
multiplied by, divided by,  added  to,  or  subtracted from the answer you
get, gives  you  the answer you should have gotten.

Miksch's Law: If a
string has one end, then it has another end.

Law of Communications: The
inevitable   result   of   improved   and    enlarged communications between
different levels in a hierarchy is  a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.

Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken.

Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what
they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand.

First Law
of Procrastination: Procrastination   shortens   the   job   and   places
the responsibility  for its termination on someone  else  (i.e., the
authority who imposed the deadline).

Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination  avoids boredom; one never has  the  feeling  that there is
nothing important to do.

Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest
has the floor.

Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then
some.

Gray's Law of Programming: 'n+1'  trivial tasks are expected to be
accomplished in  the  same time as 'n' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks.

Weinberg's
First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.

Weinberg's Second Law: If
builders  built  buildings  the  way  programmers  wrote programs,  then the
first woodpecker that came  along  would destroy civilization.

Paul's Law:
In  America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how  much  you save.

Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Weinberg's Principle: An  expert  is a person who avoids the  small  errors
while  sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Barth's Distinction: There are two
types of people:  those who divide people into  two types, and those who
don't.

Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to
do  it  himself.

First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.

Beifeld's Principle: The  probability  of  a young man meeting  a  desirable
and receptive  young female increases by  pyramidal  progression when  he is
already in the company of: (1) a date,  (2)  his wife, (3) a better looking
and richer male friend.

Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone
crazier than yourself.

Pardo's First Postulate: Anything  good  in  life  is
either  illegal,  immoral,  or fattening.

Arnold's Addendum:
       Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.

Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.

Katz' Law:
Man   and  nations  will  act  rationally  when  all   other possibilities have been exhausted.

Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink.

The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.

Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.

Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.

Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage.

Hartley's First Law:
You  can  lead a horse to water, but if you can get  him  to float on his back, you've got something.