
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.
Consume, be silent, die.
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
The universe is laughing behind your back.
Many pages make a thick book.
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
Mind your own business, Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference.
Stop searching forever. Happiness is unattainable.
It's later than you think.
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
Don't panic.
It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree.
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
Let him who takes the Plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
Today is the last day of your life so far.
Flee at once, all is discovered.
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
This wisdom is inoperative. Please try another.
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.
I have this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
The early worm gets the bird.
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)
Can't open wisdom.txt
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Charlie.
Your computer account is overdrawn. Please reauthorize.
It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
When in doubt, lead trump.
Don't eat yellow snow.
This message will self destruct in thirty seconds.
IOT trap -- mos dumped
System going down at 1:45 this afternoon for disk crashing.
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
The more things change, the more they'll never be the same again.
New crypt. See man crypt.
You might have mail.
sh: syntax error at line 1: '&' unexpected
The world ends tomorrow.
The world just ended.
ASIO is tapping this terminal.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write.
     Those who can't write work for THARUNKA.
Considering time is eternal, it's not long since breakfast.
After tomorrow, there's only today left.
Never hit a man when he's down - he may get up.
Barking dogs never bite - except when they stop barking.
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may be
     in owning a piece thereof.
A penny saved is ridiculous.
You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof
     of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity
     of your action.
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
To be is to do.
     -- I. Kant
 To do is to be.
     -- A. Sartre
 Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
     -- F. Flintstone
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
 As Dame Fortune did intend,
 Murphy would be there to tell me
 The pot's at the other end.
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket
    and rejoices that the system works.
'Be what you would seem to be' - or, if you'd like it put more simply -
     'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear
     to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than
     what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way
     that you will look forward to the trip.
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
     This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
     the only ashtray.
Keep your Eye on the Ball,
 Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
 Your Nose to the Grindstone,
 Your Feet on the Ground,
 Your Head on your Shoulders.
 Now....try to get something DONE!
Democracy is also a form of worship.
     It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
     showed that all had these things in common:
     1) They all had moderate appetites;
     2) They all came from middle class homes;
     3) All but two of them were dead.
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best friends
     are trying to kill us.
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe,
     for you can watch both of his.
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
     The goal of nature is to build better mice.
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't,
     why you should.
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word
     what you shouldn't have said.
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was
     in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee
     of eventual success.
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
     you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice,
     but no cup.
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of a random Taxation Audit! Just type
     in your name and tax return number. Please remember that leaving
     the room is punishable by law.
     Name:     Number:
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
     Now, if they'd only take a bath...
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement
     unless it was to avoid responsibility with?
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because
     the average man can see better than he can think.
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
     returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
This will be a memorable month - no matter how hard you try to forget it.
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
Stay away from flying saucers today.
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better
     so get used to it.
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
Travel important today; Taxation men arrive tomorrow.
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes.
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing your name and moving
     to a new town.
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
     in the morning, and does not stop until you get to university.
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
     otherwise require harder thinking.
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
     criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
     totally worthless.
Wasting time is an important part of living.
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
     has been discontinued.
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact,
     you don't have a lucky day this year.
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time
     reading this sort of trash.
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
     Avoid him. He's a Commie.
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
Remember, even if you win the rat race - you're still a rat.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
Drive defensively, buy a tank.
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
     for a dial tone.
The meek shall inherit the earth - they are too weak to refuse.
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
Don't hate yourself in the morning - sleep till noon.
Keep Australia beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
Hire the morally handicapped.
I can resist anything but temptation.
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
Earn cash in your spare time - blackmail your friends.
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
George Orwell was an optimist.
Chicken Little was right.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Don't cook tonight - starve a rat today!
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
Brain fried -- Core dumped
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
I finally got it all together, but now I've forgotten where I put it!
I know that you beleive you understand what you THINK I said,
     but I don't think you realise that what you heard was not
     what I meant.....
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
     Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process...
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
     from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission;
     or someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
Reality is an obstacle to halucination.
God did not create the world in 7 days; he horsed around for 6 days
     and then pulled an all-nighter.
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
     at the steam fitters picnic.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
     and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
Here at the Computer Centre, we serve all kinds of people;
     from Prime Ministers and Kings to the scum of the earth...
God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Woolies.
A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
     of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series
     of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from
     vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive
     documents and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by
     persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed
     purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department
     that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place.
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
     to decadence without touching civilization.
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
     out of a divorce.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
     and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money,
     as well as afterward.
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every effort
     to teach them good manners.
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by
     the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud
     what the country could do under first-class management.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
     of being a damned fool.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognise a mistake
     when you make it again.
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
     without looking to see whether the seeds move.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
     every six months.
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
     from where you left them to where you can't find them.
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
     Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss
     is reading it.
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
If you don't care where you are, then you aren't lost.
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean
     he knows what it is.
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem,
     you modify the problem, not the remedy.
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
Anything labelled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price
     went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means
     the price went way up.
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
     by the number of people in the group.
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
     it isn't here.
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
     this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
     somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find
     at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
     the computer.
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
     never have to stop and answer the phone.
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
     busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices
     the world has ever seen.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
     to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
     with a large fortune.
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
     to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, and a dark side,
     and it holds the universe together....
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think
     themselves cleverer than we are.
People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way
     of taking advantage of them.
Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing
     to go through hell to get it.
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
Love is sentimental measles.
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
     there is nothing in it.
I never fail to convice an audience that the best thing they could do
     was to go away.
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up
     where we are headed.
The United States Army; 194 years of proud service, unhampered by progress.
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
God is not dead - he's been busted.
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done
     for the first time.
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
Courage is grace under pressure.
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
Excessive prompts is a sure sign of senility.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.
Integrity has no need for rules.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
Money may buy friendship but money can not buy love.
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Success is a journey, not a destination.
System going down at 5 this afternoon to install scheduler bug.
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.
The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
The price of greatness is responsibility.
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
To teach is to learn.
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and one the stars.
Your education begins where what is called your education is over.
If in any problem situation you find yourself doing an immense amount of work,
     the answer can be obtained by simple inspection.
Prepare no plans or proposals simply if a way can be found to make them
     complex and wonderful.
Insanity is hereditary - it's caused by kids.
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers
     so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.
Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace
    that wasn't immune to bullets.
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
    the continuing viability of Fortran.
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
    the little hand is on the ....
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
    no one we know belongs.
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.
Remember: Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights make an airplane,
    and three rights will get you back on the freeway.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
It is amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.
Get the first shot off fast, it doesn't matter that you miss.
    It unsettles the other guy so fast that you'll have time
    to do a better job on the second.
It is only through the silence that you hear the word.
Democracy is the only form of life with many legs and no brain.
Democracy is based upon the premise that a million people are smarter
    than one, and totalitarianism assumes one person is smarter than
    a million... neither premise is neccesarily true.
Democracy is a myth... all people are born unequal.
Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself
     a pleasure.
Absurdity: a statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Accident: a condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body
     is better.
Admiration: our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Adult: one old enough to know better.
Afternoon: that part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted
     the morning.
Alliance: in international politics, the union of two thieves who have
     their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
     separately plunder a third.
Ambidextrous: able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Antonym: the opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
Automobile: a four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
Barometer: an ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather
     we are having.
Basic: the only high-level language which can be mastered in less time
     than any program written in it will take to execute.
Benchmark: a precise method of measuring the ability of a computer to do
     something which nobody in their right mind would ever want to do.
Birth: the first and direst of all disasters.
Boy: a noise with dirt on it.
Brain: the apparatus with which we think that we think.
Broad-mindedness: the result of flattening high-mindedness out.
Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise
     as a man's head.
Christian: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely
     inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.
Cigarette: a fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco
     in between.
Collaboration: a literary partnership based on the false assumption
     that the other fellow can spell.
Compatible: a theoretical concept.
Conservative: one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
Conversation: a vocal competition in which the one who is catching
     his breath is called the listener.
Coronation: the ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
     visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a bomb.
Coward: one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Cynic: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as
     they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out
     a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
Cynic: one who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
Data: a vital collection of variables which, when held in memory,
     leave no room for the program.
Data Source: makes fiche and chips taste better.
Data Transmission: a method of corrupting someone else's data from
     a safe distance.
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
Debug: de ting killed wid de pressure spray.
Deliberation: the act of examining one's bread to determine which side
     it is buttered on.
Electrocution: burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
Emulate: a tardy bird.
Erase: an attempt to read vital data of which you have no back-up.
Fairy Tale: a horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
Fortran: a traditional high-level language designed to enable scientists
     to corrupt the system without having to call outside help.
Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out
    of her stockings and desolating the country.
Hacker: one who builds furniture with an axe.
Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
     of another.
Hexadecimal: a simple but powerful method of concealing your activities.
Honorable: afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
     bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as,
     "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
Idiot: a member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
     affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
If: a general class of wish-fulfilment statements.
Ingrate: a man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains
     of indigestion.
Interpreter: one who enables two persons of different languages to understand
     each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
     the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Justice: a decision in your favor.
Kin: an affliction of the blood.
Lie: a very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered
     to date.
Lunatic Asylum: the place where optimism most flourishes.
Magpie: a bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone
     that it might be taught to talk.
Majority: that quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
Man: an animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is
     as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation
     is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however,
     multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable
     earth and Canada.
Markov Chain: used to tie up pavlov's dog.
Menu: a list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
Microfiche: plankton.
Misfortune: the kind of fortune that never misses.
Monostable: one horse accommodation.
Noncombatant: a dead Quaker.
Ocean: a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -
     who has no gills.
Operating System: a master program which, alone, can destroy
     all lesser programs.
Parity: a state of equivalence in which neither you nor the computer know
     the answer and so you toss for it.
Peace: in international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods
     of fighting.
Syntax: royalties paid by brothel madam.
VDU: a diseased sheep (Remote VDU: a diseased sheep in Western NSW).
Verification: a method of program checking which is known not to reveal
     any errors.
Wit: the salt with which people spoil their cookery... by leaving it out.
Year: a period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
Five Stages of a Project:
     Stage 1: Excitement - Euphoria
     Stage 2: Disenchantment
     Stage 3: Search for the Guilty
     Stage 4: Punishment of the Innocent
     Stage 5: Distinction for the Uninvolved.
Goldenstern's Rules:
  1. Always hire a rich attorney
  2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
Ducharm's Axiom:
     If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself
     as part of the problem.
A Law of Computer Programming:
     Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
     will find the programmers cannot write in English.
Turnaucka's Law:
     The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord.
Bradley's Bromide:
     If computers get too powerful, we can orgranize them into a committee -
     that will do them in.
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
     If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.
Van Roy's Law:
     An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
Arthur's Laws of Love:
  1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them
     of someone else.
  2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed
     in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person.
Colvard's Logical Premises:
     All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't.
 Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
     This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to.
 Grelb's Commentary:
     Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
     Superiority is recessive.
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
  1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
  2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention:
     Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
     reject the proposal.
Jones' First Law:
     Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor,
     and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its
     progress - in direct proportion to the importance of their original
     contribution.
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
     Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
Horngren's Observation:
     Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
First Rule of History:
     History doesn't repeat itself - historians merely repeat each other.
Hanlon's Razor:
     Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
     The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
     instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
   Corollary:
     Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except
     study for that instructor's course.
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
     If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
   Corollary:
     If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
Ducharme's Precept:
     Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
Naeser's Law:
     You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.
The Third Law of Photography:
     If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
     when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
     the dark leaks out.
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
     If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
     it wasn't worth doing.
Conway's Law:
     In any organization there will always be one person who knows
     what is going on. This person must be fired.
DeVries' Dilemma:
     If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
     hits the paper.
Finagle's Creed:
     Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:
     The one who has the gold makes the rules.
The Abrams' Principle:
     The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
     Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
     be out of a job.
Main's Law:
     For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
     It's on the other side.
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
     The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
     to.....to........uh..............
Frothingham's Fallacy:
     Time is money.
Crane's Law:
     There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Parkinson' First Law:
     Work expands to fill the time available for its completion; the thing
     to be done swells in perceived importance and complexity in a direct
     ratio with the time to be spent in its completion.
Parkinson's Second Law:
     Expenditures rise to meet income.
Parkinson's Law of Delay:
     Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Wiker's Law:
     Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
Tuccille's First Law of Reality:
     Industry always moves in to fill an economic vacuum.
Westheimer's Rule:
     To estimate the time it takes to do a task; estimate the time
     you think it should take, multiply by 2, and change the unit of
     measure to the next highest unit. Thus we allocate 2 days for
     a one-hour task.
Gresham's Law:
     Trivial matters are handled promptly; important matters are never
     solved.
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.
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
     The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time,
     and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
Weinberg's First Law:
     Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
The Ordering Principle:
     Those supplies necessary for yesterday's experiment must be ordered
     no later than tomorrow noon.
Cheops's Law:
     Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
Extended Epstein-Heisenberg Principle:
     In an R&D orbit, only 2 of the existing 3 parameters can be defined
     simultaneously. The parameters are: task, time, and resources($).
  1. If one knows what the task is, and there is a time limit allowed
     for completion of the task, then one cannot guess how much it will cost.
  2. If the time and resources are clearly defined, then it is impossible
     to know what part of the R&D task will be performed.
  3. If you are given a clearly defined R&D goal and a definite amount
     of money which has been calculated to be necessary for the completion
     of the task, you cannot predict if and when the goal will be reached.
  Corollary:
     If one is lucky enough and can accurately define all 3 parameters,
     then what one deals with is not in the realm of R&D.
Pareto's Law (The 20/80 Law):
     20% of the customers account for 80% of the turnover.
     20% of the components account for 80% of the cost, etc.
O'Brien's Principle (The $357.73 Theory):
     Auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line
     divisible by 5 or 10.
Issawi's Observation on the Consumption of Paper:
     Each system has its own way of consuming vast amounts of paper:
     in socialist societies by filling large forms in quadruplicate,
     in capitalist societies by putting up huge posters and wrapping
     every article in four layers of cardboard.
Brown's Law of Business Success:
     Our customer's paperwork is profit. Our own paperwork is loss.
John's Collateral Corollary:
     In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it.
Brien's First Law:
     At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organisation,
     its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
Law of Institutions:
     The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with
     the fundamental solvency of the firm.
Paulg's Law:
     In Australia, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
Juhani's Law:
     The compromise will always be more expensive than either of
     the suggestions it is compromising.
Booker's Law:
     An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
Klipstein's Laws Applied to General Engineering:
  1. A patent application will be preceded by one week by a similar
     application made by an independent worker.
  2. Firmness of delivery dates is inversely proportional to the tightness
     of the schedule.
  3. Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable terms.
     Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
  4. Any wire cut to length will be too short.
Klipstein's Laws Applied to Prototyping and Production:
  1. Tolerances will accumulate uni-directionally toward maximum difficulty
     to assemble.
  2. If a project requires 'n' components, there will be 'n-1' units in stock.
  3. A motor will rotate in the wrong direction.
  4. A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
  5. A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse
     by blowing first.
Klipstein's Laws Applied to Prototyping and Production:
  6. A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
  7. A purchased component or instrument will meet its specs long enough,
     and only long enough, to pass incoming inspection.
  8. After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
     cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
  9. After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws,
     it will be discovered that the gasket has been omitted.
 10. After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
     on the bench.
The Recommended Practices Committee of the International Society
 of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Laws for Naive Engineers:
  1. In any calculation, any error which can creep in will do so.
  2. Any error in any calculation will be in the direction of most harm.
  3. In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from engineering
     handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
  4. The best approximation of service conditions in the laboratory
     will not begin to meet those conditions encountered in actual service.
  5. The most vital dimension on any plan or drawing stands the greatest
     chance of being omitted.
The Recommended Practices Committee of the International Society
 of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Laws for Naive Engineers:
  6. If only one bid can be secured on any project, the price will be
     unreasonable.
  7. If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent production
     units will malfunction.
  8. All delivery promises must be multiplied by a factor of 2.0.
  9. Major changes in construction will always be requested after fabrication
     is nearly completed.
 10. Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
The Recommended Practices Committee of the International Society
 of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Laws for Naive Engineers:
 11. Interchangeable parts won't.
 12. Manufacturer's specifications of performance should be multiplied by
     a factor of 0.5.
 13. Salespeople's claims for performance should be multiplied by a factor
     of 0.25.
 14. Installation and Operating Instructions shipped with the device
     will be promptly discarded by the Receiving Department.
 15. Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.
The Recommended Practices Committee of the International Society
 of Philosophical Engineers' Universal Laws for Naive Engineers:
 16. Service Conditions as given on specifications will be exceeded.
 17. If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one
     will be at fault.
 18. Identical units which test in an identical fashion will not behave
     in an identical fashion in the field.
 19. If, in engineering practice, a safety factor is set through service
     experience at an ultimate value, an ingenious idiot will promptly
     calculate a method to exceed said safety factor.
 20. Warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.
Atwood's Fourteenth Corollary:
     No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.
Johnson's Third Law:
     If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue which
     contained the article, story or installment you were most anxious
     to read.
   Corollary:
     All of your friends either missed it, lost it or threw it out.
Harper's Magazine's Law:
     You never find an article until you replace it.
Richard's Complementary Rules of Ownership:
  1. If you keep anything long enough you can throw it away.
  2. If you throw anything away, you will need it as soon as it is no longer
     accessible.
Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
     The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional
     to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.
Lewis's Law:
     No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've
     bought it it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
Perlsweig's Law:
     People who can least afford to pay rent, pay rent.
     People who can most afford to pay rent, build up equity.
Laws of Gardening:
  1. Other people's tools work only in other people's gardens.
  2. Fancy gizmos don't work.
  3. In nobody uses it, there's a reason.
  4. You get the most of what you need the least.
McClaughry's Law of Zoning:
     Where zoning is not needed, it will work perfectly. Where it is
     desperately needed, it always breaks down.
The Airplane Law:
     When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to
     is on time.
First Law of Bicycling:
     No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
Second Law of Bicycling:
     Take a rain coat when you ride your bicycle. This will make you
     look like an idiot but it will also help to keep the rain away.
     In the event it does rain, you can wear your raincoat and laugh
     at everyone else who is getting wet. However, it is unwise to let
     them hear you because they will usually de-bike you.
First Law of Bridge:
     It's always the partner's fault.
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.
Kitman's Law:
     Pure drivel tends to drive off the TV screen ordinary drivel.
Johnson and Laird's Law:
     Toothache tends to start on Saturday night.
Etorre's Observation:
     The other line moves faster.
Boob's Law:
     You always find something the last place you look.
Cole's Law:
     Thinly sliced cabbage.
Wallace's Observation:
     Everything is in a state of utter dishevelment.
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.
Weaver's Law:
     When several reporters share a cab on an assignment, the reporter
     in the front seat pays for all.
   Doyle's Corollary:
     No matter how many reporters share a cab, and no matter who pays,
     each puts the full fare on his own expense account.
Johnson's Second Law:
     If, in the course of several months, only three worthwhile social
     events take place, they will all fall on the same evening.
Matsch's Law:
     It's better to have a horrible ending than to have horrors without end.
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
     No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature
     is in session.
Fowler's Note:
     The only imperfect thing in nature is the human race.
Terman's Law of Innovation:
     If you want a track team to win the high jump, you find one person
     who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot.
Trischman's Paradox:
     A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick
     in his mouth.
Bucy's Law:
     Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
     Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time
     he will pick himself up and continue on.
Haldane's Law:
     The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it's queerer
     than we can imagine.
Kerr-Martin Law:
  1. In dealing with their own problems, faculty members are the most
     extreme conservatives.
  2. In dealing with other people's problems, they are the most extreme
     liberals.
Law of Observation:
     Nothing looks as good close up as it does from far away.
     Or - nothing looks as good from far away as it does close up.
The Aquinas Axiom:
     What the gods get away with, the cows don't.
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
     A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
White's Chappaquidick Theorem:
     The sooner and in more detail you announce the bad news, the better.
Old and Kahn's Law:
     The efficiency of a committe meeting is inversely proportional to
     the number of participants and time spent on deliberations.
Shanahan's Law:
     The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of
     people present.
Law of Triviality:
     The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion
     to the sum involved.
First Law of Committo-Dynamics:
     Comitas comitatum, omnia comitas.
Second Law of Committo-Dynamics:
     The less you enjoy serving on committes, the more likely you are
     to be pressed to do so.
Hendrickson's Law:
     If a problem causes many meetings, the meetings eventually become
     more important than the problem.
Lord Falkland's Rule:
     When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not
     to make a decision.
Fairfax's Law:
     Any facts which, when included in the argument, give the desired result,
     are fair facts for the argument.
McNaughton's Rule:
     Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of
     being expressed in a simple declarative sentence that is obviously true
     once stated.
Truman's Law:
     If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
First Law of Debate:
     Never argue with a fool - people might not know the difference.
Laws of Procrastination:
  1. Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
     for its termination on someone else (the authority who imposed
     the deadline).
  2. It reduces anxiety by reducing the expected quality of the project
     from the best of all possible efforts to the best that can be expected
     given the limited time.
  3. Status is gained in the eyes of others, and in one's own eyes,
     because it is assumed that the importance of the work justifies
     the stress.
  4. Avoidance of interruptions including the assignment of other duties
     can usually be achieved, so that the obviously stressed worker can
     concentrate on the single effort.
  5. Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
     there is nothing important to do.
  6. It may eliminate the job if the need passes before the job can be done.
Swipple Rule of Order:
     He who shouts loudest has the floor.
Rayburn's Rule:
     If you want to get along, go along.
Boren's Laws:
  1. When in doubt, mumble.
  2. When in trouble, delegate.
  3. When in charge, ponder.
Parker's Rule of Parliamentary Procedure:
     A motion to adjourn is always in order.
Patton's Law:
     A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Osborn's Law:
     Variables won't; constants aren't.
Klipstein's Law of Specification:
     In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
First Law of Revision:
     Information necessitating a change of design will be conveyed to
     the designer after - and only after - the plans are complete.
     (Often called the "Now they tell us!" Law.)
   Corollary:
     In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus one
     obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way,
     so as to expediate subsequent revision.
Second Law of Revision.
     The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the further
     its influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.
Third Law of Revision.
     If, when completion of a design is imminent, field dimensions are
     finally supplied as they actually are - instead of as they were
     meant to be - it is always simpler to start all over.
   Corollary:
     It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences -
     if you have none, someone will make one for you.
Law of the Lost Inch:
     In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can
     be totalled correctly after 4:40 p.m. on Friday.
   Corollaries:
  1. Under the same conditions, if any minor dimensions are given to
     sixteenths of an inch, they cannot be totalled at all.
  2. The correct total will become self-evident at 9:01 a.m. on Monday.
Laws of Applied Confusion:
  1. The one piece that the plant forgot to ship is the one that supports
     75% of the balance of the shipment.
   Corollary:
     Not only did the plant forget to ship it; 50% of the time they haven't
     even made it.
  2. Truck deliveries that normally take one day will take five when
     you are waiting for the truck.
  3. After adding two weeks to the schedule for unexpected delays, add
     two more for the unexpected, unexpected delays.
  4. In any structure, pick out the one piece that should not be mismarked
     and expect the plant to cross you up.
  Corollaries:
     1. In any group of pieces with the same erection mark on it, one
        should not have that mark on it.
     2. It will not be discovered until you try to put it where the mark
        says it's supposed to go.
     3. Never argue with the fabricating plant about an error. The inspection
        prints are all checked off, even to the holes that aren't there.
Miksch's Law:
     If a string has one end, then it has another end.
Wyszkowski's Theorem:
     Regardless of the units used by either the supplier or the customer,
     the manufacturer shall use his own arbitrary units convertible to those
     of either the supplier or the customer only by means of weird and
     unnatural conversion factors.
The Snafu Equations:
  1. Given any problem containing 'n' equations, there will always be
     'n+1' unknowns.
  2. An object or bit of information most needed will be the least available.
  3. Once you have exhausted all possibilities and fail, there will be one
     solution, simple and obvious, highly visible to everyone else.
  4. Badness comes in waves.
Skinner's Constant (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.
Laws of Computer Programming:
  1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
  2. Any given program costs more and takes longer.
  3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
  4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
  5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
  6. The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
  7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
     programmer who must maintain it.
Laws of Computer Programming:
  8. Any programmer can find 90% of his bugs simply by explaining his
     program to any uninterested observer. The uninterested observer
     may be sleeping, dead, non-human, or in extreme cases, non-existant.
  9. The most difficult or nearly impossible programming problems appear
     obvious or extremely simple to anyone with little or no knowledge
     of programming.
 10. The rarest bug in any operating system or major programming effort
     will always show up during a demonstration of its use to prospective
     users or customers. These bugs usually cannot be reproduced and therefore
     cannot be located.
Troutman's Programming Postulates:
  1. If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems
     will malfunction.
  2. Not until a program has been in production for at least six months
     will the most harmful error be discovered.
  3. Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper order
     will be.
  4. Interchangeable tapes won't.
  5. If the input editor has been designed to reject all bad input, an
     ingenious idiot will discover a method to get bad data past it.
Gilb's Laws of Unreliability:
  1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
  2. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
  3. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable
     errors, which by definition are limited.
  4. Investments in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable
     cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
Brook's Law:
     Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
  1. If it should exist, it doesn't.
  2. If it does exist, it's out of date.
  3. Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.
Laws of Computerdom According to Golub:
  1. Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid the embarrassment of
     estimating the corresponding costs.
  2. A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete
     than expected; a carefully planned project takes only twice as long.
  3. The effort required to correct course increases geometrically with time.
  4. 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.
Kaplan's Law of the Instrument:
  1. To a small boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
  2. If you have to drive a nail, every tool looks like a hammer.
Shaw's Principle:
     Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want
     to use it.
The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:
     Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Gummidge's Law:
     The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number
     of statements understood by the general public.
Dunne's Law:
     The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with equivocation.
Malek's Law:
     Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
Allison's Precept:
     The best simple-minded test of expertise in a particular area is
     the ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences
     in that area.
Weinberg's Corollary:
     An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on
     to the grand fallacy.
Potter's Law:
     The amount of flak received on any subject is inversely proportional
     to the subject's true value.
Ross's Law:
     Never characterize the importance of a statement in advance.
The Rule of the Way Out:
     Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas:
     Every revolutionary idea - in Science, Politics, Art or whatever -
     evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by
     the three phrases:
     1. "It is impossible - don't waste my time."
     2. "It is possible, but it is not worth doing."
     3. "I said it was a good idea all along."
Clarke's First Law:
     When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something
     is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that
     something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke's Second Law:
     The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them
     into the impossible.
Rule of the Great:
     When somebody you greatly admire and respect appears to be thinking
     deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
Clarke's Third Law:
     Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Law of Superiority:
     The first example of superior principle is always inferior to the
     developed example of inferior principle.
Blaauw's Law:
     Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.
Cohen's Law:
     What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -
     not the facts themselves.
Fitz-Gibbon's Law:
     Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved
     with the broth.
Barth's Distinction:
     There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types,
     and those who don't.
Runamok's Law:
     There are four kinds or people: those who sit quietly and do nothing,
     those who talk about sitting quietly and doing nothing, those who
     do things, and those who talk about doing things.
Levy's Eighth Law:
     No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
Levy's Ninth Law:
     Only God can make a random selection.
Segal's Law:
     A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches
     is never sure.
Miller's Law:
     You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it.
Kamin's Sixth Law:
     When attempting to predict and forecast macro-economic moves of
     economic legislation by a politician, never be misled by what he
     says; instead - watch what he does.
Weiler's Law:
     Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
LaCombe's Rule of Percentages:
     The incidence of anything worthwhile is either 15-25% or 80-90%.
   Dudenhoefer's Corollary:
     An answer of 50 percent will suffice for the 40-60 range.
Weinberg's Second Law:
     If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
     then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
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 organisation.
The Peter Principle:
     In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
   Corollaries:
  1. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is
     incompetent to carry out its duties.
  2. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached
     their level of incompetence.
Peter's Inversion:
     Internal consistency is valued more highly than efficient service.
Peter's Hidden Postulate according to Godin:
     Every employee begins at his level of competence.
Peter's Observation:
     Super-competence is more objectionable than incompetence.
Peter's Rule for Creative Incompetence:
     Create the impression that you have already reached your level of
     incompetence.
Peter's Theorem:
     Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.
Peter's Law of Substitution:
     Look after the molehills and the mountains will look after themselves.
Peter's Prognosis:
     Spend sufficient time in confirming the need and the need will disappear.
Peter's Placebo:
     An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.
Godin's Law:
     Generalizedness of incompetence is directly proportional to highestness
     in hierarchy.
Freeman's Rule:
     Circumstances can force a generalized incompetent to become competent,
     at least in a specialized field.
Vail's Axiom:
     In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchal level.
Imhoff's Law:
     The organization of any bureaucracy is very much like a septic tank -
     the really big chunks always rise to the top.
Parkinson's Third Law:
     Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
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 an important decision, the good bureaucracy,
     public or private, will find it.
Parkinson's Axioms:
  1. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
  2. Officials make work for each other.
Sociology's Iron Law of Oligarchy:
     In every organized activity, no matter the sphere, a small number
     will become the oligarchical leaders and the others will follow.
Oeser's Law:
     There is a tendency for the person in the most powerful position
     in an organization to spend all of his or her time serving on
     committees and signing letters.
Cornuelle's Law:
     Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
     People are always available for work in the past tense.
Law of Communications:
     The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
     between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
     area of misunderstanding.
Dow's Law:
     In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater
     the confusion.
Bunuel's Law:
     Overdoing things is harmful in all cases, even when it comes to
     efficiency.
Spark's Ten Rules for the Project Manager:
  1. Strive to look tremendously important.
  2. Attempt to be seen with important people.
  3. Speak with authority; however, only expound on the obvious and
     proven facts.
  4. Don't engage in arguments, but if cornered, ask an irrelevant
     question and lean back with a satisfied grin while your opponent
     tries to figure out what's going on - then quickly change the subject.
  5. Listen intently while others are arguing the problem. Pounce on
     a trite statement and bury them with it.
Spark's Ten Rules for the Project Manager:
  6. If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had
     lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.
  7. Obtain a brilliant assignment, but keep out of sight and out of
     the limelight.
  8. Walk at a fast pace when out of the office - this keeps questions
     from subordinates and superiors at a minimum.
  9. Always keep the office door closed. This puts visitors on the defensive
     and also makes it look as if you are always in an important conference.
 10. Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into
     a "Pearl Harbor File".
Truths of Management:
  1. Think before you act; it's not your money.
  2. All good management is the expression of one great idea.
  3. No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.
  4. If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify action, don't do it.
Jay's First Law of Leadership:
     Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them
     before anyone else is creativeness.
Worker's Dilemma:
  1. No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough.
  2. What you don't do is always more important than what you do do.
Match's Maxim:
     A fool in a high station is like a man on the top of a high mountain;
     everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody.
Iron Law of Distribution:
     Them that has, gets.
H. L. Mencken's Law:
     Those who can - do.
     Those who cannot - teach.
   Martin's Extension:
     Those who cannot teach - administrate.
   Dave's Addition:
     Those who won't - criticise.
The Army Axiom:
     Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
Jones's Law:
     The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone
     he can blame it on.
First Law of Socio-Economics:
     In a hierarchical system, the rate of pay for a given task
     increases in inverse ratio to the unpleasantness and difficulty
     of the task.
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, and
     those who manage what they do not understand.
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
     Celibacy is not hereditary.
Beifeld's Principle:
     The probability of a young man meeting a desirable 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.
Farber's Fourth Law:
     Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.
Hartley's Second Law:
     Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
Beckhap's Law:
     Beauty times brains equals a constant.
Pardo's Postulates:
  1. Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
  2. The three faithful things in life are money, a dog and an old woman.
  3. Don't care if you're rich or not, as long as you can live comfortably
     and have everything you want.
   Note: anything not fitting into the three categories of 1. above
     causes cancer in rats.
Parker's Law:
     Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
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.
Issawi's Law of the Conservation of Evil:
     The total amount of evil in any system remains constant. Hence,
     any diminution in one direction - for instance, a reduction in
     poverty or unemployment - is accompanied by an increase in another,
     e.g. crime or air pollution.
Katz's Law:
     Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities
     have been exhausted.
Parker's Law of Political Statements:
     The truth of any proposition has nothing to do with its credibility
     and vice versa.
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
     The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population
     is growing.
Law of the Individual:
     Nobody really cares or understands what anyone else is doing.
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
     Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
Levy's Third Law:
     That segment of the community with which one has the greatest sympathy
     as a liberal inevitably turns out to be one of the most narrow-minded
     and bigoted segments of the community.
   Kelly's Reformation:
     Nice guys don't finish nice.
The Kennedy Constant:
     Don't get mad - get even.
Canada Bill Jones's Motto:
     It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
   Supplement:
     A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
Jones's Motto:
     Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
McClaughry's Codicil to Jones's Motto:
     To make an enemy, do someone a favor.
Vique's Law:
     A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
The Fifth Rule:
     You have taken yourself too seriously.
IBM Pollyanna Principle:
     Machines should work; people should think.
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.
   Klipstein's Corollary:
     The most delicate component will be the one to drop.
Sprinkle's Law:
     Things always fall at right angles.
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
     Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner
     of the workshop.
   Corollary:
     On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first always strike
     your toes.
The Spare Parts Principle:
     The accessibility, during recovery of small parts which fall from
     the workbench, varies directly with the size of the part - and inversely
     with its importance to the completion of work underway.
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.
Law of Annoyance:
     When working on a project, if you put away a tool that you're certain
     you're finished with, you will need it instantly.
Watson's Law:
     The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number
     and significance of any persons watching it.
Wyszkowski's Second Law:
     Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough.
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.
Schmidt's Law:
     If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
     Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
Anthony's Law of Force:
     Don't force it; get a large hammer.
Horner's Five-Thumb Postulate:
     Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
Cahn's Axiom:
     When all else fails, read the instructions.
The Principle Concerning Multifunctional Devices:
     The fewer functions any device is required to perform, the more perfectly
     it can perform those functions.
Cooper's Law:
     All machines are amplifiers.
Jenkinson's Law:
     It won't work.
Les Miserables Metalaw:
     All laws, whether good, bad or indifferent, must be obeyed to the letter.
Persig's Postulate:
     The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon
     is infinite.
Lilly's Metalaw:
     All laws are simulations of reality.
The Ultimate Principle:
     By definition, when you are investigating the unknown you do not know
     what you will find.
Cooper's Metalaw:
     A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.
Murphy's Law:
     If anything can go wrong, it will.
   Corollaries:
  1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
  2. Everything takes longer than you think.
  3. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one
     that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
  4. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
     can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
  5. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
  6. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
  7. Every solution breeds new problems.
  8. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
  9. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
 10. Mother nature is a bitch.
The Murphy Philosophy:
     Smile ... tomorrow will be worse.
Murphy's Constant:
     Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
Quantization Revision Of Murphy's Law:
     Everthing goes wrong all at once.
Hill's Commentaries on Murphy's Law:
  1. If we lose much by having things go wrong, take all possible care.
  2. If we have nothing to lose by change, relax.
  3. If we have everthing to gain by change, relax.
  4. If it doesn't matter, it does not matter.
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
     Murphy was an optimist.
Zymurgy's Seventh Exception to Murphy's Law:
     When it rains, it pours.
Boling's Postulate:
     If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
White's Statement:
     Don't lose heart...
   Owen's Commentary on White's Statement:
        ... they might want to cut it out...
   Byrd's Addition to Owen's Commentary on White's Statement:
        ... and they want to avoid a lengthy search.
Iles's Law:
     There is always an easier way to do it.
   Corollaries:
  1. When looking directly at the easier way, especially for long periods,
     you will not see it.
  2. Neither will Iles.
Chisholm's Second Law:
     When things are going well, something will go wrong.
   Corollaries:
  1. When things just can't get any worse, they will.
  2. Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
Chisholm's Third Law:
     Proposals, as understood by the proposer, will be judged otherwise
     by others.
   Corollaries:
  1. If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
  2. If you do something which you are sure will meet with everbody's
     approval, somebody won't like it.
  3. Procedures devised to implement the purpose won't quite work.
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 correct 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
     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. No one whom you ask for help will see it.
  2. Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.
Finagle's Fourth Law:
     Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Finagle's Rules:
  1. To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
  2. Always keep a record of data - it indicates you've been working.
  3. Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
  4. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
  5. Experiments should be reproducible - they should all fail in the same way.
  6. Do not believe in miracles - rely on them.
Wingo's Axiom:
     All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
     without thinking.
Gumperson's Law:
     The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its
     desirability.
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.
   The Dialectics of Progress:
     Direct action produces direct reaction.
   The Pace of Progress:
     Society is a mule, not a car... If pressed too hard, it will kick
       and throw off its rider.
Sodd's First Law:
     When a person attempts a task, he of she will be thwarted in that task
     by the unconscious intervention of some other presence (animate or
     inanimate). Neverthless, some tasks are completed, since the intervening
     presence is itself attempting a task and is, of course, subject to
     interference.
Sodd's Second Law:
     Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound
     to occur.
   Corollary:
     Any system must be designed to withstand the worst possible set
     of circumstances.
Simon's Law:
     Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
Rudin's Law:
     In crises that force people to choose among alternative courses
     of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.
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?
Everitt's Second Law of Thermodynamics:
     Confusion is always increasing in society. Only if someone or something
     works extremely hard can this confusion be reduced to order in a limited
     region. Nevertheless, this effort will still result in an increase in
     the total confusion of society at large.
Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics:
     Things get worse under pressure.
Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
     Nothing ever goes away.
Pudder's Law:
     Anything that begins well, ends badly.
     Anything that begins badly, ends worse.
Stockmayer's Theorem:
     If it looks easy, it's tough.
     If it looks tough, it's damn well impossible.
Howe's Law:
     Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
Wynne's Law:
     Negative slack tends to increase.
Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
     Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to
     use a larger can.
Sturgeon's Law:
     90% of everything is crud.
The Unspeakable Law:
     As soon as you mention something...
       ... if its good, it goes away.
       ... if its bad, it happens.
Non-reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
     Negative expectations yield negative results.
     Positive expectations yield negative results.
Gordon's First Law:
     If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth
     doing well.
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.
Edington's Theory:
     The number of different hypotheses erected to explain a given biological
     phenomenon is inversely proportional to the available knowledge.
Peer's Law:
     The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
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.
Fourth Law of Revision:
     After painstaking and careful analysis of a sample, you are always told
     that it is the wrong sample and doesn't apply to the problem.
Hersh's Law:
     Biochemistry expands to fill the space and time available for its
     completion and publication.
Rule of Accuracy:
     When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if
     you know the answer.
Young's Law:
     All great discoveries are made by mistake.
   Corollary:
     The greater the funding, the longer it takes to make the mistake.
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
     Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
Fett's Law of the Lab:
     Never replicate a successful experiment.
Wyszowski's First Law:
     No experiment is reproducible.
Futility Factor:
     No experiment is ever a complete failure -
     it can always serve as a negative example.
Mr. Cooper's Law:
     If you do not understand a particular word in a piece of technical
     writing, ignore it. The piece will make perfect sense without it.
Parkinson's Law for Medical Research:
     Successful research attracts the bigger grant which makes further
     research impossible.
Parkinson's Sixth Law:
     The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals
     published.
Whole Picture Principle:
     Research scientists are so wrapped up in their own narrow endeavours
     that they cannot possibly see the whole picture of anything, including
     their own research.
   Corollary:
     The Director of Research should know as little as possible about
     the specific subject of research he is administering.
Brooke's Law:
     Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
     discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands
     it beyond recognition.
Campbell's Law:
     Nature abhors a vacuous experimenter.
Meskimen's Law:
     There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
Mrs Murphy's Law:
     Things go wrong when Murphy's out of town.
Yet another Murphy corollary:
     If nothing can possibly go wrong, it still will.
Weinberg's White Bread Warning:
     Things are the way they are because they got that way.
Laws of Understanding:
  1. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
  2. If you don't understand the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.
   Corollaries:
     1. If you have to ask the question, you won't understand the answer.
     2. If you understand the answer, you asked the wrong question.
  3. If you understand what you yourself are saying, invariably no one else
     will.
   Corollary:
     If you understand what someone else is saying, you probably have grossly
     misinterpreted him.
  4. In any argument, the heat of the argument is inversly proportional
     to the amount of knowledge present.
Easy Essay Questions - Medicine:
     You have been provided with a razor blade, gauze, and a bottle of Scotch.
     Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected.
     You have 18 minutes.
Easy Essay Questions - Public Speaking:
     Two thousand drug-crazed aborigines are storming the room. Calm them.
     You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.
Easy Essay Questions - Biology:
     Create life. Implicit in this assignment is that the use of any other form
     of life is not allowed since life must be created, not simply reproduced
     or modified.
Easy Essay Questions - Engineering:
     The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box
     on the table; included is an instruction manual printed in Swahili.
     In 10 minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room.
     Take whatever action you may feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify
     your decision.
Easy Essay Questions - Sociology:
     What sociological problems might accompany the end of the world? Construct
     an experiment to test your theory. First, prepare an Environmental Impact
     Statement acceptable to the Sierra Club.
Easy Eassy Questions - Psychology:
     Based on what you have read in the newspapers, evaluate the emotional
     stability, degree of adjustment, and the repressed frustrations of each:
     Anita Bryant, Billy Carter, Sigmund Freud, Richard Nixon.
Easy Essay Questions - Political Science:
     There is a red telephone in front of you. Start World War III. Report
     at length on its social/political effects, if any. Prepare an Environmental
     Impact Statement.
Easy Essay Questions - Economics:
     Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt.
Easy Essay Questions - Physics:
     Create matter. The use of any form of energy is not allowed.
Easy Essay Questions - Mathematics:
     Reconstruct the system such that e and pi are whole numbers.
Easy Essay Questions - Law:
     Take a position for or against truth as it relates to justice. If your
     position is pro, explain the paradox this creates with the Australian
     judicial system.
Easy Essay Questions - Construction:
     Build a full scale replica of the Great Pyramid. Use only the resources
     similar to those at the disposal of the ancient Egyptians. Note: this is
     a Union job, no slave labor is allowed. You have 17 minutes.
Easy Essay Questions - Philosophy:
     Trace the development of human thought. Compare this with the development
     of any other kind of thought.
Easy Essay Questions - General Knowledge:
     Describe in detail, briefly.
   Extra Credit: Define the Universe. Give three examples.
Real programmers don't write specs - users should consider themselves lucky
     to get any programs at all and take what they get.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should
     be hard to understand.
Real programmers don't write application programs. They program right down to
     the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who can't do system
     programming.
Real programmers don't eat quiche. In fact, real programmers don't know how
     to spell quiche. They eat twinkles and szechuan food.
Real programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications
     programmers.
Real programmers' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw
     them on the machine, they can be patched into working in 'only a few'
     30-hour debugging sessions.
Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe-stress freaks
     and crystallography weenies.
Real programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at
     9AM, it's because they were up all night.
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in
     BASIC, after the age of 12.
Real programmers don't write in PL/1. PL/1 is for programmers who can't
     decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
Real programmers don't play tennis or any other sport that requires you to
     change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear
     their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up
     in the middle of the machine room.
Real programmers don't document. Documentation is for simps who can't read
     the listings or object deck.
Real programmers don't write in PASCAL or BLISS or ADA, or any of those pinko
     computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Cavemen drew flowcharts and
     look how much good it did them.
Real programmers don't write in APL, unless the whole program can be
     written on one line.
Real programmers don't write in LISP. Only faggot programs contain more
     parenthesis than actual code.
Real programmers scorn floating-point arithmetic. The decimal point was
     invented for pansy bed wetters who are unable to think big.
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
     sells it, they eat it. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they
     don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.
Real programmers like vending-machine popcorn. Coders pop it in the
     microwave oven. Real programmers use the heat from the CPU. They can
     tell which jobs are running from the rate of popping.
Real Programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming
     is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained. They
     wear neckties and carefully line up sharp pencils on an otherwise clear
     desk.
Real Programmers don't believe in schedules. Planners make schedules.
     Managers firm up schedules. Frightened coders strive to meet
     schedules. Real programmers ignore schedules.



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