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                      The Way It Goes Sometimes...
                     ------------------------------


 Patrick's Theorem
    If the experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.

 Skinners's Constant
    That quanity which, when multiplied times, divided by, added to, or 
    subtracted from your answer ... gives you the answer you should have 
    gotten. 

 Horners's Five Thumb Postulate
    Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.

 Flagle's Law of the Perversity of Inanimate Objects
    Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may 
    be expected to perform ... at any time ... in a totally unexpected manor, 
    for reasons that are obsure or else completely mysterious. 

 Allen's Axiom
    When all else fails, read the directions.

 The Spare Parts Principle
    The accessibility, during recovery, of small parts which fall from the 
    work bench, varies directly with the size of the part, and inversely with 
    its importance to the completion of the work underway. 

 The Compensation Corollary
    The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the 
    observed measurments must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with 
    theory. 

 Gumperson's Law
    The probability of a given event occuring is inversely proportional to 
    its desirability. 

 The Ordering Principle
    Those supplies needed for yesterday's experiment must be ordered no later 
    than tomorrow noon. 

 The Ultimate Principle
    By definition, when you are investigating the unkown you do not know what 
    you will find. 

 The Futility Factor
    No experiment is ever a complete failure ... It can always serve as as a 
    bad example. 

 Airplane Law
    When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is 
    on time. 

 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. 

 Anderson's Law
    Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in exactly the 
    right way, will become even more complicated. 

 Anthony's Law of Force
    Don't force it, get a larger hammer. 

 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. 

 Army Axiom
    Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.

 Axiom of the Pipe. (Trischmann's Paradox)
    A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in 
    his mouth. 

 Baker's Law
    Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

 Barber's Laws of Backpacking
    1)  The integral of the gravitational potential taken around any loop 
        trail you choose to hike always comes out positive. 
    2)  Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient 
        to exactly the point of most pressure. 
    3)  The weight of your pack increases in direct proportion to the amount 
        of food you consume from it.  If you run out of food, the pack weight 
        goes on increasing anyway. 
    4)  The number of stones in your boot is directly proportional to the 
        number of hours you have been on the trail. 
    5)  The difficulty of finding any given trail marker is directly 
        proportional to the importance of the consequences of failing to find 
        it. 
    6)  The size of each of the stones in your boot is directly proportional 
        to the number of hours you have been on the trail. 
    7)  The remaining distance to your chosen campsite remains constant as 
        twilight approaches. 
    8)  The net weight of your boots is proportional to the cube of the 
        number of hours you have been on the trail. 
    9)  When you arrive at your chosen campsite, it is full.
    10) If you take your boots off, you'll never get them back on again.
    11) The local density of mosquitos is inversely proportional to your 
        remaining repellent. 

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

 Boren's First Law
    When in doubt, mumble.

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

 Barzun's Laws of Learning
    1)  The simple but difficult arts of paying attention, copying 
        accurately, following an argument, detecting an ambiguity or a false 
        inference, testing guesses by summoning up contrary instances, 
        organizing one's time and one's thought for study - all these arts -
        cannot be taught in the air but only through the difficulties of a 
        defined subject. They cannot be taught in one course or one year, but 
        must be acquired gradually in dozens of connections. 
    2)  The analogy to athletics must be pressed until all recognize that in 
        the exercise of Intellect those who lack the muscles, coordination, 
        and will power can claim no place at the training table, let alone on 
        the playing field. 

 Forthoffer's Cynical Summary of Barzun's Laws
    1)  That which has not yet been taught directly can never be taught 
        directly. 
    2)  If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed.

 Decaprio's Rule
    Everything takes more time and money.

 Dijkstra's Law of Programming Inertia
    If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not 
    start writing it. 

 Etorre's Observation
    The other line moves faster.

 First Maxim of Computers
    To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.

 Gallois's Revelation
    If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes back out but 
    tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive 
    machine, is somehow ennobled, and no one dares to criticize it. 
  Corollary - An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while 
    sweeping on to the Grand Fallacy. 

 Glib's Laws of Reliability
    1.  Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
  Corollary - 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. 
    2.  Any system which relies on human reliability is unreliable.
    3.  The only difference between the fools and the criminal who attacks a 
        system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front. 
    4.  A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than 
        simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes 
        intolerable. 
    5.  Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the 
        inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used. 
    6.  The error detection and correction capabilities of a system will 
        serve as the key to understanding the types of error which they 
        cannot handle. 
    7.  Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to 
        detectable errors, which by definition are limited. 
    8.  All real programs contain errors unless proven otherwise, which is 
        impossible. 
    9.  Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable 
        cost of errors, or until somebody insists on getting some useful work 
        done. 

 The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences
    Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

 Golub's Laws of Computerdom
    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; if carefully planned, it will take 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. 

 Goodin's Law of Conversions
    The new hardware will break down as soon as the old is disconnected and 
    out. 

 Gordon's First Law
    If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing 
    well. 

 Gray's Law of Programming
    N+1 trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as N 
    trivial tasks. 
  Loggs Rebuttal - N+1 trivial tasks take twice as long as N trivial tasks 
    for N sufficiently large. 

 Grosch's Law
    Computer power increases as the square of the costs.  If you want to do 
    it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as fast. 

 Halpern's Observation
    The tendancy to err that programmers have been noticed to share with 
    other human beings has often been treated as if it were an awkwardness 
    attendant upon programming's adolescence, which (like acne) would 
    disappear with the craft's coming of age.  It has proved otherwise. 

 Hoare's Law of Large Programs
    Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.

 Howe's Law
    Every man has a scheme that will not work.

 IBM Pollyanna Principle
    Machines should work.  People should think.

 Laws of Computability as Applied to Social Science
    1.  Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in exactly 
        the right way, will become even more complicated. 
    2.  If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.

 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. 
    8.  Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and 
        you will discover that programmers cannot write in English. 
    9.  Software is hard.  Hardware is soft.  It is economically more 
        feasible to build a computer than to program it. 
    10. An operating system is a feeble attempt to include what was 
        overlooked in the design of a programming language. 

 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. 

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

 Paperboy's rule of Weather
    No matter how clear the skies are, a thunderstorm will move in 5 minutes 
    after the papers are delivered. 

 Project scheduling "99" rule
    The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time.  The last 
    10 percent takes the other 90 percent. 

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

 Segal's Law
    A man with one watch knows what time it is.  A man with two watches is 
    never sure. 

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

 Troutman's Programming Postilates
    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 proper 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. 
    6.  Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.

 The Unspeakable Law
    As soon as you mention something ... if it's good, it goes away; if it's 
    bad, it happens. 

 Weinberg's Law
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the 
    first woodpecker that came along would destroy society as we know it. 
  Corollary - An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while 
    sweeping on to the Grand Fallacy.