Murphy's Laws...

Murphy's Laws are an attempt to succeed where physicists have failed - to create a set of laws encompassing all the lawless whims of nature. They were reputedly named after an American, Sgt Murphy, in World War Two, but it is possible that Nagler was correct when he said that Murphy's Laws were not actually invented by Murphy, but by someone else with the same name.

Here are a few (385, excluding sub-laws) others. Not all are original Murphy, but all are Murphyistic. Then again, my definition of Murphyistic is rather wide! My main source was Arthur Bloch's books on the Laws.

  1. Murphy's First Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. (a word of note: Some say the law should be "If the slightest probability for an unpleasant event to happen exists, the event will take place; preferably during a demonstration.")
  2. Murphy's Second Law: If it can go wrong, it will go wrong in the worst possible way.
    Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
  3. Leakproof seals - will.
  4. Self starters - will not.
  5. Interchangeable parts - won't.
  6. If you're feeling well, don't worry, you'll get over it.
  7. All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.
  8. If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it.
  9. A short cut is the longest distance between two points.
  10. If everything seems to be going well, you've obviously overlooked something.
  11. You will always find something in the last place you look.
  12. Of course, whether that something is what you're looking for is a different story.
  13. No matter how long and hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
  14. To get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it.
  15. Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.
  16. If you fool around with anything long enough, you'll break it.
  17. A $300 picture tube will protect a $0.10 fuse by blowing up first.
  18. No matter how good you are, a superior will always try to modify your results.
  19. Lightning strikes the day before you insure or the day after you cancel the insurance.
  20. If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
  21. Any tool dropped while repairing a car will roll underneath to the car's exact geographical centre.
  22. The repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
  23. In any given set of circumstances, the proper course of action is determined by subsequent events.
  24. When a broken appliance is demonstrated for a repairman, it will work perfectly.
  25. If something goes wrong in government, it will go wrong in triplicate.
  26. A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.
  27. There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong.
  28. Build a system even a fool can use and only a fool will use it.
  29. Everybody has a scheme for getting rich that won't work.
  30. In any hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and then remains there.
  31. You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck is two blocks away.
  32. Murphy's Golden Rule - He who has the gold makes the rules.
  33. Everything east of the San Andreas Fault will eventually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.
  34. Nature always sided with the hidden flaw.
  35. Some fool will always point the flaw in a foolproof plan.
  36. Most well-trodden paths lead nowhere.
  37. What you resist, you become.
  38. Things that can be counted on in a crisis:
    • Marketing says yes
    • Finance says no
    • Legal has to review it
    • Personnel is concerned
    • Planning is frantic
    • Engineering is above all
    • Manufacturing wants more floor space
    • Management wants somebody responsible.
  39. Any argument carried on long enough will end up in semantics.
  40. To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression (Freudian psychology)
  41. If everything seems to be going well, you obviously don't know what's going on.
  42. If more than one person (or the boss) is responsible for a mistake, then no-one is at fault.
  43. In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
  44. Never argue with a fool. People might not notice the difference.
  45. The distance from the ticket counter to your flight is directly proportional to the weight of your luggage and inversely proportional to the time before departure.
  46. You can know when something's wrong only when you've made an odd number of mistakes.
  47. One of the advantages of being disorganised is that you're constantly discovering new things. (--- A. A. Milne)
  48. Trust everybody ... then cut the cards.
  49. Two wrongs are only the beginning.
  50. If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
  51. If an hour has been spent amending a sentence, the paragraph will eventually be deleted.
  52. To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
    This often involves finding a crowd that's going somewhere and getting in front of them.
  53. A fool and his money are soon elected.
  54. When the average nobody trips over his shoelaces, he ties them. But an expert looks at the root of the problem, and removes the laces altogether.
  55. Nobody goes to places that are crowded.
  56. The simplest way to learn to read speedily is to get an unexpected letter from the Tax Collection Department.
  57. When a politician gets an idea, he usually gets it wrong.
  58. Exceptions prove the rule ... and wreck the budget.
  59. Success always occurs in private, and failure in full view.
  60. Quality assurance dosen't.
  61. The tough part of a Data Processing Manager's job is that users don't really know what they want, but they know for certain what they don't want.
  62. A committee is a dozen idiots doing the work of one.
  63. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  64. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
  65. He who hesitates is probably right.
  66. The ideal resume (C.V.) will turn up one day after the position is filled.
  67. If something is confidential, it will be left in the copier machine.
  68. One child is not enough, but two children are far too many.
  69. A clean tie attracts the soup of the day.
  70. * If the facts are against you, bang the facts.
    * If the law is against you, bang the law.
    * If the facts and the law are against you, bang the table.
  71. The hardness of the butter is in direct proportion to the softness of the bread.
  72. The bag that breaks is the one with the eggs.
  73. Nothing can be done in one trip.
  74. Two things are universal: hydrogen and stupidity.
  75. Whenever you turn on the radio, you hear the last few notes of your favourite song.
  76. When there are sufficient funds in the checking account, checks take two weeks to clear. When there are insufficient funds, checks clear overnight.
  77. The book you spent $20.95 for today will come out in paperback tomorrow.
  78. The more an item costs, the farther you have to send it for repairs.
  79. Never buy from a rich salesman.
  80. Asking dumb questions is easier than correcting dumb mistakes.
  81. If it says "one size fits all," it dosen't fit anyone.
  82. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
  83. The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it.
  84. Love letters, business contracts and money due to you always arrive three weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.
  85. When you drop change at a vending machine, the pennies will fall nearby, while all other coins will roll out of sight.
  86. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
  87. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. (--- Olivier)
  88. Life can be only understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
  89. Say no, then negotiate.
  90. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of competence.
  91. The length of a progress report is inversely proportional to the amount of progress.
  92. Progress is made on alternative Fridays.
  93. No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
  94. Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.
  95. The hidden flaw never remains hidden.
  96. As soon as the stewardess serves the coffee, the aircraft encounters turbulence.
  97. For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
  98. People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either of them being made.
  99. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
  100. When reviewing your notes for a test, the most important ones will be illegible.
  101. A free agent is anything but free.
  102. The least experienced fisherman always catches the biggest fish.
  103. Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
  104. The one item you want is never the one on sale.
  105. The telephone will ring when you are outside the door, fumbling for your keys.
  106. If only one price can be obtained for a quotation, the price will be unreasonably high.
  107. Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term examination, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
    Corollary: Every teacher assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that teacher's course.
  108. Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences - if you have none, someone will make one for you.
  109. Buchwald's Law: As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.
  110. Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
  111. Macpherson's Theory of Entropy: It requires less energy to take an object out of its proper place than to put it back.
  112. Special Corollary: The work-bench is always untidier than before.
  113. General Corollary: The chaos in the universe is constantly increasing.
  114. Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
  115. Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
    1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
    2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
    3. The energy required to change either one of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally impossible.
  116. Ogden Nash's Law: Progress may have been alright once, but it sent on far too long.
  117. First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.
  118. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself - Historians merely repeat each other.
  119. Flugg's Law: When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
  120. For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. (-- H. L. Mencken)
  121. 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.
  122. Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do.
  123. Computer prices halve every two years. Those 2 years finish the day after you buy yours.
  124. If you can't answer the question, change it.
  125. Never trust someone who says "Trust me".
  126. The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.
  127. Marriages made in heaven end up in hell.
  128. There is at least one Friday the 13th each year.
  129. When someone says "Oh, I see", you know (s)he doesn't.
  130. There's only one thing worse than a broken toilet - a broken toilet and you wanting to use it.
  131. The amount of time left to meet a deadline is directly proportional to the probability of getting the deadline extended.
  132. What a politician delivers is inversely proportional to what was promised.
  133. Attendance registers will only be marked when you are absent.
  134. If you're prepared, you won't need to be. If not, you will.
  135. If your camera has N shots, your best photo will be your (N+1)th.
  136. If at first you don't succeed, change the definition of success.
  137. Instruction manuals are always written in Greek or Chinese and are heavier than the things they're supposed to explain.
  138. Handy guide to Modern Science:
    1. If it's green or it wriggles, it's biology.
    2. If it stinks, it's chemistry.
    3. If it doesn't work, it's physics.
    4. If it's incomprehensible, it's mathematics.
    5. If it doesn't make sense, it's either economics or psychology.
  139. Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
  140. Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
  141. Finagle's Second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to
    1. misinterpret it,
    2. fake it, or
    3. believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
  142. Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
    Corollaries:
    1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
    2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it at once.
  143. Finagle's Fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
  144. Tenenbaum's Law of Replicability: The most interesting results only occur once.
  145. Asking a group of scientists to revise their theory is like asking a group of cops to revise the law.
  146. Loony Laughter Law: Laugh lines are there to remind you to laugh.
    Corollary: The cheapness of a film is directly proportional to the frequency of laugh lines.
  147. Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
  148. Ginsberg's Theorem:
    1. You can't win.
    2. You can't break even.
    3. You can't even quit the game.
  149. 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.
    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.
  150. Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. (--- F. P. Jones)
  151. Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
  152. Flies' Law: None of the hundred people you meet while going to meet your date will tell you your fly's open.
  153. Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
  154. Randal's Law of Rendezvous: Regardless of how long you wait for someone, they'll only turn up five minutes after you leave.
  155. Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are.
  156. Dantz's Observation: A walk of a thousand miles begins with a politician.
  157. Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes.
  158. Phillip's Law: Four-wheel-drive just means getting stuck in more inaccessible places.
  159. Fulton's Law of Gravity: The effort to catch a falling, breakable object will produce more destruction than if the object had been allowed to fall in the first place.
  160. Merdith's Law for Graduate School Survival: Never let your major professor know that you exist.
  161. Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
  162. Ilic's Law: When the game has started, the thinking stops.
  163. Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
  164. Ehrman's Commentary:
    1. Things will get worse before they get better.
    2. Who said things would get better?
  165. Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
  166. The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
  167. Do not believe in miracles - rely on them.
  168. DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper.
  169. Wagner's Law of Sports Coverage: When the camera isolates on a male athlete, he will spit, pick or scratch.
  170. Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
  171. Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
  172. Ellard's Law: Those who want to learn will learn. Those who don't want to learn will lead enterprises. Those incapable of either will regulate scholarship and enterprise to death.
  173. Percussive Sublimation is the promotion of an incompetent employee to a "higher" position which brings in no new responsibility but unclogs the rest of the hierarchy. This is known as kicking someone upstairs. Hierarchiology tells us that every thriving organization will be characterized by this accumulation of deadwood at the executive level, consisting of percussive sublimatees and potential candidates for percussive sublimation. One well-known appliance manufacturing firm has twenty-three vice-presidents! The Lateral Arabesque is another pseudo-promotion. Without being raised in rank - sometimes without even a pay raise - the incompetent employee is given A NEW AND LONGER TITLE and is moved to an office in a remote part of the building... so we see that percussive sublimation and lateral arabesques can serve to keep the drones out of the hair of the workers. (--- from "The Peter Principle")
  174. 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.
  175. Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't.
  176. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to.
  177. Grelb's Commentary: Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
  178. Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
  179. Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes.
  180. By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task completely overwhelm you.
  181. Lefty Gomez's Law: If you don't throw it, they can't hit it.
  182. Law of Logic: If your facts are wrong but your logic is perfect then your conclusions are inevitably false. Therefore, by making mistakes in your logic, you have at least random chance of coming to a correct conclusion.
  183. Cahn's Axiom: When everything else fails, read the instructions.
  184. 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.
  185. De Never's Law of Debate: Two monologues do not make a dialogue.
  186. Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"
  187. Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
  188. Boren's Laws:
    1. When in charge, ponder.
    2. When in trouble, delegate.
    3. When in doubt, mumble.
  189. Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
  190. A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and the real reason.
  191. About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
  192. First law of innovation management: Change is the status quo.
  193. Second law of innovation management: Management by objectives is no better than the objectives.
  194. Third law of innovation management: A manager cannot tell if he is leading an innovative mob or being chased by it.
  195. First law of advice: The correct advice to give is the advice that is desired.
  196. First law of decision making: Any decision is better than no decision.
  197. Second law of decision making: To decide not to decide is a decision.
  198. Third law of decision making: A decision is judged by the conviction with which it is uttered.
  199. Fourth law of decision making: Decisions are justified by the benefits to the organization, but they are MADE by considering the benefits to the decision-makers.
  200. First law of communication: The purpose of the communication is to advance the communicator.
  201. Second law of communication: The information conveyed is less important than the impression.
  202. Third law of survival: To protect your position, fire the fastest rising employees first.
  203. Putts-Brooks law: Adding manpower to a late technology project only makes it later.
  204. Edward's Time/Effort law: Effort x time left = constant.
    1. Given a large initial time to do something, the initial effort will be small.
    2. As time goes to zero, effort goes to infinity.
    Corollary: If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
  205. Parallels to Murphy's Law:
    1. Anyone else who can be blamed should be blamed.
    2. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong faster with computers.
    3. Whenever a computer can be blamed, it should be blamed.
  206. Abbott's Admonitions:
    1. If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know.
    2. If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.
  207. Abrams's Advice: When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
  208. Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.
    Corollary: Provided, of course, that you know there is a problem.
  209. Acheson's Rule of the Bureaucracy: A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
  210. Acton's Law: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  211. Ade's Law: Anybody can win - unless there happens to be a second entry.
  212. Airplane Law: When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time.
  213. Albrecht's Law: Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well being.
  214. Allen's Law of Civilization: It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
  215. Agnes Allen's Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
  216. Fred Allen's Motto: I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
  217. Alley's Axiom: Justice always prevails . . . three times out of seven.
  218. Sagan's Fallacy: To say a human being is nothing but molecules is like saying a Shakespearean play is nothing but words.
  219. Alligator Allegory: The objective of all dedicated product support employees should be to thoroughly analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems when called upon. However, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it is difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
  220. Allison's Precept: The best simple-minded test of experience in a particular area is the ability to win money in a series of bets on future occurrences in that area.
  221. Anderson's Law: I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
  222. Andrews's Canoeing Postulate: No matter which direction you start it's always against the wind coming back.
  223. 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.
  224. 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.
    5. Never argue with the fabricating plant about an error. The inspection prints are all checked off, even to the holes that aren't there.
  225. Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you when things go wrong.
  226. Approval Seeker's Law: Those whose approval you seek the most give you the least.
  227. The Aquinas Axiom: What the gods get away with, the cows don't.
  228. Army Axiom: Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
  229. Army Law: If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, pick it up; if you can't pick it up, paint it.
  230. Secretary's Secret: As soon as you sit down to a hot cuppa, your boss will ask you to do something that will last till you have a cold cuppa.
  231. Sandiland's Law: Free time which unexpectedly becomes available will be wasted.
  232. Scott's Law of Looking Busy: Never walk down a hallway in an office without a piece of paper in your hand.
  233. Gluck's First Law: Whichever way you turn upon entering an elevator, the buttons will be on the opposite side.
  234. Every particle seeks the nearest eye.
  235. Here's a good philosophy: Put an ounce of wine in a barrel of sewage and you get sewage. Put an ounce of sewage in a barrel of wine and you still get sewage.
  236. Ashley-Perry Statistical Axioms:
    1. Numbers are tools, not rules.
    2. Numbers are symbols for things; the number and the thing are not the same.
    3. Numbers must be manipulated in as complex a way as possible so as to make impossible all possible questioning.
  237. In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
  238. 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. If a project requires n components, there will be n-1 units in stock.
    4. A motor will rotate in the wrong direction.
    5. A failsafe circuit will destroy others.
    6. No two identical parts are alike.
    7. A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.
    8. A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
    9. After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found on the bench.
      Corollary: After an instrument has been dissassembled and assembled a sufficient number of times, there will be two of them.
    10. 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.
  239. Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
  240. 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 strike your toes.
  241. Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object.
  242. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. (--- Arthur C. Clarke)
  243. Anon's Comment on Clarke's Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
  244. Anything labeled "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.
  245. 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.
  246. Haite'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.
  247. Avoid reality at all costs.
  248. Bagdikian's Observation: Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele.
  249. Generalisation: It's difficult to soar with eagles when you're working with turkeys.
  250. Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors.
  251. Baruch's Rule: An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
  252. Baruch's Observation: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
  253. Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of:
    1. a date,
    2. his wife,
    3. a better looking and richer male friend.
  254. Buttered Pancake Principle: Any buttered pancake that falls down will land on the buttered side. Results of this principle are not affected in any way by adding jam. However, the pancake will land on the non-buttered side whenever attempting to demonstrate this principle.
  255. Gordon's Warranty Law: "All warranty clauses expires upon bill payment."
  256. Gordon's Object Lifespan Theorem: "No matter the amount of care given the purchased object, it will fuse/explode/disassemble within three days of warranty expiration."
  257. IBM Project Management Axiom: "Need for project modifications increases inversely to time left."
  258. Universal Tech Document Units Law: "Characteristics, specifications, dimensions and any other data included in technical documents must be stated in exotic units, such as "tenth of troy once per barn" for pressures, or "acre times atmosphere per kilogram" for speeds."
  259. Instruction Booklet Governing Principle: "Instruction booklets are lost by the Goods Delivery Service. If not, they are listed in five languages: Japanese, Thai, Swahili, Shona and Moghol."
  260. Sjeverrijk Theorem: "In any computation, the value given for certain is wrong."
  261. Scientific Computations Law:
    1. Decimal points are misplaced.
    2. Positive powers of ten are in fact negative, and vice-versa.
    This law is responsible for interesting results such as 40.8E-3 angstroms for the earth's circumference, or 3.2E2 Gigafarads in an RLC circuit.
  262. Fractions Computations Basic Principle: "In any fraction of mid-level complexity, interchange of factors above and under the fraction bar takes place."
  263. Scheverezhin's Equation System Theorem: "When solving an equation system, the result yielded is x=17x + 1, which is evidently false. Careful recomputation will yield x=x or 1=1."
  264. Vuilleumier's Laws For Building Electronic Prototypes:
    1. "Any pre-cut equipment is too short. This is specially true of optic fibre cables with expensive connectors at both ends."
    2. "If n electronic components are required, n-1 are available."
    3. (also known as "Selective Gravitational Field"): "Any tool escaping manipulator's hands will not necessarily follow Earth's gravitational field, but will land in the most unreachable location in the prototype, smashing on its way the most expensive component of the prototype. This will know only one exception if the tool is particularly heavy, in which case it will land on the manipulator's foot."
    4. "The prototype blows up first, thankfully leaving the fuses intact."
    5. "Prototype npn blackboxes actually hold pnp transistors, and vice-versa."
    6. "A quartz oscillator oscillates at a frequency off the rated one by a minimum of 25% - if it does oscillate at all."
    7. "When the prototype has been fully assembled according to lab instructions, a minimum of 11 components are left."
  265. If every expert consulted states the problem has no solution, its solution will be obvious to the first unqualified person entering the room, whether he/she speaks the language or not.
  266. If you consult enough experts, you can confirm any opinion.
  267. If you can distinguish between good and bad advice, then you don't need any advice.
  268. Prospective Principle: "A Graphic curve must be plotted before computing any values actually supposed to belong to it."
  269. Fudge's Principle: "If measured results do not match computed values of your equation, add a new factor - named after yourself - to the equation."
  270. Diddle's Principle: "Any set of results can match any set of equations provided you develop a good imagination and sense of tolerance."
  271. Ostrich's Principle: "Ignore any bugging problem; it will be solved as soon as people stop talking about it."
  272. Soviet Method: "Set working methods in complicated rules and numerous authorizations. Nothing will therefore happen, for which no blame can be put on you."
  273. First Law of Scientific progress: The advance of science can be measured by the rate at which exceptions to previously held laws accumulate.
    Corollaries:
    1. Exceptions always outnumber rules,
    2. There are always exceptions to established exceptions,
    3. By the time one masters the exceptions, no-one recalls the rules to which they apply.
  274. Laws of Particle Physics:
    1. The shorter the life of the particle, the greater it costs to produce.
    2. The basic building blocks of nature don't occur naturally.
  275. Einstein's Observation: Inasmuch as the mathematical theorems are related to reality, they are not sure; inasmuch as they are sure, they are not related to reality.
  276. False's Law of Mathematics: Nobody wants to read anyone else's formulas.
  277. Road's Statistics: 80% of all people consider themselves to be above-average drivers.
  278. Rule of the Open Mind: People who are resistant to change can't resist change for the worse.
  279. Fox on Yesmanship: It's worth scheming to be the bearer of good news.
    Corollary: Don't be in the building when bad news arrives.
  280. Parkinson's Law (also known as "Thousand Principle"): "Any corporation with a minimum one thousand work force becomes an autonomous entity, in which enough administrative paperwork is generated to make external contacts superfluous."
  281. "Gilb's Laws of Reliability":
    1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
    2. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
    3. The only difference between a fool and a criminal is that the fool will attack a system unpredictably and on a broader front.
    4. A system tends to grow in complexity instead of simplicity, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.
    5. Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to their inherent unreliability.
    6. The error-detection and -correction capabilities of any system serve as a key to understanding the types of errors it cannot handle.
    7. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are finite.
    8. All real programs contain errors until proved 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.
  282. Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
  283. A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
  284. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
  285. The other queue always moves faster.
  286. Vile's Law of Advanced Queuemanship:
    1. If you're running for a short queue, it suddenly becomes a long queue.
    2. When you're waiting in a long queue, the people behind you are shunted to a new, short queue.
    3. If you step out of a short queue for a moment, it becomes a long queue.
    4. If you're waiting in a long queue, the people in the front let in their friends and relatives and make it a long queue.
    5. A short queue outside a building becomes a long queue inside.
    6. If you stand in one place long enough, you make a queue.
  287. A Dentist is a Prestidigitator whom people pay to torture them.
  288. 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.
  289. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
  290. Every solution breeds new problems.
  291. You may keep a letter in your pocket for 12 hours, but you'll only remember to post it when you've passed all the postboxes.
  292. A doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
  293. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
  294. If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
  295. Scott's 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 to be in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
  296. You can't fall from the floor - unless you're a real baby.
  297. Issawi's Laws of Progress:
    1. The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse.
    2. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
  298. Simon's Law: Anything put together falls apart sooner or later.
  299. Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
  300. Golub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
  301. Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.
  302. Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
  303. 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.
  304. Paul's Law of Optimism: You can only be optimistic when you cannot fall any lower.
  305. Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time.
  306. Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it.
  307. Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
  308. Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
  309. Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.
  310. Reynold's Law of Climatology: Wind velocity increases with the cost of the hairdo.
  311. Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
  312. Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, discard them.
    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.
  313. Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.
  314. Harvard's Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
  315. Hoare's Law of Large Problems: In every large problem is a small problem trying to get out.
    Dantz's Corollary: The small problem only gets out when the large one is solved.
    Hoare's Corollary: Who said the large one would be solved?
  316. Schainker's Converse: In every small problem is a larger problem trying to get out.
  317. Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
    Famous fools: Galileo, Darwin, Einstein.
  318. Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
  319. Words of the Working Woman: Of course I'm not as busy as men; I get it right first time!
  320. The best laid plans of mice and men come out about equal.
  321. An error in the premise will appear at the earliest in the conclusion.
  322. Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
    Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
  323. Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.
  324. Parkinson's First Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
  325. Parkinson's Second Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
  326. Soper's Law: Any bureaucracy reorganised to enhance efficiency is immediately indistinguishable from its predecessor.
  327. Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense.
  328. Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets.
  329. 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.
  330. G.B.Shaw's Law: Those who can - do. Those who can't - teach.
    Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach - administrate.
  331. The only time to be positive is when you're positive you're wrong.
  332. Dantz's Totally Unquestionable Law of Science: In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
  333. Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
  334. First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
  335. Second Law of Bicycling: Punctures only occur on the following occasions:
    • when you are rushing to meet someone,
    • when you've left your puncture kit at home,
    • when you're at a railway crossing & the train's on its way.
  336. Dantz's Law of Cholesterol: Weight watchers may have a longer life, but I'll enjoy mine!
  337. Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.
  338. Oarn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.
  339. Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. (Tables with various values of this constant may be obtained for free from the Association of Unregistered International Statisticians. All orders to be escorted by a $60 donation)
  340. Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.
  341. Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding.
  342. Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken.
  343. Truman's dictum: If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
  344. Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people:
    1. Those who understand what they do not manage.
    2. Those who manage what they do not understand.
  345. First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).
  346. Law of Arrival: Those who live nearest arrive latest.
  347. Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
  348. Foster's Law: The only people who find what they're looking for in life are the fault-finders.
  349. Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
  350. 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.
  351. 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.
  352. Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
  353. Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save.
  354. Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
  355. Weinberg's Principle: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
  356. Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.
  357. Cohen's Second Law: People are divided into two groups - the righteous and the unrighteous. And the righteous do the dividing.
  358. Thiessen's Law of Art: An artist must first die before he can think about becoming great.
  359. First Rule of Acting: Whatever happens, look as if it was intended.
  360. Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
    Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
  361. Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness goes clean to the bone.
  362. Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.
  363. Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; but the population is growing.
  364. Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something - I believe I'll have another drink.
  365. The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad - get even.
  366. Lord Balfour's Contention: Nothing matters very much and very few things matter at all.
  367. Canada Bill Jone's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
    Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces.
  368. Jone's Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
  369. The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously.
  370. Dykstra's Law: Everyone is someone's weirdo.
  371. Munder's Theorem: For everyone who's a 10, there are 10 who are a 1.
  372. Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.
  373. 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.
  374. Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
  375. 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.
  376. A few quotes from Mark Twain:
    • "He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
    • A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
    • 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.
    • Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
    • "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
    • Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
  377. Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
  378. Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped.
  379. Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
  380. Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can ever hope to acquire it.
  381. Lehrer's Lament
    • Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
    • Advertising wondrous things.
    • Angels we have heard on High
    • Tell us to go out and Buy.
  382. O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law: "Murphy was an optimist."
  383. Goldberg's commentary: "O'Toole was an optimist".
  384. My final commentary: "To be an optimist, you must first exist."
  385. Alternative final commentary: Three things are inevitable: Death, Taxes, and Murphy's Laws.
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