When the moon fell in love with the sun All was golden in the sky

An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws(A-b)

Abbott's Admonitions:
If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know.
If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question.
Abrams's Advice:
When eating an elephant, take one bite at a time.
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.
Acheson's Rule of the Bureaucracy:
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Acton's Law:
Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Ade's Law:
Anybody can win -- unless there happens to be a second entry.
Airplane Law:
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time.
Alan's Law of Research
The theory is supported as long as the funds are.
Albrecht's Law:
Social innovations tend to the level of minimum tolerable well being.
Algren's Precepts:
Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
Allen's Law of Civilization:
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it.
Agnes Allen's Law:
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.
Allen's Axiom
When all else fails, follow instructions.
Allen's Distinction
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
Fred Allen's Motto:
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
Alley's Axiom:
Justice always prevails . . . three times out of seven.
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 ass in alligators, it is difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
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.
Andrews's Canoeing Postulate:
No matter which direction you start it's always against the wind coming back.
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.
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.
Laws of Applied Confusion:
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.
Truck deliveries that normally take one day will take five when you are waiting for the truck.
After adding two weeks to the schedule for unexpected delays, add two more for the unexpected, unexpected delays.
In any structure, pick out the one piece that should not be mismarked and expect the plant to cross you up.
Corollaries:
In any group of pieces with the same erection mark on it, one should not have that mark on it.
It will not be discovered until you try to put it where the mark says it's supposed to go.
Never argue with the fabricating plant about an error. The inspection prints are all checked off, even to the holes that aren't there.
Approval Seeker's Law:
Those whose approval you seek the most give you the least.
The Aquinas Axiom:
What the gods get away with, the cows don't.
Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
Army Law:
If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, pick it up; if you can't pick it up, paint it.
Ashley-Perry Statistical Axioms:
Numbers are tools, not rules.
Numbers are symbols for things; the number and the thing are not the same.
Skill in manipulating numbers is a talent, not evidence of divine guidance.
Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from nonpractitioners.
The product of an arithmetical computation is the answer to an equation; it is not the solution to a problem.
Arithmetical proofs of theorems that do not have arithmetical bases prove nothing.
Astrology Law:
It's always the wrong time of the month.
Fourteenth Corollary of Atwood's General Law of Dynamic Negatives:
No books are lost by loaning except those you particularly wanted to keep.
Avery's Rule of Three:
Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start of a brand new series of three.
B

Babcock's Law:
If it can be borrowed and it can be broken, you will borrow it and you will break it.
Baer's Quartet:
What's good politics is bad economics; what's bad politics is good economics; what's good economics is bad politics; what's bad economics is good politics.
Bagdikian's Law of Editor's Speeches:
The splendor of an editor's speech and the splendor of his newspaper are inversely related to the distance between the city in which he makes his speech and the city in which he publishes his paper.
Baker's Byroad:
When you are over the hill, you pick up speed.
Baker's Law:
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
Baldy's Law:
Some of it plus the rest of it is all of it.
Barber's Laws of Backpacking
The integral of the gravitational potential taken around any loop trail you chose to hike always comes out positive.
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to exactly the point of most pressure.
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.
The number of stones in your boot is directly proportional to the number of hours you have been on the trail.
The difficulty of finding any given trail marker is directly proportional to the importance of the consequences of failing to find it.
The size of each of the stones in your boot is directly proportional to the number of hours you have been on the trail.
The remaining distance to your chosen campsite remains constant as twilight approaches.
The net weight of your boots is proportional to the cube of the number of hours you have been on the trail.
When you arrive at your chosen campsite, it is full.
If you take your boots off, you'll never get them back on again.
The local density of mosquitos is inversely proportional to your remaining repellent.
Barrett's Laws of Driving:
You can get ANYWHERE in ten minutes if you go fast enough.
Speed bumps are of negligible effect when the vehicle exceeds triple the desired restraining speed.
The vehicle in front of you is traveling slower than you are.
This lane ends in 500 feet.
Barr's Comment on Domestic Tranquility:
On a beautiful day like this it's hard to believe anyone can be unhappy -- but we'll work on it.
Barth's Distinction
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.
Bartz's Law of Hokey Horsepuckery:
The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.
Baruch's Rule for Determining Old Age:
Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Barzun's Laws of Learning
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.
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
That which has not yet been taught directly can never be taught directly.
If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed.
Baxter's First Law:
Government intervention in the free market always leads to a lower national standard of living.
Baxter's Second Law:
The adoption of fractional gold reserves in a currency system always leads to depreciation, devaluation, demonetization and, ultimately, to complete destruction of that currency.
Baxter's Third Law:
In a free market good money always drives bad money out of circulation.
Beardsley's Warning to Lawyers:
Beware of and eschew pompous prolixity.
Beauregard's Law:
When you're up to your nose, keep your mouth shut.
Becker's Law:
It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.
Beers Law of Reciprocating Systems Dynamics:
Some mistakes are too fun to make only once.
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, and (3) a better looking and richer male friend.
Belle's Constant:
The ratio of time involved in work to time available for work is usually about 0.6.
Benchley's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.
Benchley's Law:
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Berkeley's Laws:
The world is more complicated than most of our theories make it out to be.
Ignorance is no excuse.
Never decide to buy something while listening to the salesman.
Information which is true meets a great many different tests very well.
Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have a single answer.
An answer may be wrong, right, both, or neither. Most answers are partly right and partly wrong.
A chain of reasoning is no stronger than its weakest link.
A statement may be true independently of illogical reasoning.
Most general statements are false, including this one.
An exception TESTS a rule; it NEVER PROVES it.
The moment you have worked out an answer, start checking it -- it probably isn't right.
If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made.
Being sure mistakes will occur is a good frame of mind for catching them.
Check the answer you have worked out once more -- before you tell it to anybody.
Estimating a figure may be enough to catch an error.
Figures calculated in a rush are very hot; they should be allowed to cool off a little before being used; thus we will have a reasonable time to think about the figures and catch mistakes.
A great many problems do not have accurate answers, but do have approximate answers, from which sensible decisions can be made.
Berra's Law:
You can observe a lot just by watching.
Berson's Corollary of Inverse Distances:
The farther away from the entrance that you have to park, the closer the space vacated by the car that pulls away as you walk up to the door.
Bicycle Law:
All bicycles weigh 50 pounds:
A 30-pound bicycle needs a 20-pound lock and chain.
A 40-pound bicycle needs a 10-pound lock and chain.
A 50-pound bicycle needs no lock or chain.
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride it's uphill and against the wind.
The Billings Phenomenon:
The conclusions of most good operations research studies are obvious.
Billings's Law:
Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
Blaauw's Law:
Established technology tends to persist in spite of new technology.
Blanchard's Newspaper Obituary Law:
If you want your name spelled wrong, die.
Bok's Law:
If you think education is expensive -- try ignorance.
Boling's Postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
Bolton's Law of Ascending Budgets:
Under current practices, both expenditures and revenues rise to meet each other, no matter which one may be in excess.
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
Bonafede's Revelation:
The conventional wisdom is that power is an aphrodisiac. In truth, it's exhausting.
Boob's Law:
You always find something the last place you look.
Booker's Law:
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
Boozer's Revision:
A bird in the hand is dead.
Boren's Laws of the Bureaucracy:
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
When in charge, ponder.
Borkowski's Law:
You can't guard against the arbitrary.
Borstelmann's Rule:
If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.
Boston's Irreversible Law of Clutter:
In any household, junk accumulates to fill the space available for its storage.
Boultbee's Criterion:
If the converse of a statement is absurd, the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said.
Boyle's Laws:
The success of any venture will be helped by prayer, even in the wrong denomination.
When things are going well, someone will inevitably experiment detrimentally.
The deficiency will never show itself during the dry runs.
Information travels more surely to those with a lesser need to know.
An original idea can never emerge from committee in the original.
When the product is destined to fail, the delivery system will perform perfectly.
The crucial memorandum will be snared in the out-basket by the paper clip of the overlying correspondence and go to file.
Success can be insured only by devising a defense against failure of the contingency plan.
Performance is directly affected by the perversity of inanimate objects.
If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
The lagging activity in a project will invariably be found in the area where the highest overtime rates lie waiting.
Talent in staff work or sales will recurringly be interpreted as managerial ability.
The "think positive" leader tends to listen to his subordinates' premonitions only during the postmortems.
Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations.
On successive charts of the same organization the number of boxes will never decrease.
Branch's First Law of Crisis:
The spirit of public service will rise, and the bureaucracy will multiply itself much faster, in time of grave national concern.
First Law of Bridge:
It's always the partner's fault.
Brien's First Law:
At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.
Broder's Law:
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
Brontosaurus Principle:
Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology; when this occurs, they are an endangered species.
Brooks's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Brownian Motion Rule of Bureacracies:
It is impossible to distinguish, from a distance, whether the bureaucrats associated with your project are simply sitting on their hands, or frantically trying to cover their asses.
Heisenberg's Addendum to Brownian Bureaucracy: If you observe a bureaucrat closely enough to make the distinction above, he will react to your observation by covering his ass.
(Jerry) Brown's Law:
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.
(Sam) Brown's Law:
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
(Tony) Brown's Law of Business Success:
Our customer's paperwork is profit. Our own paperwork is loss.
Bruce-Briggs's Law of Traffic:
At any level of traffic, any delay is intolerable.
Buchwald's Law:
As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse.
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Bunuel's Law:
Overdoing things is harmful in all cases, even when it comes to efficiency.
Bureaucratic Cop-Out #1:
You should have seen it when *I* got it.
Burns's Balance:
If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.
Bustlin' Billy's Bogus Beliefs:
The organization of any program reflects the organization of the people who develop it.
There is no such thing as a "dirty capitalist", only a capitalist.
Anything is possible, but nothing is easy.
Capitalism can exist in one of only two states -- welfare or warfare.
I'd rather go whoring than warring.
History proves nothing.
There is nothing so unbecoming on the beach as a wet kilt.
A little humility is arrogance.
A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.
Butler's Law of Progress:
All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Bye's First Law of Model Railroading:
Anytime you wish to demonstrate something, the number of faults is proportional to the number of viewers.
Bye's Second Law of Model Railroading:
The desire for modeling a prototype is inversely proportional to the decline of the prototype.