Who said friendly fire isn

Hanggi's Law: The more trivial your research, the more people will read it and agree. Henderson's Law of Scholarship: Research is reading two books that have never been read to write a third that will never be read. Hersh's Law: Biochemistry expands to fill the space and time available for its completion and publication. If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the answer can be obtained by simple inspection.

In an instrument or device characterized by a number of plus-or-minus errors, the total error will be the sum of all the errors adding in the same direction. In any given calculation, the fault will never be placed if more than one person is involved. Corollary: In any given discovery, the credit will never be properly placed if more than one person is involved.

Jaffe's Precept: There are some things that are impossible to know — but it is impossible to know these things.

Law Of Continuity: Experiments should be reproducible. Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. The bigger the theory, the better. The experiment may be considered a success of no more than 50 percent of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory.

Mann's Law generalized : If a scientists uncovers a publishable fact, it will become central to his theory. May's Law of Stratigraphy: The quality of correlation is inversely proportional to the density of control. Murray Gell-Mann's Law: Whatever isn't forbidden is required; thus, if there's no reason why something shouldn't exist, then it must exist.

Parkinson's Law of Scientific Progress: The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published. Rocky's Lemma of Innovative Prevention: Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal.

Rule of Accuracy: When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer. Rules of the Lab: 1. When you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly. Experiments must be reproducible, they should fail the same way each time. First draw your curves, then plot your data.

Experience is directly proportional to equipment ruined. A record of data is essential, it shows you were working. To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start. To do a lab really well, have your report done well in advance. If you can't get the answer in the usual manner, start at the answer and derive the question. If that doesn't work, start at both ends and try to find a common middle. Do not believe in miracles — rely on them.

Team work is essential. It allows you to blame someone else. All unmarked beakers contain fast-acting, extremely toxic poisons. Any delicate and expensive piece of glassware will break before any use can be made of it. Law of Spontaneous Fission.

Second Law of Particle Physics: The basic building blocks of matter do not occur in nature. Skinner's Constant Flanagan'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 got. The Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.

The Law of the Too Solid Goof: In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors. Corollary 1: No one you ask for help will see the error either. Corollary 2: Any nagging intruder, who stops by with unsought advice, will spot it immediately.

The Prime Axiom: In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong, will. The Reliability Principle: The difference between the Laws of Nature and Murphy's Law is that with the Laws of Nature you can count on things screwing up the same way every time.

The Snafu Equations: 1. The object or bit of information most needed will be least available. The device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible. In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and failed, there will be one solution, simple, obvious, and highly visible to everyone else. Badness comes in waves. Interchangeable devices won't. Thumb's First Postulate: It is better to solve a problem with a crude approximation and know the truth, plus or minus 10 percent, than to demand an exact solution and not know the truth at all.

Thumb's Second Postulate: An easily understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a complex, incomprehensible truth. Veslind's Law of Experimentation: 1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.

If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. Whole Picture Principle: Research scientists are so wrapped up in their own narrow endeavors 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 or she is administering. Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.

Wingo's Research Principle: The bigger the discovery, the more likely it was made while testing for something else. Wyszowski's Laws: 1. No experiment is reproducible. Anything can be made to work if you fiddle with it long enough. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. A piece of electronic equipment is housed in a beautifully designed cabinet, and at the side or on top is a little box containing the components which the designer forgot to make room for.

Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development. Arnold's Laws of Documentation: 1. If it should exist, it doesn't. If it does exist, it's out of date. Only useless documentation transcends the first two laws. Cook's Cogitation: When putting cheese in a mousetrap, always leave room for the mouse. DeVrie's Dilemma: If you hit two typewriter keys simultaneously, the one you don't want to hit the paper does.

If several thing can go wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. Launegayer's Maxim: All the world's an analog tape, and digital circuits play only bit parts. 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. Bogovich's Corollary to Mr. Cooper's Law: If the piece makes no sense without the word, it will make no sense with the word. Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.

Ralph's Observation: It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize you are in a hurry. Rapoport's Rule of the Roller Skate Key: Certain items that are crucial to a given activity will show up with uncommon regularity until the day when that activity is planned. At this point, the item in question will disappear from the face of the earth. Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

The Principle Concerning Multifunctional Devices: The more functions a device is required to perform, the less effectively it can perform any individual function.

A phenomenon known to anyone who has ever lit fires: You can throw a burnt match out the window of your car and start a forest fire while you can use two boxes of matches and a whole edition of the Sunday paper without being able to start a fire under the dry logs in your fireplace.

Aristotle's Dictum: One should always prefer the probable impossible to the improbable possible. Arthur C. Clarke's Law: It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. Chisolm's Law of Inevitability: Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. Shirley Chisholm. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. Ed's Law of Radiology: The colder the X-ray table, the more body you are required to place upon it. Eklunds Law: The probability of an event being a coincidence decreases as the number of coincidences surrounding the event increases.

The probability that anyone will believe a singular event is coincidence increases as the number of coincidences surrounding the event increases. Etorre's Observation: The other line moves faster. This applies to all lines — bank, supermarket, tollbooth, customs, and so on. And don't try to change lines.

The Other Line — the one you were in originally — will then move faster. Barbara Ettore. Finagle's Corollary: On a seasonally adjusted basis, there are only six months in a year. Foster's Thought: If polls are so accurate, why are there so many polling companies? George's Lament: The one exception to the rule that what goes up must come down is the landing gear. Gerhardt's Law: If you find something you like, buy a lifetime supply.

They are going to stop making it. Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics: 1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.

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. Grandmother Blackburn's Mental Umbrella: Always be prepared for the worst. If it happens, you are ready for it. If it doesn't, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Gumperson's Law: The probability of a given event occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability. Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. If good luck is when preparation meets opportunity, then bad luck must be when poor planning meets a Mack truck. Jerry's Law: Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

Juhani's Law: The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it is compromising. Kipling's Errata: If you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you don't understand the problem. Langsam's Laws 1. Everything depends.

Nothing is always. Everything is sometimes. Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. Lippka's Law: When the world falls into complete moral decay, don't be so old you can't enjoy it.

Lord Falkland's Rule: When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision. Love letters, business contracts and money due you always arrive three weeks late, whereas junk mail arrives the day it was sent.

Martin's Universal Law: Nothing is ever so good nor so bad that it can't be expanded to be more so. Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but always time to do it over. Murphy's Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary to Murphy's Law of Selective Gravity: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

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.

Nonreciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. Norman's Household Hint: Give me a home where the buffalo roam, and you've got a room full of buffalo chips. When the enemy is closing, the artillery will always be long. Try to look unimportant — the enemy may be low on ammo. Never draw fire — it irritates everyone around you. Never share a foxhole with someone braver than you.

Teamwork is essential — it gives the enemy other people to shoot at. No combat ready unit ever passed inspection. No inspection ready unit ever passed combat. The enemy diversion you are ignoring is the main attack. When in doubt, empty your magazine.

The easy way is always mined. If the enemy is within range so are you. Tracers work both ways. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. Mother nature is a bitch. It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

The Light at the end of the tunnel is only the light of an oncoming train. Murphy's Military Laws Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you are. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Friendly fire ain't. The most dangerous thing in the combat zone is an officer with a map. The problem with taking the easy way out is that the enemy has already mined it.

The buddy system is essential to your survival; it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at. The further you are in advance of your own positions, the more likely your artillery will shoot short. Incoming fire has the right of way. If your advance is going well, you are walking into an ambush. The quartermaster has only two sizes, too large and too small. If you really need an officer in a hurry, take a nap. The only time suppressive fire works is when it is used on abandoned positions.

The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire. There is nothing more satisfying that having someone take a shot at you, and miss. Don't be conspicuous. In the combat zone, it draws fire.

Out of the combat zone, it draws sergeants. If your sergeant can see you, so can the enemy. Murphy's Technology Laws You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the track. Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence. Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand. If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm. The attention span of a computer is only as long as it electrical cord.

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing. Tell a man there are billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure. All great discoveries are made by mistake. Always draw your curves, then plot your reading. Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. All's well that ends. A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

The first myth of management is that it exists. A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection. New systems generate new problems.

To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.

Any given program, when running, is obsolete. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.

Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work. Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book. The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman. To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.

After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done. Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.