Anybody remember the Prince Valiant comic strip? There was one where Prince Valiant was in China, speaking with the Emperor. The Emperor’s wise men rushed in, proclaiming doom, because one of them had dropped a slice of buttered toast and it had landed butter-side UP. Clearly this was a portent of doom.
Prince Valiant calmed their fears by suggesting that, perhaps, they had simply buttered the wrong side of the toast.
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
This is true (I’ve been reading J.B. Bury’s “Cambridge Medieval History”).
There was one I read, and I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like, “Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from lack of wisdom.”
As I once pointed out to one worthless idiot I had working for me who was always talking about his years of experience, experience doesn’t mean shit if you’re too stupid to learn anything from it.
Murphy’s Law: The Pantyhose Corollary: The more you like a particular pair of hose, the faster they will run. If you flipping hate the suckers and they pull and sag and are itchy, they will never, ever run. Ever. they will always be that last pair in the drawer you end up wearing because that nice pair that felt like silk ran the second you put them on.
It works the same for most things. The more you like something, the sooner it breaks.
Hardly groundbreaking, but I’m noticing that there seems to be a law of popular memetic reduction: The more popular a complex idea or work of art becomes, the more likely it is that all discussion of it will be reduced to the neurotic repetition of a couple of simple internet memes.
Of course, this observation may in part be caused by the Martian law of cyclic nocturnal snarkiness: The closer I get to bed time, the more snarky and arrogant my posts become.
A big part of my job is driving a forklift. No matter how little traffic is moving in the plant at any particular time, if I stop my forklift and step away from it for one second, suddenly at least one and often more forklifts will appear out of nowhere and I will be blocking the exact place they need to get to.
The perverse law of inanimate objects. If you have a sink full of dishes and turn on the facet there will one spoon that will direct the water stream all over you.
If you want a job done quickly, give it to a lazy person. They are motivated to maximize their leisure time, so will find the shortest route to completion.
Closely related to the video game law of open world play: The next mission will require you to drive completely across the map and back to accomplish your goal.
