Monthly Archives: October 2008

Continuing Thoughts on Energy

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This came about from a discussion my wife and I had this morning. Let’s face it; sooner or later, we are going to run out of crude oil. Then we will really be up the creek and we won’t have a paddle. Of course, the problem for us is that this date in the future is several years away and after we are no longer on this earth. So, it really isn’t our problem, is it? The problem for the coming generations is that they will have to deal with the fact that all the previous generations before them never worried about whether there would be enough oil.

But the problem is our problem and we had better do something about it if we even want there to be future generations. And the answer to the present energy crisis is not more drilling! Even if we were to embark on a massive drilling program wherever there is available crude oil to be obtained, the effects of that new supply will not be felt for several years.

The answer lies in the development of alternative energy sources, be they natural or man-made. Solar, geothermal and wind power are what I call natural sources; nuclear fission and fusion are what I term man-made. Each has their own benefits; each has their own disadvantages. And what works in one area may not necessarily work in another, especially in terms of the various natural sources.

I will admit that I am in favor of fusion as the energy resource for the future. Fusion is, as many will hopefully recall from high school or introductory college science courses, the process by which stars shine. It is the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei. Right now, the only way that we could have a fusion reactor on earth is to duplicate the conditions of extremely high pressures and extremely high temperatures found in stars.

There are people attempting to do just that right now and each day the ability to develop a self-sustaining fusion reactor gets closer. But it is not there yet. There is also the possibility of what is called “cold fusion.” This process received a certain degree of notoriety in the 1980’s when Pons and Fleischman announced that they had achieved the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms at room temperature. Unfortunately, in their rush to achieve fabulous riches (my characterization), they failed to check their results and their work was ridiculed. The whole concept is now viewed with some disdain because of this. What is interesting to note is that the concept itself was first proposed, I believe, by the Nobel laureate Hans Bethe in the 1930’s.

But, no matter which form of fusion you wish to consider, development of the process as a viable energy resource will take time and money. And those are factors that the American people are never willing to consider when it comes to research. They will pay for something if they benefit from it now but they are unwilling to pay for the research that will only benefit others later. We probably would never have gone to the moon in the 1960’s if the journey had been phrased as purely exploration and research.

That brings up the other “man-made” source of energy, nuclear fission. The problems with nuclear fission are not necessarily that people will steal the nuclear fuel and create weapons of mass destruction or crash some airplane into a nuclear reactor and somehow create a nuclear explosion; the problems come from how to do dispose of the waste generated. And right now, just as the energy laws of this country favor exploration for oil and the development of oil outside the boundaries of this country, the laws concerning nuclear fission require that utilities pay for the cost of storage and disposal up-front, instead of spreading the cost out over the life of the process. Of course, in this case, the life of the process approaches billions of years and no one wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard.

Sooner or later, we, the present generation, are going to have to make some decisions about resolving the energy crisis. The solutions that many offer today only postpone the inevitable. We have to realize that any viable solution will take time and it will cost us money. But it is money well spent if we are to insure the future for the coming generations, presuming that they will be further generations.

It is a moral imperative that we not only take care of the environment in which we live but also insure that our progeny have a world to live in and the energy to live in that world.

Additional notes –

There are a number of articles available, especially in the solar energy industry, if you are interested; I received the following information from The Vote Solar Initiative:

Utility Involvement in Distributed Generation Markets

First, there’s a new phenomenon afoot–across the US, utilities are getting involved in distributed generation solar markets like never before.  Boon or threat?  We just published an article in Renewable Energy World with our friend Kevin Fox (of Keyes and Fox, LLC) with an answer, and our thoughts about what it all means for the solar industry.  The short version: we believe this new development provides advocates with a tremendous new opportunity to open up solar markets for all.  In California, we are working towards a standard-offer wholesale tariff under the RPS.  In North Carolina, we are intervening to establish a standard-offer REC program.  As utilities are now able to take the federal investment tax credit, we expect this trend to accelerate and we hope that the path we’ve laid out provides a helpful model for our friends and allies.

Market Mechanisms, Policy Choices

Which brings us to our second release.  With the long-term extension of the 30% investment tax credit and the explosion of solar manufacturing capacity worldwide, we’re entering a new era of solar possibilities.  After years of living in a seller’s market, we are finally going to see lower module prices–and that means new opportunities to develop state solar programs.
As we discuss in our Renewable Energy World paper, solar can participate in both wholesale and retail markets.  To help inform policy choices, we’re releasing a tool that will help analyze the incentives necessary to deliver the same customer economics under three different policy scenarios: upfront incentives, performance-based incentives, and a feed-in tariff.  Check out the BETA version here and let us know what you think.

Municipal Tax Assessment Financing

Finally, the implosion of credit markets could mean severe problems for people looking to finance a solar purchase.  In a timely Wall Street Journal article, Vote Solar is quoted discussing how financial innovation is as important as technological innovation.  One potential remedy has been pioneered by the city of Berkeley, with their innovative property tax assessment financing program.  We’ve just posted a couple papers discussing how the model works, and what states can do to enable municipalities to follow their lead.  Check them out here.

If you are interested in what The Vote Solar Initiative is doing, they can be reached at

The Vote Solar Initiative

300 Brannan Street, Suite 609

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.votesolar.org

Tel: 415/817-5062

Fax: 415/543-1374

I would be interested in knowing what other information is available.

—————————-

Cross-posted to RedBlueChristian

The Basic Rules

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I am preaching at Lake Mahopac United Methodist Church this Sunday, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (5 October 2008).  The service is at 10, location of church.

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Once, when asked about paying taxes to the Roman authorities, Jesus replied “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, give to God that which is God’s. It was an interesting answer to a question asked by the Jewish authorities in an effort to trap Jesus into openly declaring that He was in opposition to Roman authority. Needless to say, as in every case where the power establishment sought to trap Jesus into saying something that could be used against him, they failed.

So how do we reconcile this explanation of our sectarian and secular lives with the vision that many have today where modern day Pharisees want to make God’s laws mankind’s laws?

There is, to be sure, a relationship between the Ten Commandments and our modern day legal system. But our legal system is built on more than just the Ten Commandments; other legal systems, both from ancient history and relatively modern history, have gone into its development.

The problem isn’t that we should not seek a world based on God’s laws but rather that we don’t often understand what God’s laws are based upon. God gave the Ten Commandments to the Israelites to establish a covenant between the people and Himself. These Ten Commandments set the relationship between God and His people and between the people themselves. But while the Commandments are relational in nature, we have tried to turn them into a set of regulations, laws, and codes that will guide and direct our lives.

When we use a list of rules and regulations as a means of maintaining a relationship, we will find ourselves quickly falling into a pattern of sin. But we quickly and easily embrace the letter of the law as a reasonable substitute for its meaning. We do this because we think we can somehow regulate human behavior in such a way that it prevents sin when it merely points out the folly of doing so. We have to be careful that in creating laws and regulations that we do not substitute the law and adherence to it for the real thing, following God. This was the problem that caused God to cry out in Isaiah

God is asking, “Why this frenzy of sacrifices? Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices, rams and plump grain-fed calves? Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats? When you come before me,  whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, running here and there, doing this and that— all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

“Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games: Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings— meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them! You’ve worn me out! I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion, while you go right on sinning. When you put on your next prayer-performance, I’ll be looking the other way. No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening. And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing people to pieces, and your hands are bloody. Go home and wash up. Clean up your act. Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings so I don’t have to look at them any longer. Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless. (Isaiah 1: 11 – 17)

Paul’s words to the Philippians speak volumes about those who would use the Law to justify their position and their authority. As Paul wrote it, there is a great difference between the type of righteousness that comes from setting and following a set of rules and the type of righteousness that comes from embracing Christ and living the type of life that He showed us. How many times have we seen leaders, be they public or otherwise, who hold the law before our eyes but seek to go around it in their own lives?

In a world where the focus of the Bible is justice for the poor and the oppressed, why is it that we pass laws that favor the rich and the oppressors? In a world where equality is needed, why do our laws seek to divide and separate?

Why is it, when Jesus went among the people to bring them back to God, do we seek to create laws and requirements that keep people from God? We quite willingly create laws and regulations, both in the sectarian and secular sense, that make sin illegal. But all such laws do, it seems, is to make sin seem more sensible and inviting. We write laws that are based on our own ignorance and bias and claim them to be the thoughts of God. We are told that God’s laws are fixed and unchanging, yet we are unwilling to follow them unless they fit our own view of the world.

There are those who would have us post the Ten Commandments in our classrooms and our courtrooms or as stone monuments outside such buildings. But the very act of carving a stone monument threatens to violate the Second Commandment that there will be no graven images. And if you are going to use the commandment that one shall not murder as the basis for the argument that abortion is wrong, why are those who protest against abortion not among those who protest against the death penalty? And shouldn’t they be among those who protest against unjust and illegal wars or against war in general?

The parable in the Gospel reading for today is a warning, not just for those who heard the story two thousand years ago but for those today who seek to build the Kingdom of Heaven for their own purposes. They are the ones who will be punished, as those who heard the story two thousand years ago clearly understood. Those who build the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth and share the results of the vineyard will be rewarded; those who seek to keep the profits for themselves will fall under the weight of their own destruction.

It is one thing to make a law that protects you; it is an entirely different thing when you make a law that prevents you from doing something. We are required by law to wear our seat belt when driving or riding in a car. For some, especially when these laws were first passed, this was a nuisance. The attitude of many was that they had driven for several years without them and nothing had happened so why should they start wearing them now.

But it is a fundamental law of physics that things in motion will remain in motion and things at rest will remain at rest (Newton’s First Law of Motion). If you are involved in a car crash and you are not wearing your seat belt, you will find yourself obeying this law as you continue moving forward while the car has come to a stop. Wearing seat belts is the law because there are other laws, laws of nature, which will cause you greater harm than the discomfort of wearing the seat belt.

Laws in science may be changed, but it is only done with great reluctance and after much experimentation and thought. Our scientific process would be very questionable if the laws that govern nature were easily changed. Laws in science are, for the most part, unchanging and fixed; they are, if you will, carved in stone.

And the problem of any law is that you have to think through all the consequences of such laws. Those who would ban abortion are not willing to provide the help and aid that these newborn infants will need. If we are to have Biblically inspired laws, they have to be consistent. You cannot create laws and call them Biblical if they benefit one group of people while denying the same rights and privileges to other groups.

We have to have laws but they have to be laws that are based on relationships rather than prevention. They have to be laws that build, not destroy. The Law, as first embodied in the Ten Commandments, was not meant to replace our relationship with God; it was meant to increase that relationship.

But what happens when we make laws that prevent that relationship from being built; what happens when we make laws that prevent relationships and we claim that such laws are the natural order dictated by God. What happens when we make rules for membership in the United Methodist Church that are based on our own biases and, perhaps, ignorance? If we deny membership to someone because of those biases and ignorance, then are we not guilty of violating the very rules that we set forth? Are we not violating one of the basic tenets of the Bible that says that we should not judge, lest we be judged ourselves?

Now, as it turns out, we do have rules for membership in the Methodist Church. These rules were first articulated as the requirements for joining the early Methodist societies. There is no evidence that Wesley ever applied them to membership in the Church of England since there were no Methodist churches at the time he wrote these rules. (See “Did Wesley boot out “bad” Methodists?”)

It is quite clear, however, when you read Wesley’s General Rules that 1) many people would have trouble meeting the membership requirements and 2) the early Methodist churches in this country probably ignored them. After all, one of the rules prohibited the owning and selling of slaves, yet we know that there were Methodists in this country who were involved in the slave trade and owned slaves. It was the ownership of slaves through marriage that lead to the first schism in the Methodist Church, a split that lasted longer than the actual Civil War.

So are the rules just archaic reminders of the beginnings of our denomination; are we to say that how one leads their life has no bearing on their membership in a church or society?

What are Wesley’s three basic rules? Wesley insisted, however, that evangelical faith should manifest itself in evangelical living. He spelled out this expectation in the three-part formula of the Rules:

It is therefore expected of all who continue therein that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

First: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind, especially that which is most generally practiced, such as:

The taking of the name of God in vain

The profaning the day of the Lord, either by doing ordinary work therein or by buying or selling

Drunkenness: buying or selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of extreme necessity.

Slaveholding; buying or selling slaves

Fighting, quarreling, brawling, brother going to law with brother; returning evil for evil, or railing for railing; the using many words in buying or selling.

The buying or selling goods that have not paid the duty

The giving or taking things on usury—i.e., unlawful interest

Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation; particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers

Doing to others as we would not they should do unto us.

Doing what we know is not for the glory of God, as:

The putting on of gold and costly apparel

The taking such diversions as cannot be used in the name of the Lord Jesus.

The singing those songs, or reading those books, which do not tend to the knowledge or love of God

Softness and needless self-indulgence

Laying up treasure upon earth

Borrowing without a probability of paying; or taking up goods without a probability of paying for them

It is expected of all who continue in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

Secondly: By doing good; by being in every kind merciful after their power; as they have opportunity, doing good of every possible sort, and, as far as possible, to all men:

To their bodies, of the ability which God gives, by giving food to the hungry, by clothing the naked, by visiting or helping them that are sick or in prison.

To their souls, by instructing, reproving, or exhorting all we have any intercourse with; trampling under foot that enthusiastic doctrine that “we are not to do good unless our hearts be free to it.”

By doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith or groaning so to be; employing them preferably to others; buying one of another, helping each other in business, and so much the more because the world will love its own and them only.

By all possible diligence and frugality, that the gospel be not blamed.

By running with patience the race which is set before them, denying themselves, and taking up their cross daily; submitting to bear the reproach of Christ, to be as the filth and offscouring of the world; and looking that men should say all manner of evil of them falsely, for the Lord’s sake.

It is expected of all who desire to continue in these societies that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation,

Thirdly: By attending upon all the ordinances of God; such are:

The public worship of God.

The ministry of the Word either read or expounded.

The Supper of the Lord

Family and private prayer

Searching the Scriptures

Fasting or abstinence

These are the General Rules of our societies; all of which we are taught of God to observe, even in his written Word, which is the only rule, and the sufficient rule, both of our faith and practice. And all these we know his Spirit writes on truly awakened hearts. If there be any among us who observe them not, who habitually break any of them, let it be known unto them who watch over that soul as they who must give an account. We will admonish him of the error of his ways. We will bear with him for a season. But then, if he repents not, he has no more place among us. We have delivered our own souls.

Perhaps the best way to understand these rules is to remember what John Wesley said,

Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.

If anyone, be they a member of a Methodist church or not, leads a life which runs counter to either these General Rules, the Ten Commandments, or even the basic intent of life outlined in the Bible, membership in the church will be the least of their worries. On the other hand, if one follows either these rules or the Ten Commandments with the expectation that adherence to the rules without an understanding of what the rules and laws imply and require, they too will have other worries. It is only when you understand that the rules require a new life, a life found in God through Christ that victory will be gained.

John Wesley once said

I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out.

And just as we heard Paul’s words to the Philippians warning us against those who would use their power and authority to create laws that destroy relationships and prevent the completion of the Gospel, so too do we hear Paul’s words telling us that he has given up the life in the law and is now leading a life in the Spirit. He saw the law as a stumbling block to his life in Christ and so he gave up the law. But now he is on his way, to a better life, to a life in Christ.

In the end, we have to make fundamental decisions about who we are and what we do, not by some set of arbitrarily designed rules but by the rules that were laid down by God on Mt. Sinai to His people, our spiritual ancestors.

The Twelve Disciples: Were they management potential?

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This isn’t mine but the last reference to it was in 2004 so I thought I would put it up.  I got it from “Transforming Discipleship: Making Disciples a Few at a Time” by Greg Ogden – printed in SoJo Mail for 30 October 2003.

Memo

TO: Jesus, Son of Joseph, Woodcrafter Carpenter Shop, Nazareth

FROM: Jordan Management Consultants, Jerusalem

Dear Sir:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the 12 men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests; we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.

It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education, and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale.

We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic depressive scale.

One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man. All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.

We wish you every success in your new venture.

Sincerely yours,
Jordan Management Consultants

The Challenge of Education

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Last week, an interesting thing happened in England. The consequences of this action will, I believe, reach far beyond the shores of that country and encompass the world. The Royal Society asked their Director of Education, Professor Michael Reiss, to step down from his position because of comments that he made regarding the teaching of evolution in the classroom.

To quote from Dr. Keith S. Taber’s letter to the Times Educational Supplement (see http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/learning-science-concepts/message/835 for the entire letter and the responses),

The gist of Prof. Reiss’ argument was that the appropriate response to students who raise their beliefs in class when they are taught the scientific theory of natural selection should not be to ignore, dismiss or ridicule the students’ views, but rather to respect their ideas as a starting point for discussion, and to challenge them through the scientific arguments that have led to evolution by natural selection becoming some a strongly supported and widely accepted model for how life on earth has developed.

Professor Reiss is not supporting creationism or intelligent design, nor is he arguing for the inclusion of these topics in the science curriculum. But he is arguing that teachers should respect the views of their students and use those views as a starting point for discussion.

Too often, teachers dismiss the ideas of students as irrelevant or meaningless to the discussion. And this doesn’t just apply to those who teach evolution with an all-or-nothing approach; any time we present our ideas as the only choice or the only option, we risk alienating students and those who are seeking answers to critical and crucial questions in their lives.

Education should be the number one priority in our lives but it doesn’t seem to be that. We argue for accountability from our teachers but all we ask them to do is teach an ever-increasing number of facts with no connection to the real world and without the means to analyze the facts or even develop the ability to discern what constitutes a good idea and what constitutes a bad idea. As I noted earlier, “Are We Ready For The Future?”, we quite easily deal with short-term problems because we have short-term visions. But what will happen if we encounter a complex problem that cannot be solved quickly and simply? What will happen if we encounter a problem that has never been described?

When Dmitri Mendeleev first proposed his first periodic table, the major problem that he had to overcome was that of the “missing” elements. Others before him had attempted to push the elements together, leaving no holes in their predicted tables. But this solution failed to provide suitable explanations for the observed properties of the known elements and the relationship between elements that showed similar properties. What Mendeleev did was to use the observed physical and chemical properties of the known elements and reason that there were other un-discovered elements. To make his periodic table work, he left holes where he felt that elements should go; he then provided information about what the properties of these elements would be. The most commonly cited examples are Mendeleev’s “eka-aluminum” and “eka-silicon”. “Eka-aluminum” would have properties similar to that of aluminum and indium; “eka-silicon” would have properties similar to that of silicon and tin. We know these two elements today as gallium and germanium.

But Mendeleev’s periodic table does not have holes in it to account for the Noble Gases nor did he predict their existence. He did not predict their existence because he had no evidence to suggest their presence in our environment. Helium would not be discovered until two years after Mendeleev’s periodic table was published and only through an examination of the spectrum of the sun

With our knowledge of electrons and electron structure, we could easily see how to place the Nobel Gases in the periodic table but Mendeleev did not have that information. How will we handle such problems in our future?

The only way that Mendeleev was able to even predict the existence of some elements was through his ability to see relationships between the elements and how elements could be grouped together because of similar properties. If all we do is teach basic facts and do little to go beyond those facts, such “break-through” thoughts will be few and far between in the future.

Now, some will tell me that once helium was discovered, it would have been intuitively obvious that there were other similar gases necessary to fill the holes that the discovery of helium would have automatically created. And that is true, but you have to have that sense of discovery and that is not present in an environment in which only facts are taught and questioning is not allowed.

To teach students to question things is a very risky thing to do; because it will cause many students to question the fundamental things that they have been taught. But if the fundamental things are sound, the questioning will cause no disturbance. If there are problems with those fundamentals, perhaps they should be questioned.

Teachers need to respect the belief systems of their students; it is how the students operate. But they also need to move beyond the teaching of facts and begin including questioning and analysis in their presentation of the facts. This will be a challenge but the benefit will be that future problems will be solved, not unknown.

Murphy’s Law and its various variations

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I am preaching at Lake Mahopac UMC this weekend (service is at 10, location of church).  The sermon is entitled “The Basic Rules” and I hope to have it posted Saturday afternoon.  It is lectionary based and the Old Testament Reading for this Sunday (21st Sunday after Pentecost) is Exodus 20: 1 – 4, 7 – 9, 12 – 20.  These are the verses that introduce us to the Ten Commandments.  I have used the lectionary on a number of occasions before (see “The Rules We Play By”, “Rules for Living”, and “Tenants of the Vineyard”).

But this time, instead of a football analogy, I was going to try something different.  In thinking about the rules embodied in the Ten Commandments, I thought about the rules that one has to learn in chemistry.  I found a very interesting collection of the rules in chemistry that are named after various chemists – NAMED RULES IN CHEMISTRY.  I also thought about that ubiquitous set of rules that a man named Murphy inspired.  And with that introduction, here are Murphy’s Law and its various variations:

Murphy’s Laws

  1. If anything can go wrong, it will.
  2. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the first one to go wrong.
  3. If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
  4. If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
  5. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
  6. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
  7. Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
  8. Mother nature is a bitch.

Addition to Murphy’s Laws

In nature, nothing is ever right. Therefore, if everything is going right … something is wrong.

Forsyth’s Second Corollary to Murphy’s Laws

Just when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, the roof caves in.

O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Laws

Murphy was an optimist.

Brook’s Law

If at first you don’t succeed, transform your data set!

Brooke’s Law

Adding manpower to a late software makes it later.

Cheop’s Law

Nothing ever gets build on schedule or within budget.

Featherkile’s Rule

Whatever you did, that’s what you planned.

Finagle’s Fourth Law

Once a job is fooled up, anything done to improve it will only make it worse.

Flap’s Law

Any inanimate object, regardless of its position, configuration or purpose, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either entirely obscure or else completely mysterious.

Gilb’s Laws of Unreliability

  1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
  2. Any system that depends upon human reliability is unreliable.
  3. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
  4. Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.

Ginsberg’s Theorems (actually a variation on the laws of thermodynamics)

  1. You can’t win.
  2. You can’t break even.
  3. You can’t even quit the game.

Golub’s Laws of Computerdom

  1. Fuzzy project objectives are used to avoid embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs.
  2. A carelessly planned project takes three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project takes 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.

Grosch’s Law

Computing power increases as the square of the cost.

Gumperson’s Law

The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Gummidge’s Law

The amount of expertise varies in inverse ratio to the number of statements understood by the general public.

Harvard’s Law, as Applied to Computers

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity and other variables, the computer will do as it damn well pleases.

Horner’s Five Thumb Postulate

Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.

Jenkinson’s Law

It won’t work.

Johnson’s Third Law

If you miss one issue of any magazine, it will be the issue that contains the article, story or installment you were most anxious to read.

Corollary to Johnson’s Third Law

All of your friends either missed it, lost it or threw it out.

Atwoods Corollary

No books are lost by lending except those you particularly wanted to keep.

Harper’s Magazine Law

You never find the article until you replace it.

Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology

There’s always one more bug.

The Laws of Computer Programming

  1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
  2. Any given program costs more and takes longer each time it is run.
  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 the available memory.
  6. The value of a program is inversely proportional to the weight of its output.
  7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.

Pierce’s Law

In any computer system, the machine will always misinterpret, misconstrue, misprint, or not evaluate any math or subroutines or fail to print any output on at least the first run through.

Corollary to Pierce’s Law

When a compiler accepts a program without error on the first run, the program will not yield the desired output.

Pudder’s Laws

  1. Anything that begins well ends badly.
  2. Anything that begins badly ends worse.

Osborn’s Law

Variables won’t; constants aren’t.

Rule of Accuracy

When working toward the solution of a problem, it always helps if you know the answer.

Stockmayer’s Theorem

If it looks easy, it’s tough. If it looks tough, it’s damn near impossible.

Troutman’s Postulate

  1. Profanity is the one language understood by all programmers.
  2. Not until a program has been in production for six months will the most harmful error be discovered.
  3. Job control cards that positively cannot be arranged in improper 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. If a test installation functions perfectly, all subsequent systems will malfunction.

Weiler’s Law

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.

Weinberg’s Second Law

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Westheimer’s Rule (I believe this comes from a chemist)

To estimate the time it takes to do a task: estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by two and change the unit of measure to the next highest unit. Thus, we allocate two days for a one hour task.

Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics

Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can (old worms never die, they just worm their way into larger cans).

Zymurg’s Seventh Exception to Murphy’s Law

When it rains, it pours.