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. Oler's Theorem: Everybody needs a certain level of misery in his life to ever be happy. Corollary 1: If his misery falls below his critical level, he becomes unhappy and is driven to seek new misery.
Corollary 2: When his total misery rises to his critical level he becomes happy again. Pudder's Law: Anything that begins well will end badly. Note: The converse of Pudder's law is not true. Ray's Rueful Rumination: The world is full of surprises, very few of which are pleasant. Rule of Failure: If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you have tried. Second Rule of Environmental Protection: The most efficient way to dispose of toxic waste is to reclassify the waste as non toxic.
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe: 1. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. A quarter-ounce of chocolate equals four pounds of fat. There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects.
Steiger's Law: This is as bad as the situation can get — but don't bet on it. Steinmetz's Rumination: There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he stops asking questions. Stovall's Law of Negative Inaction: The only thing wrong with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.
Teller's Commentary: Whoever learns to control the weather will have destroyed the last safe topic of conversation. Terman's Law of Innovation: If you want a track team to win the high jump, you find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot. It was very windy and cold, and I was out making hand signals to the drivers of the big rigs to call for help.
I am not sure how this looked; because some of them looked at me like I was crazy. I was crazy! He looked over at us, got off the freeway, came back on our side and drove right past us! We could hardly believe our eyes. To make a long story short, a Deputy Sheriff finally stopped and called for a tow truck. He was kind enough to stay with us until the truck arrived.
During the wait, CHP and other Sheriffs then stopped to see what was going on. It looked like a crime scene! After a couple of hours in Mojave, and an unwanted repair bill, we finally headed back home. We had planned to go to an old abandoned mining camp that Gail had found and written about a few years earlier. This camp had been deserted for over 40 years; but when we got there, the old buildings had been replaced with new ones and the old mining equipment replaced with a new backhoe and trucks.
We had just driven six hours to do some metal detecting at this place!. We do not give up very easily, so down the road we went to investigate some other old mining areas. Darkness came quickly, and we had to find a place to camp for the night. After settling behind a large knoll, we emptied the truck only to find that the lantern had no mantles and the flashlight batteries were dead! We had not brought spares of either item. Can you believe that? We left early the next morning for home.
This was the last leg of our day trip; and although we had our share of bad luck, we did have some good times, as well. That was, until while driving home on Highway , just five miles out of Kramer Junction, the clutch on my truck decided that it would quit working. My next trip, and all of our trips, will always bring a moment of joy that only we prospectors and treasure hunters understand.
Good Luck!! Visit us on Facebook Important Note. Gold Mining in the 21st Century! Tagged with: gold prospecting adventure , high-banking , humor. Visit us on Facebook. Important Note. Prospecting Supplies. Translate this Page. Tags gold claims mining properties maps gold prospecting gold dredging Dave McCracken gold prospecting adventure how to find gold legal affairs miners rights dave mack prospecting newsletter California Dredging Moratorium gold mining in Oregon members stories about the new 49ers subscription video week-long group projects happy camp california metal detecting for gold electronic gold prospecting metal detecting high-banking sampling for gold rules guidelines membership Karuk vs DFG gold mining history facts about gold gold recovery prospecting overseas booming weekend group projects adventure humor Navy SEAL equipment dry-washing gold mining Oregon sniping We appreciate your comments.
Privacy Policy. One often hears designers of safety-critical systems say: "We have to tolerate all credible faults". However, the word "credible" in this assertion contrasts starkly with the word "incredibly" in the sentence before.
There are a couple of factors that lead to designers erroneously thinking that certain faults and failures are impossible; when in fact, not only are they possible, but some are actually highly probable. However, there are two problems with this. The first problem is that people who actually design safety-critical systems are rarely given enough time to keep current with the literature.
The second problem is that the literature on actual occurrences of rare failure modes is almost nonexistent. Take away: Designers should fight their management for time to keep current with the literature and designers should use every report of a rare failure as an opportunity to imagine other similar modes of failure. The other factor that leads to designers erroneously thinking that certain faults and failures are impossible stems from abstraction. The complexity of modern safety critical systems requires some form of attraction.
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