It's The Law

When I was a kid, my dad bought a book entitled, "The Official Rules" by Paul Dickson. Being a complete and total dork, I have spent the intervening years watching closely for any sign that I might have discovered some previously undocumented natural law...something that might put me in with such heady company as Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and that famous optimist, Murphy.

From time to time, I have been inspired by some situation and put forward an apparently good candidate, only to have it fall apart in the examination process. For example, I once offered a friend this sage advice:

"Never sleep with a woman who drives a pickup truck."

"Why?" he asked.

"I have absolutely no idea," I said.

Clearly, that candidate for immortality seemed interesting at the time, but failed on closer examination.

I have stumbled on a couple concepts that have borne up to all tests, and here they are, in all their glory:

Kalbfleisch's First Law: There is no such thing as a fifteen minute job.

This is because for any task that could be completed in less than fifteen minutes, it will take an additional fifteen minutes to find the tools needed to actually perform it, and there is a very high likelihood that a trip to the store will be necessary. I could go on, but I've only got fifteen minutes to finish this entry.

Kalbfleisch's Second Law: The number of ways to skin a cat increases exponentially with the number of cats that need skinning.

I discovered this one while sitting in a professional conference this week and watching the goings on. A new missile system which has basically five major new capabilities has brought the entire community to a stand-still while each member argues in favor of his or her particular employment solution. Which leads me to the first corollary:

Increasing the number of skinners will increase the number of ways to skin cats, but have no appreciable impact on the number of cats that still need skinning.

I'm sure there will be more.

Stay tuned.

And no, I did not finish this post in less than fifteen minutes.