Laws Of The Universe

Agnes Allen's Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

Army Laws: If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, pick it up. If you can't pick it up, paint it.

Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't.

Bartz's Law of Hokey Horsepuckery: The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success.

Baruch's Rule for Determining Old Age: Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

Basic Law of Construction: Cut it large and kick it into place.

Becker's Law: It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.

Benchley's Law: Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Berra's Law: You can observe a lot just by watching.

Bicycle Law: All bicycles weigh 50 pounds: A 30-pound bicycle needs a 20-pound lock and chain. A 40-pound bicycle needs a 10-pound lock and chain. A 50-pound bicycle needs no lock or chain.

Boling's Postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.

Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Boren's Laws of the Bureaucracy: 1. When in doubt, mumble. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in charge, ponder.

Borstelmann's Rule: If everything seems to be coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.

Bralek's Rule for Success: Trust only those who stand to lose as much as you do when things go wrong.

Brien's First Law: At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.


Cannon's Comment: If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.


Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool MOM.


Cardinal Conundrum: An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true.


Character and Appearance Law: People don't change; they only become more so.


Clarke's Law of Revolutionary Ideas: Every revolutionary idea -- in Science, Politics, Art or Whatever -- evokes three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the three phrases: 1. “It is completely impossible -- don't waste my time.” 2. “It is possible, but it is not worth doing.” 3. “I said it was a good idea all along.”


Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.


Cleveland's Highway Law: Highways in the worst need of repair naturally have low traffic counts, which results in low priority for repair work.


Clyde's Law: If you have something to do, and you put it off long enough, chances are someone else will do it for you.


Cohen's Law of Wisdom: Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.


Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.


Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.


Colvard's Logical Premise: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen, or it won't.


Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology: 1. No action is without side-effects. 2. Nothing ever goes away. 3. There is no free lunch.


Cooper's Law: All machines are amplifiers. 


Dieter's Law: The food that tastes the best has the highest number of calories.


Displaced Hassle Principle: To beat the bureaucracy, make your problem their problem. 


Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough, you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.


Dykstra's Law: Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.


Edelstein's Advice: Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.


Ehrlich's Rule: The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.


Ettorre's Observation: The other line moves faster. Corollary: Don't try to change lines. The other line -- the one you were in originally -- will then move faster.


Farber's Third Law: We're all going down the same road in different directions


Finagle's Laws of Information: 1. The information you have is not what you want. 2. The information you want is not what you need. 3. The information you need is not what you can obtain. 4. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.


Finnigan's Law: The farther away the future is, the better it looks.

And You Thought Carrying Books Was Easy?

Words of Wisdom To Graduates

Charles Sykes is the author of DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS. He volunteered for high school and college graduates a list of eleven things they did not  learn in school. In his book, he talks about how the feel good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and set them up for failure in the real world. You may want to share this list with them.

         

• Life is not fair; get used to it.
• The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to  accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
• You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You  won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.
• If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
• Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your  mistakes. Learn from them.
• Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now.  They  got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and  listening  to  you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from  the parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your  own room. 
• Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In  some schools they have abolished failing grades; they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
• Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few  employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time. 
• Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. 
• Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Who Were Those Guys? - First Job by JV

My first permanent job in the paper industry was with a very unique company in Florida. I say unique, because they didn't have to answer to a board of directors. They also had some "traditions" which probably lived on longer than they should have. One of those traditions was you couldn't drive your car to the airport if you were on company business. You had to schedule a company chauffeur to pick you up in a limo.

On one return trip, I was with the head of environmental services - and - in those days - every trip went through Atlanta. The joke was, even if you were going to heaven, you still had to stop in Atlanta. Our flight from Atlanta was on Southern Airways. They're slogan was, "Everyone gets treated like first class" - because they had no first class on their flights. So, it was really like "no class" instead of first class.

Anyway, the head of environmental services and myself were seated beside a gentleman who was obviously well connected. We knew this because he made a point of talking about himself the whole trip. He also was dressed for the part - while we were dressed in leisure suits (or equivalent paper mill supervisor fare).

We landed at a small airport and walked to the terminal (in those days they would bring stairs up to the plane and you would walk outside). Just as our luggage arrived, so did the chauffeur. We pointed out our bags and he proceeded to pick them up. I watched the face of our new friend - and you could see the wheels spinning in his head.

He finally couldn't take it any longer and came up and said, "Now, who did you guys say you were?" We gave him our names, and nothing more, except to ask if our chauffeur could drop him any place. He declined, but watched us all the way to the limo. I've often wondered who he thought he had met.

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What It's Like To Walk Away From An Emergency Landing

Delta Flight 4951's emergency landing at JFK.

The Natural Gas Leak - That Wasn't

The paper industry  made great strides in reducing unscheduled releases over my career - and state regulators have gotten a lot better in requiring controls to be installed and monitored. Let's just say it has been a "partnership" which has improved the environment. This doesn't mean there haven't been "surprise" moments - even for those in the industry.

In the early 80's, we installed a heat recovery project to save energy. It had a tremendous financial return (less than a year) and also helped the country reduce foreign oil purchases. Well, the project also had another affect we hadn't counted on - it concentrated mercaptans found in the process and made the working conditions around the equipment unbearable. Mecaptans are odorous compounds which the gas company puts in your natural gas so you'll know if you have a leak.

On an emergency basis, we piped the concentrated mercaptans to a boiler stack and eventually started burning the gases at high temperature to eliminate them. When we first installed the burning system, we were not required to have a back-up, and from time to time, the system would go down and we'd have to vent the gases to the atmosphere (which was permissible at the time). Normally, weather conditions diffused the vent gases so impact was minimized to around the plant site.

One time we had to vent and there was absolutely no wind - and thus - no dilution. The venting gases traveled north east in an almost undiluted path. Areas which normally could not smell the mill could smell these mercaptans at their worst. This went on for several hours - the mill got no calls - and we thought we were out of the woods.  The next days local paper, though, indicated we didn't go unnoticed. The headlines were, County Emergency Services Could Not Find Natural Gas Leak!  Apparently, people were calling to complain about smelling Natural Gas and the Emergency folks spent a better part of the day driving around looking for a natural gas leak. This shouldn't happen today, thanks to efforts of paper mills to improve their systems and to environmental regulators who have insisted on better monitors. Never-the-less, this is one of those sad but true stories from the past.