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Cipolla gave a work of beautiful clarity in his essay on the phenomenon of stupidity and its effects on human survival. These are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of stupidity: 1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. 2. The probability that a certain person (will) be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. 4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid...

Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee. 2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe. 3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act. 4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers. 5. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were...

In the early 1600s, pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler put forth his three laws of planetary motion, which, for the first time, provided an accurate and evidence-based description of the movement of the Solar System's planets around the Sun. By the end of the century, Isaac Newton followed Kepler's example with three laws of his own, describing the relationship between an object and the forces acting on it, thus laying the foundations for classical mechanics. Almost exactly three hundred years later, Carlo M. Cipolla, a professor of economic history at the University of California - Berkeley, introduced a set of laws...

Jeb Bush and his allies have now spent approximately $20 million in TV ads in the 2016 presidential race - more than twice as much as any other candidate or outside group, according to ad-spending data from NBC News partner SMG Delta. And they have little to show for it, will poll numbers for Bush currently stuck in the single digits both nationally and in the early states. The pro-Bush Super PAC, Right to Rise, has spent $19.5 million in TV ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, while the campaign has spent an additional $438,000.

The talent of the musical act is in inverse proportion to the volume at which its fans typically prefer to play their "product" on their car stereos. The more expensive the car stereo and rims, the worse the upkeep and mechanical condition of the vehicle. [Learned this the hard way after buying a car with "rimz" on it. Never do that. Only buy a car that is full stock.] On a heterosexual male, the more intricate the styling of the head and/or facial hair -- and the more evidence that he regularly spends a lot of time on same --...

BY the real-world standard of how lawyers act, Attorney General Eric Holder's professed certainty about his decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-defendants in federal court is strictly (pardon the expression) "bush." It's an old adage among litigators that you're not a real trial lawyer until you've won an unwinnable case and lost an unloseable one. Lawyers in private practice know -- and make sure their clients know -- that litigation is a chancy business. That, of course, is a major reason why private disputes are overwhelmingly settled before (or during) trial and why most criminal cases are...

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much. If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor. The costs to the US and...

February 11, 2009 Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle and Barack Obama By Kyle-Anne Shiver What happens when everything that can go wrong in a person's character formation does go wrong, and that person continues to be promoted to his level of incompetence? President Barack Obama happens. I'm well into my sixth decade of life and have yet to see a more perfect collision of Murphy's Law with the Peter Principle in a single individual. Proper character development is the overriding aim of good parents in raising their children. Mature parents, especially those Judeo/Christian parents with faith, believe it sinful to...

Murphy's Lesser-Known Laws 1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 2. He who laughs last, thinks slowest. 3. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't. 4. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool. 5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong. 6. The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first. 7. The shin bone is a device for...

(AP) NEW YORK -- Former Spice Girl Melanie Brown has listed Eddie Murphy's name on the birth certificate of her infant daughter, her publicist said Friday. The 31-year-old Brown, known as Scary Spice when she was in the megahit group of the '90s, gave birth to the child April 3 in Santa Monica, Calif. Brown's publicist, Nadine Bibi, didn't immediately respond Friday to an e-mail from The Associated Press asking for details. Arnold Robinson, a spokesman for Murphy, declined comment. Brown has said ex-boyfriend Murphy is the father. The 46-year-old "Dreamgirls" star has said he isn't sure, while Brown has...

SEATAC, Wash. - As the sun dipped low in the sky last Sunday and his plane began its descent, Eugene Nelson had a sinking feeling that something was wrong. He'd been in the air for hours, much longer than his business flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan should have taken. Then the airliner flashed a map of his flight's path on a video screen, and it hit him. Instead of descending toward the island off China's eastern coast, the next stop on the Intel Corp. engineer's itinerary would be the remote city of Taiyuan, an industrial center deep within China....

Laws of Life: Murphy's First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five. Kaufman's Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed. The Salary Axiom: The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay. Miller's Law of Insurance: Insurance covers everything except what happens. First Law of Living: As...

SAN DIEGO - When voters cast ballots for mayor Tuesday, they won't be considering campaign promises to open new libraries and parks, add police officers or pave streets. Candidates trying to replace Dick Murphy after he resigned amid a wave of scandal have nothing but bitter medicine for the nation's seventh-largest city.Debates are filled with dark talk about filing for bankruptcy, slashing jobs and turning over the city's beleaguered pension fund to a court-appointed trustee.The political turmoil will likely last long after the ballots are cast. With no one expected to win a majority of votes, the top two finishers...

How you can break Murphy's Law By Jennifer Sym October 8, 2004 THERE'S grim news for people who worry that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. A new mathematical formula has proved Murphy's Law really does strike at the worst possible time. Ordinary people have long known that computers crash on deadline and cars break down in emergencies, while previous studies have shown the law, also called Sod's Law, is not a myth and toast really does fall buttered side down. But now a panel of experts has provided the statistical rule for predicting the law of...

THERE'S grim news for people who worry that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. A new mathematical formula has proved Murphy's Law really does strike at the worst possible time. Ordinary people have long known that computers crash on deadline and cars break down in emergencies, while previous studies have shown the law, also called Sod's Law, is not a myth and toast really does fall buttered side down. But now a panel of experts has provided the statistical rule for predicting the law of "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" - or ((U+C+I) x...