Murphy's Laws K

K

Kafka's Law
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Kamin's Laws (Banin's Laws)
1.All currencies will decrease in value and purchasing power over the long term, unless they are freely
and fully convertable into gold and that gold is traded freely without restrictions of any kind.
2.Threat of capital controls accelerates marginal capital outflows.
3.Combined total taxation from all levels of government will always increase (until the government is
replaced by war or revolution).
4.Government inflation is always worse than statistics indicate: central bankers are biased toward
inflation when the money unit is non-convertible, and without gold or silver backing.
5.Purchasing power of currency is always lost far more rapidly than ever regained. (Those who expect
even fluctuations in both directions play a losing game.)
6.When attempting to predict and forecast macro-economic moves or economic legislation by a
politician, never be misled by what he says; instead watch what he does.
7.Politicians will always inflate when given the opportunity.

Kamin's Laws of economics
1.All currencies will decrease in value and purchasing power over the long term, unless they are freely
and fully convertible into gold and that gold is traded freely without restrictions of any kind.
2.Threat of capital controls accelerates marginal capital outflows.
3.Combined total taxation from all levels of government will always increase (until the government is
replaced by war or revolution).
4.Government inflation is always worse than statistics indicate: central bankers are biased toward
inflation when the money unit is non-convertible, and without gold or silver backing.
5.Purchasing power of currency is always lost far more rapidly than ever regained. (Those who expect
even fluctuations in both directions play a losing game.)

Kaplan's Law of the Instrument
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.

Katz's Law
Men, women and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Katz's Maxims
1.Where are the calculations that go with the calculated risk?
2.Inventing is easy for staff outfits. Stating a problem is much harder. Instead of stating problems,
people like to pass out half- accurate statements together with half-available solutions which they
can't finish and which they want you to finish.
3.Every organization is self-perpetuating. Don't ever ask an outfit to justify itself, or you'll be covered
with facts, figures, and fancy. The criterion should rather be, "What will happen if the outfit stops
doing what it's doing?" The value of an organization is more easily determined this way.
4.Try to find out who's doing the work, not who's writing about it, controlling it, or summarizing it.
5.Watch out for formal briefings; they often produce an avalanche (a high-level snow job of massive
and overwhelming proportions).
6.The difficulty of the coordination task often blinds one to the fact that a fully coordinated piece of
paper is not supposed to be either the major or the final product of the organization, but it often turns
out that way.
7.Most organizations can't hold more than one idea at a time. Thus complementary ideas are always
regarded as competetive. Further, like a quantized pendulum, an organization can jump from one
extreme to the other, without ever going through the middle.
8.Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is it
something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future
tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of "contractor grammar", defined by the imperfect past,
the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.

Keiko's Law of Golf
The only way to avoid hitting a tree is to aim at it.

Kelley's Law
Last guys don't finish nice.

Kelly's Law
An executive will always return to work from lunch early if no one takes him.

Kennedy's Law
Excessive official restraints on information are inevitably self-defeating and productive of
headaches for the officials concerned.

Kensington's Law of Shoemaking
No matter how long it takes for you to get back to pick up the shoes the shoemaker will tell you that
they won't be ready until tomorrow.

Kensington's Observation
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.

Kent's Law
The only way a reporter should look at a politician is down.

Kerr-Martin Law
1.In dealing with their OWN problems, faculty members are the most extreme conservatives.
2.In dealing with OTHER people's problems, they are the world's most extreme liberals.

Kettering's Laws
1.If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.
2.If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

Key to Status
S = D/K. S is the status of a person in an organization, D is the number of doors he must open to
perform his job, and K is the number of keys he carries. A higher number denotes higher status.
Thus the janitor needs to open 20 doors and has 20 keys (S = 1), a secretary has to open two doors
with one key (S = 2), but the president never has to carry any keys since there is always someone
around to open doors for him (with K = 0 and a high D, his S reaches infinity).

Keyes Rules of Misquotation
Axiom 1. Any quotation that can be altered will be.
Corollary 1A: Vivid words hook misquotes in the mind.
Corollary 1B: Numbers are hard to keep straight.
Corollary 1C: Small changes can have a big impact (or: what a difference an a makes).
Corollary 1D: If noted figures don't say what needs to be said, we'll say it for them.
Corollary 1E: Journalists are a less than dependable source of accurate quotes.
Corollary 1F: Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events.
Axiom 2. Famous quotes need famous mouths.
Corollary 2A: Well-known messengers get credit for clever comments they report from less
celebrated mouths.
Corollary 2B: Particularly quotable figures receive more than their share of quotable quotes.
Corollary 2C: Comments made about someone might as well have been said by that person.
Corollary 2D: Who you think said something may depend on where you live.
Corollary 2E: Vintage quotes are considered to be in the public domain.
Corollary 2F: In a pinch, any orphan quote can be called a Chinese proverb.

Kharasch's Institutional Imperative
Every action or decision of an institution must be intended to keep the institution machinery working.
Corollary - The expert judgment of an institution, when the matter involved concerns continuation of
the institution's operations, is totally predictable, and hence the finding is totally worthless.

Kibitzer's Constant
When you can't discover the cause of a breakdown, all of the free advice you get will be for things
you've already checked.

Kirkland's Law
The usefulness of any meeting is in inverse proportion to the attendance.

Kitman's Law
On the TV screen, pure drivel tends to drive off ordinary drivel.

Klipstein's Lament
All warranty and guarantee clauses are voided by payment of the invoice.

Klipstein's Law
Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty of assembly.

Klipstein's Law of Specifications
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.

Klipstein's Laws
Applied to General Engineering:
1.A patent application will be preceded by one week by a similar application made by an
independent worker.
2.Firmness of delivery dates is inversely proportional to the tightness of the schedule.
3.Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be
expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
4.Any wire cut to length will be too short.
Applied to Prototyping and Production:
1.Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty to assemble.
2.If a project requires n components, there will be n-1 units in stock.
3.A motor will rotate in the wrong direction.
4.A failsafe circuit will destroy others.
5.A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.
6.A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
7.A purchased component or instrument will meet its specs long enough, and only long enough,
to pass incoming inspection.
8.After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be
discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
9.After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that
the gasket has been omitted.
10.After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found on the bench.

Klipstein's Observation
Any product cut to length will be too short.

Knight's Law
Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy
Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you
happen to have firsthand knowledge.

Knowles's Law of Legislative Deliberation
The length of debate varies inversely with the complexity of the issue.
Corollary: When the issue is trivial, and everyone understands it, debate is almost interminable.

Kohn's Second Law
Any experiment is reproducible until another laboratory tries to repeat it.

Konrads Observations on Capitalism
1.There is no such thing as a "dirty capitalist", only a capitalist.
2.Capitalism can exist in one of only two states -- welfare or warfare. Anything is possible, but nothing
is easy.

Koppett's Law
Whatever creates the greatest inconvenience for the largest number must happen.

Korman's conclusion
The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again.

Kovac's Conundrum
When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy siginal.

Kristol's Law
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want.

Krueger's Observation
A taxpayer is someone who does not have to take a civil service exam in order to work for the
government.