Jokes and Puns: Lighten up your day!

Durant's Discovery: One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Dunn's Discovery: The shortest measurable interval of time is the time between the moment one puts a little extra aside for a sudden emergency and the arrival of that emergency.

Dunne's Law: The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with equivocation.

Dude's Law of Duality: Of two possible events, only the undesired one will occur.

Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.

Dror's First Law: While the difficulties and dangers of problems tend to increase at a geometric rate, the knowledge and manpower qualified to deal with these problems tend to increase linearly.
Dror's Second Law: While human capacities to shape the environment, society, and human beings are rapidly increasing, policymaking capabilities to use those capacities remain the same.

Dow's Law: In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion.

Douglas's Law of Practical Aeronautics: When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly.

Laws of Dormitory Life:

The amount of trash accumulated within the space occupied is exponentially proportional to the number of living bodies that enter and leave within any given amount of time.
Since no matter can be created or destroyed (excluding nuclear and cafeteria substances), as one attempts to remove unwanted material (i.e., trash) from one's living space, the remaining material mutates so as to occupy 30 to 50 percent more than its original volume.
Corollary: Dust breeds.
The odds are 6:5 that if one has late classes, one's roommate will have the earliest possible classes.
Corollary 1: One's roommate (who has early classes) has an alarm clock that is louder than God's own.
Corollary 2: When one has an early class, one's roommate will invariably enter the space late at night and suddenly become hyperactive, ill, violent, or all three.

Donsen's Law: The specialist learns more and more about less and less until, finally, he knows everything about nothing; whereas the generalist learns less and less about more and more until, finally, he knows nothing about everything.

Donohue's Law: Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.

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

Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics:

Get elected.
Get re-elected.
Don't get mad -- get even.

Diogenes's First Dictum: The more heavily a man is supposed to be taxed, the more power he has to escape being taxed.
Diogenes's Second Dictum: If a taxpayer thinks he can cheat safely, he probably will.

Dijkstra's Prescription for Programming Inertia: If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not start writing it.

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

Dhawan's Laws for the Non-Smoker:

The cigarette smoke always drifts in the direction of the non-smoker regardless of the direction of the breeze.
The amount of pleasure derived from a cigarette is directly proportional to the number of non-smokers in the vicinity.
A smoker is always attracted to the non-smoking section.
The life of a cigarette is directly proportional to the intensity of the protests from non-smokers.

Dennis's Principles of Management by Crisis:

To get action out of management, it is necessary to create the illusion of a crisis in the hope it will be acted upon.
Management will select actions or events and convert them to crises. It will then over-react.
Management is incapable of recognizing a true crisis.
The squeaky hinge gets the oil.

Deitz's Law of Ego: The fury engendered by the misspelling of a name in a column is in direct ratio to the obscurity of the mentionee.

Decaprio's Rule: Everything takes more time and money.

First Law of Debate: Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.

Dean's Law of the District of Columbia: Washington is a much better place if you are asking questions rather than answering them.

Deadlock's Law: If the law-makers make a compromise, the place where it will be felt most is the taxpayer's pocket.
Corollary: The compromise will always be more expensive than either of the suggestions it is compromising.

de la Lastra's Corollary: After an access cover has been secured by 16 hold-down screws, it will be discovered that the gasket has been ommitted.

de la Lastra's Law: 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.

Davis's Basic Law of Medicine: Pills to be taken in twos always come out of the bottle in threes.

Davidson's Maxim: Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves.

Dave's Rule of Street Survival: Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.

Dave's Law of Advice: Those with the best advice offer no advice.

Darwin's Observation: Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can.

Darrow's Observation: History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.

Czecinski's Conclusion: There is only one thing worse than dreaming you are at a conference and waking to find that you are at a conference, and that is the conference where you can't fall asleep.

Cutler Webster's Law: There are two sides to every argument unless a man is personally involved, in which case there is only one.

Culshaw's First Principle of Recorded Sound: Anything, no matter how bad, will sound good if played back at a very high level for a short time.

Cropp's Law: The amount of work done varies inversely with the amount of time spent in the office.

Cripp's Law: When traveling with children on one's holidays, at least one child of any number of children will request a rest room stop exactly halfway between any two given rest areas.

Crane's Rule: There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.

Mark Miller's Exception to Crane's Law: There are no "free lunches", but sometimes it costs more to collect money than to give away food.

Crane's Law (Friedman's Reiteration): There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ("tanstaafl")

Courtois's Rule: If people listened to themselves more often, they'd talk less.

Corry's Law: Paper is always strongest at the perforations.

Cornuelle's Law: Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.

Me (young, naive): I hope something good happens.
Me (now): I hope whatever bad thing happens is at least funny.

Corcoroni's Laws of Bus Transportation:

The bus that left the stop just before you got there is your bus.
The amount of time you have to wait for a bus is directly proportional to the inclemency of the weather.
All buses heading in the opposite direction drive off the face of the earth and never return.
The last rush-hour express bus to your neighborhood leaves five minutes before you get off work.
Bus schedules are arranged so your bus will arrive at the transfer point precisely one minute after the connecting bus has left.
Any bus that can be the wrong bus will be the wrong bus. All others are out of service or full.

Mr. 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.

Cooper's Metalaw: A proliferation of new laws creates a proliferation of new loopholes.

Cooper's Law: All machines are amplifiers.

Coolidge's Immutable Observation: When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

Cook's Law: Much work, much food; little work, little food; no work, burial at sea.

Cooke's Law: In any decisive situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision.

Conway's Law 2: In every organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

Conway's Law 1: If you assign N persons to write a compiler you'll get a N-1 pass compiler.

Considine's Law: Whenever one word or letter can change the entire meaning of a sentence, the probability of an error being made will be in direct proportion to the embarrassment it will cause.

Conrad's Conundrum: Technologie don't transfer.

Connolly's Rule for Political Incumbents: Short-term success with voters on any side of a given issue can be guaranteed by creating a long-term special study commission made up of at least three divergent interest groups.

Connolly's Law of Cost Control: The price of any product produced for a government agency will be not less than the square of the initial Firm Fixed-Price Contract.

First Maxim of Computers: To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.

Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.

Laws of computer programming:

Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
Any given program costs more and takes longer.
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
Any program will expand to fill available memory.
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capabilities of the programmer who must maintain it.
Any non-trivial program contains at least one bug.
Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Law of Computability Applied to Social Science: If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.

Law of Computability: Any system or program, however complicated, if looked at in exactly the right way, will become even more complicated.

Committee Rules:

Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this stamps you as being wise.
Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the others.
When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
Commoner's Three Laws of Ecology:
No action is without side-effects.
Nothing ever goes away.
There is no free lunch.

Comins's Law: People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.

Colson's Law: If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.

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

Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage.

Cohn's Law: The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all your time doing nothing but reporting on the nothing you are doing.

Cohen's Laws of Politics:

Law of Alienation: Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.
Law of Ambition: At any one time, thousands of borough councilmen, school board members, attorneys, and businessmen -- as well as congressmen, senators, and governors -- are dreaming of the White House, but few, if any of them, will make it.
Law of Attraction: Power attracts people but it cannot hold them.
Law of Competition: The more qualified candidates who are available, the more likely the compromise will be on the candidate whose main qualification is a nonthreatening incompetence.
Law of Inside Dope: There are many inside dopes in politics and government.
Law of Lawmaking: Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
Law of Permanence: Political power is as permanent as today's newspaper. Ten years from now, few will know or care who the most powerful man in any state was today.
Law of Secrecy: The best way to publicize a governmental or political action is to attempt to hide it.
Law of Wealth: Victory goes to the candidate with the most accumulated or contributed wealth who has the financial resources to convince the middle class and poor that he will be on their side.
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.

Cohen's Law: What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -- not the facts themselves.

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.

Clopton's Law: For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill.

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

Clark's Law: It's always darkest just before the lights go out.

Clark's First Law of Relativity: No matter how often you trade dinner or other invitations with in-laws, you will lose a small fortune in the exchange.
Corollary: Don't try it: you cannot drink enough of your in-laws' booze to get even before your liver fails.

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:
"It is completely impossible -- don't waste my time."
"It is possible, but it is not worth doing."
"I said it was a good idea all along."

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

Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

Corollary (Asimov): When the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists, and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion -- the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, right.

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Ciardi's Poetry Law: Whenever in time, and wherever in the universe, any man speaks or writes in any detail about the technical management of a poem, the resulting irascibility of the reader's response is a constant.