The Laws of Golf
The official rules of golf, as laid down by the R&A in 1897 and updated since, run to dozens of clauses and subclauses, but serious practitioners of the game know that it is run by a completely different set of rules:
• You can always find a golf ball when you are not looking for it by being where you wouldn’t be if you were looking for it.
• The best way to go round a tree standing directly in your path is to am directly at it.
• A bad shot always travels far enough to land in more trouble.
• No matter how badly you play, there will always be at least one shot per round so perfect, so on target, and so gratifying that you will come back to play again.
• The player with the fastest golf buggie never has a bad lie.
• Nobody cares what you shot today - except you.
Hitting the trail
Backpacking this summer? Mit Barber has some observations:
1. The integral of the gravitational potential taken around any loop trail you choose to hike always comes out positive.
2. Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to exactly the point of most pressure.
3. The weight of your rucksack increases in direct proportion to the amount of food you consume from it. If you run out of food, the rucksack weight goes on increasing anyway.
4. The number of stones in your boot is directly proportional to the number of hours you have been on the trail.
5. The difficulty of finding any given trail marker is directly proportional to the importance of the consequences of failing to find it.
6. The size of each of the stones in your boot is directly proportional to the number of hours you have been on the trail.
7. The remaining distance to your chosen campsite remains constant as twilight approaches.
8. The net weight of your boots is proportional to the cube of the number of hours you have been on the trail.
9. When you arrive at your campsite, it is full.
10. If you take your boots off, you’ll never get them back on again.
11. The local density of mosquitoes is inversely proportional to the amount of your remaining insect repellent.
A word in your ear, M’Lud
In the legal profession, they understand that it’s the unwritten laws that count, not what’s in the Statute book. No surprise, then, that the most popular cufflinks sold by legal gift company, Carbolic Smoke Ball Co., are those pictured here. The only better selling product, in fact, is a desktop pen-holder in the shape of a casket which has ‘Ashes of Difficult Clients’ engraved on the front.
Brown breaking all the rules
Gordon Brown’s pledge to limit public spending to 40% of GDP was abandoned this week, as public sector borrowing soared though the £9bn in June. It’s odd, because rules and laws, and the restriction of freedom have always been at the heart of this dirigiste politician. It’s the unwritten ones he has never had a feel for:
Agnes Allen’s Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of. [Iraq]
Micawber’s Law: Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. [Do we need to spell it out?]
Morrow’s Law: The candidate who takes the credit for the rain gets the blame for the drought. [Remember how he used to boast about 10 years of solid growth?]
Mind you, there is at least one unwritten law even this dunderhead must understand by now:
Locke’s Law: One day you’re a peacock, the next day you’re a feather duster.
The First Law of Bridge
It is always the partner’s fault.
The Mathematical Formula for Bribery
OG = PLR x AEB
The opportunity for bribery equals the plethora of legal requirements multiplied by the number of architects, engineers and builders.
Truman’s Second Law
If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.
Rice’s Rule
It’s not important whether you win or lose but how you play the game.
Reuther’s Law
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it just may be a duck.
Malthus’s Law
Population when unchecked increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
