>From a friend, passed along for your amusement: The three laws of thermodynamics are explained in several places in Wikipedia:
1. Conservation of energy. In any process, the total energy of the universe remains constant. 2. Entropy. The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. 3. Absolute zero temperature. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. Anonymous restatement of the three laws: 1. You can't get anything without working for it. 2. The most you can accomplish by working is to break even. 3. You can only break even at absolute zero. Restatement of the three laws, attributed to Allen Ginsberg: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't get out of the game. A corollary to Ginsberg's Laws, by someone named Freeman, every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can get out of the game. For your continued amusement, here is an 11-year-old web page with a collection of observed and restated laws of the universe: http://www.chem.leeds.ac.uk/ICAMS/people/jon/bits/laws.html http://tinyurl.com/yb3sfa I'm especially fond of Hlade's Law, Churchill's Commentary, and the Heineken Uncertainty Principle.
