10 Geeky Laws That Should Exist, But Don’t

There are many, many laws having nothing to do with government, that are useful to know because they tell you something about how the universe works. There are Newton’s laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, Boyle’s law, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, among dozens more. Most of these laws have been known for a long time, but it wasn’t until a mere nineteen years ago that Godwin’s Law was written.

If you’ve ever been involved in a discussion on Usenet, or have been following politics in the past decade or so, you’ve probably encountered Godwin’s Law. While Godwin’s Law is unfortunately as true today as it was then, it seems unfortunate that there aren’t more widely-accepted axioms to help us geeks define the characteristics of our world.

To that end, then, here are ten geeky laws (axioms) that should exist, but don’t… at least, they didn’t until now:

xkcd © Randall Munroe

1. Munroe’s Law: A person in a geeky argument who can quote xkcd to support his argument automatically wins the argument. This law supersedes Godwin, so that even if the quote is about Hitler, the quoter still wins.

2. Lucas’s Law: There is no movie so beloved that a “special edition,” prequel or sequel cannot trample and forever stain its memory.

3. Tolkien and Rowling’s Law: No reasonably faithful movie adaptation of a book will ever be quite as good as the book it adapts. Thus great movie adaptations can only be made out of truly amazing books.

4. Somers and McCarthy’s Law: There is no dangerous unscientific theory so preposterous that no celebrity will espouse and advocate it.

5. Jobs’s Law: No matter how well last year’s cool tech gadget still works, it will seem utterly inadequate the moment the new version comes out.

6. Savage and Hyneman’s Law: Blowing stuff up is fun. Blowing stuff up in the name of science is AWESOME.

Photo by Shawn Zamechek; used under CC license

7. Starbuck’s Law: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂, better known as caffeine, is the most wonderful chemical compound known to humankind. If the field of Chemistry had never identified or produced a single other useful compound, caffeine alone would be justification enough for its existence.

8. Wilbur’s Law: Bacon makes everything better.

9. Comic Book Guy’s Law: There is no detail of a movie too brief or inconsequential to become the subject of an hours-long diatribe.

10. The Unified Geek Theory: At present, the President of the United States, the wealthiest person in the United States, and the most trusted newscaster in the United States are all geeks. At the same time, movies based on comic book characters are routinely taking in hundreds of millions of dollars. The only reasonable conclusion is: We’ve won!

Got any good ones we missed? Please list them in the comments.