"There's a saying..."

Wed Sep 22 01:44:07 UTC 2004

In a message dated  Mon, 20 Sep 2004 00:54:10 -0400,  Bapopik at AOL.COM quotes
(inter alia)

>  ... [7] Ireland. [8] There's a saying, "The problem with making something
> foolproof
>  is that fools are so damned ingenious," which comes to mind here. ...
>  alt.tech-support.recovery - Apr 24, 1999 by Stephen -

This is a variation of an old saying, "Just when you make something
idiot-proof, they invent a bigger idiot" which is one of the common variations found in
collections of Murphy's-Law sayings

Ask Fred Shapiro to check his collection.  I think he has 1980's or earlier
versions of this quote.

>  Re: A question whose answer might seem obvious
>  ... (There's a saying: if someone speaks two or more languages, they come
> from continental Europe. If they speak one language, they're British. ...
>  rec.arts.sf.composition - Jul 9, 2001 by David Given -

A book in my library which I can't locate at the moemnt cites a
mispronunciation of some word in a Continental European language by Celtic Britons who were
contemporaries of "King" Arthur, and adds, "It seems that the Englishman's
traditional inability to pronounce foreign words goes back a long ways."

>  Re: Nudist children's privacy issues (was: Nude Photos of ...)
>  ... off-the-scale misunderstood and abused. There's a saying that "You
can't
> boil the ocean". Applied to programming, it means (for ...
>  rec.nude - Nov 27, 1995 by Charlie Perkins - View Thread (146 articles)

Could we please have the rest of the citation?

>  Re: Legitimate Post?
>  ... There's a saying out there that goes like this: "Good. Fast. Cheap.
Pick
> any two." That philosophy hasn't steered me wrong yet. ...
>  comp.sys.mac.apps - Mar 15, 2000 by Charles Martin

This is similar to "The perfect is the enemy of the good" which was discussed
on ADS-L some time ago, with iirc someone tracing it back to Voltaire.

>  Re: Aerodynamics of flight question
>  ... there's a saying that the second engine in a twin helps the plane get
to
> the crash location more quickly, and strangely that's proven to be true. ...
>  rec.skydiving - Sep 15, 1995 by Bill Von Novak

This is well known to the aviation safety people, and it turns out there is a
legitimate reason.  Twin-engine planes are faster than single-engine planes,
which means that when something goes wrong, the pilot has a lot less time to
correct it.

Also, if the engine quits in a single-engine plane, it is not an emergency,
but rather a matter of looking for the nearest cornfield to land in  (good
flight instructors make a point of turning off the engine, forcing the student
pilot to make a dead-stick landing.)  However, if an engine fails in a twin, it
is an emergency because the remaining engine tries to throw the plane into a
roll and it takes quick corrective action to get the plane back under control.
Many experienced pilots feel safer in a single-tengine plane than in a twin.

>  Re: The Data Quality Act
>  ... No, Windows' GUI was probably written in VB, not least because
> internally at Microsoft there's a saying that developers should "eat their
> own dog food ...
>  comp.programming - Jul 19, 2002 by Edward G. Nilges

I believe "eat their own dog food" was discussed in ADS-L some time ago (it
is in Fred Shapiro's collection of comptuer quotes).  The Windows GUI dates
back to an IBM-Microsoft collaboration that began int he mid-80's and therefore
long antedates VB (Visual Basic).

>  GETTING IN (TO WHAT)
>  ... There's a saying ing the navy "A bitching sailor is a happy sailor."
> Should I take some of what I'm seeing with a grain of salt and consider
this
> the "bitching ...
>  misc.transport.trucking - Jun 22, 2003 by Bill Moore

In a management class I took in 1975, we were taught that "a little griping
is good for morale".  Actually this quote goes back at least to Napoleon, who
liked to refer to the Old Guard as "the grumblers".

>  The Fannish Mind (wasRe: Mike Myers and Judy Myers Halloween ...
>  ... understanding. There's a saying: FIAWOL (Fandom Is A Way Of Life); I
> think that true in a lot of areas beyond science fiction itself. ...
>  talk.politics.animals - Nov 16, 1999 by Rat & Swan

Incredibly, FIAWOL cannot be found in "Science Fiction Citations for the
OED", URL http://www.jessesword.com/SF/sf_fan.shtml

>  Re: Kids first knife - sharp or _not_sharp
>  ... what has been said above. There's a saying that states "the most
> dangerous knife is the one which is not sharp". If the knife is ...
>  rec.knives - Dec 16, 1997 by David Suarez de Lis

"The most dangerous gun is the one that isn't loaded" meaning "the most
dangerous gun is the one you THINK isn't loaded" is something I heard in the
1950's---I might add that in Kentucky gun safety was tauight in my elementary school.

>  Re: Establishing software quality (was, er, many other things)
>  ... (Not to mention that those kinds of projects ALSO include huge amounts
> of software.) I've heard that there's a saying at Boeing: The jet is ready
to
> ship when ...
>  comp.os.os2.advocacy - Dec 27, 1998 by Steven C. Den Beste - View Thread
(26
> articles)
>  I've heard that there's a saying at Boeing: The jet is ready to ship when
>  the documentation outweights it.

An old saying in the aircraft industry, hardely restricted to Boeing.

         - Jim Landau