Here is an old saying that appears, at first glance, to have no scientific basis whatsoever: "Troubles come in threes." But this is actually a rough description of the Poisson distribution, which shows that torally random improbable events tend to occur in clusters, rather than at approximately regular intervals.
In the late nineteenth century, there was a famous mathematical study done of the occurrence of soldiers killed by horse kicks in the German Army. The purpose of the study was to test the Poisson didtribution. There were a lot of horses used by the armies of the world at the time, but a soldier being killed by horse kicks was a rare event. It was found that these accidents tended to occur in clusters, especially doublets and triplets, and were not evenly spaced in time.
I will enjoy looking up "the Poisson Distribution subject," and learning more about the concept of "bad things coming in threes." That would mean that if one bad thing happened, watch out!
I guess the definition of a "bad thing" takes care of itself, since horse kicks are never good... or, maybe they could be.
What if the horse kicked a horse thieve. That would be good for the horse owner, bad for the thief. The thief would be in line for two more strokes of bad luck, but is there a run of good luck for the owner?
I made it home from work without crashing, I am not ill, that's two good things..... maybe tonight's the night to date Jill because I'm due to strike it lucky! The first question I'll ask her is "How's your luck been going?"
I still think certified is the way to go.
I'm sure Ermie' comment was just that, i.e., I'm surprised you never heard that joke before. I think I first heard it about 25 years ago ...
"Just because you're not paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." ~Colin Sautar
Kinda like Murphy's Law: "If anything can go wrong, it will", may have come from Capt. Edward A. Murphy after a test run of the high-speed sled decelleration project, where a technician had miswired a transducer and Capt. Murphy said "If anything could go wrong, he'll find it", then written down in the altered form amongst a bunch of other verbal axioms, eventually spreading its way across the aerospace industry, like the "Measure twice, cut once" axiom in carpentry.
.. But i really prefer these two quotes:
"You can't have everything... where would you put it?" ~Steven Wright
...and ...
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes." ~Jack Handey
The shoe one is great. They're all great, but the shoe one is totally new to me and it's so rational.
These little "rules of thumb" are just plain great for having a quick explanation for things that happen. I have as much fun re-arranging them and trying them in different combinations as I once had in a sand box during a rain storm.
It might be good brain exercise to mess with slogans, cliches, maxims, axioms, platitudes and laws for a break from trying to find a better 3-meter antenna.
Don't stop. It's just at the fun point.