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Augustine's Law
Augustine's laws were a series of tongue in cheek aphorisms put forth by Norman Ralph Augustine, an American aerospace businessman who served as Under Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977. In 1984 he published his laws. The book and several of the laws were the topic of an article in Sound and Vibration magazine in March 2012. List Law 16 His most cited law is number 16, which shows that defense budgets grow linearly but the unit cost of a new military aircraft grows exponentially: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day." See also *Moore's Law Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tongue In Cheek
The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner. History The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scott in his 1828 ''The Fair Maid of Perth''. The physical act of putting one's tongue into one's cheek once signified contempt. For example, in Tobias Smollett's ''The Adventures of Roderick Random,'' which was published in 1748, the eponymous hero takes a coach to Bath and on the way apprehends a highwayman. This provokes an altercation with a less brave passenger: The phrase appears in 1828 in ''The Fair Maid of Perth'' by Sir Walter Scott: It is not clear how Scott intended readers to understand the phrase. The more modern ironic sense appeared in the 1842 poem "The Ingoldsby Legends" by the English clergyman Richard Barham, in which a Frenchman inspects a watch and cries: The ironic usage originates with the idea of suppressed mirt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
