Monday, March 17, 2008

The three (or so) laws of Frustodynamics

Dedication: To the unknown soldiers of HogUARTS.

To keep in line with the Fravian definition[1] of a blog, we provide below random crap for your amusement.

Once upon a time, in a far-off university called HogUARTS (there exist many other possibly valid names for this place, but we prefer this for what ought to be obvious reasons) there came into being a concept. This was called, for want of a clever acronym, frustness. We leave it to your imagination to deduce the proper state of mind required to conjure up such a concept, and merely remark in passing that while certain other not-quite-"first"-rate institutions may lay claim on the concept, it is to be found in its purest form in exactly one place in the universe.

We elide an explanation of this concept, since it is as much of an in-joke as "Vladimir Vapnik, Cosmic Conqueror".

Much time passed after the above earth-shaking paradigm shift (not to be confused with per diem) occurred, there occurred much research into this concept, whose results we present you (having plagiarised from like-mindless people) below:

The laws of frustness:


  1. Zeroth law: The law of pseudomathematical equality

    This really requires a pretty diagram to illustrate effectively, but we make do, and state:

    "if A is as frust as B, and B is as frust as C, then A is as frust as C".

    Roughly paraphrased, this states that equal amounts of frustness do not usually result in noteworthy incidents, but in the event that there is a significant discrepancy in the quantaamounts of frustness, an equalisation process occurs. For example, if individual A was frust, and B was not, prolonged (or in some cases, instantaneous) contact usually results in B becoming at least as frust as A. The second law usually applies in such matters, though...

  2. First law: The law of conservation

    "The total frustness of the universe remains constant"

    Unfortunately, this says nothing whatsoever of the actual distribution or evolution over time of frustness, and neither does it provide any constructive method of determining said distribution. It therefore suffices to say that if you're reading this, you are a local maxima of the distribution. Cautious application of the first law usually results in your reaching the global maximum. This explains why people of similar frustness levels tend to congregate, as might be proved by your favourite local Orkut groups. Note, however, that the constancy over the universe implies that there exists at least one recycler of frustness somewhere in the universe under consideration.

  3. Second law: The law of entropyincrease

    "The frustness of an isolated system increases with time."

    Usually used to determine the direction of the arrow of time, this very useful law serves as an explanation of why things are as they are, particularly since it applies, through some oversight, to systems that are not isolated, too.

  4. Third law: Asymptotic (un)stability

    "Frustness can tend to, but never reach, zero."

    Since it is far more likely to go in the opposite direction, this law might seem redundant. It's most useful function, however, is both as a reminder that there is a minimum, and that you can't quite achieve it no matter how hard you try.



Examples of the last two laws are left as an exercise to the reader, rather like this review does.


Disclaimer: No claim whatsoever of originality is made, indeed, it would surprise us if we were involved in this particular formulation of the above laws, since they quite likely date from the time Maxwell's demon's memory overflowed, or even the Carnotaurus.

[1] A blog is...[2]

 The most over-rated nonsense on the internet. It's essentially someone's rambling, online diary, that links to real sites in order to pretend that there is actual content, (other than the self-absorbed, indulgent crap that makes up most of it).

[2] Our clarification: Anything whose title is a permutation of "random [verb] [proposition] [article] [adjective] [noun]". Note that only the word "random" is not negotiable.



PS: It turns out that this marks a century. How appropriate.

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