Theories

After slogging through a mediocre and sometimes infuriating (feel tank?) article on theories, I thought about the theories I'm carrying around, the various ideas I and others have posited to explain the workings of the world.

#1. There's Jubb's Law, my newest discovery: Given any noun, Jubb will have a story related to that noun.

This one is absolutely true. We have yet to test it with an encyclopedia, but randomly selected, relatively common nouns invariably lead to some kind of crazy story. Jubb is a great Oral Storyteller, a twenty-first century Goliard.

#2. There's Lampa's Hypothesis: Given an intergender friendship, a heterosexual guy will always be willing to initiate a physical relationship in the event that the girl indicates her willingness to do the same.

This one is pretty dubious. It was true for at least one guy I knew, for his entire high school career, but I've known other people that prove it wrong. It might depend on your definition of "friendship", and it seems to assume that a guy can never have a real friendship with a girl he considers ugly. Or it just assumes that people aren't that superficial.

#3. Jenna's Infinite Contradiction Theory. Given a statement, a firm denial of that statement will lead to the immediate retraction of that statement by the speaker.

This one works on one specific person pretty often, but I'm still not sure how universal it is. Some people just throw out words, it seems, so she can't be the only one this applies to.

#4. The Obligatory Ultra-Gay Theory. Given a university, there will be at least one person who, in some way, embodies every stereotype that Gay Rights activists have spent decades trying to destroy.

This person will often have the same first name. This isn't gay-hating here, for the P.C. Thugs in the crowd. I know some great non-stereotypically gay people. But, talking to others, the Ultra-Gay seems to exist at every school, possibly as part of a plot by the Ultra-Conservatives (see the connection!) to discredit the entire Gay Rights movement.

#5. The Essay Correlative: Given a paper, the amount of time spent, the amount of effort put into the paper, and the writer's familiarity with the subject cannot predict the grade received.

There is a correlation between grades and the above factors, but other criteria, including but not limited to the professor's mood, the weather outside, the date turned in, the humidity in the prof's office, the number of papers read beforehand, the date corrected, font, the presence of page numbers, amount and location of staples, the professor's temperment, and the current location of Venus can also influence grade received.

*Note- Steve's Test Correlative, a related theory that dealt with grades on German class pop quizzes, is now accepted by very few in the mainstream scientific community.

#6. The German-American Drinking Theory: Given alcohol, a German will drink casually and an American will "drink to get drunk".

I'm a huge propenent of this embattled theory and the below theory; I think that The Lanky German (a subject discovered in Reutlingen) is a familiar exception but The Gothic German (Konstanz) is a more typical example of a "real" German, as far as this Theory is concerned.

And I've met plenty of Americans who're confused at the very idea of an option besides "drinking to get drunk."

#7. The German Sex-Alcohol Area Theory: Every German can be described by the area under the curve on a graph correlating frequency of sex with frequency of alcohol consumption. This area will be unique to that German.

#8. Dan's Deathtrap-Mishap Theory: Averaged out over an infinite number of long car-rides, The Deathtrap will encounter one mishap every third trip.

True, in the long run. I still maintain that I'm a good driver, though. Just unlucky. And careless.

#9. Partisen Hypocracy Theory: Given two or more polticial parties, the moral recitude of a given political action is dependent on the political party of the observer.

Disgusting. This Theory is true, and it's why The Wishy-Washy Moderates need to organize. It's been proven in Florida, Washington D.C., and elsewhere, and affects all strata of society. As it seems to bleed into the only belief structure more Wishy-Washy than that of the moderates: the moral relativism of postmodern thought.

#10. The Attribution Principle: When people observe others, they attribute their actions to character qualities. When considering their own actions, people attribute their actions to the circumstances immediately surrounding that action.

This wasn't invented by anyone I know. I heard it second or third hand; it's in some Psych book. It might be classified as a Fallacy, but either way it's really great, because it feels really true. I do that; I've done that on this very page. I'm pretty fond of this observation.

That's all I can think of, right now. Later.