Introducing the Neuman

I dislike talking about sports.

I used to be a jock. An athlete of some repute, I won awards throughout high school in all the sports that didn't have anyone else participating.

Sometime between the mid 90's and now I have moved from fan to derisive opponent. I think it has something to do with the fact that if all professional sporting events were canceled the only negative impact would be that the Rhino party would receive more votes as Leaf fans tried to find something else to support.

To be fair I also dislike discussing the following subjects:
The weather.
What day of the week it is.
Relationships with low emotional investment.
Celebrities.
Puppies.

As a result I like to discuss things more cerebral in nature, like the benefits of a particular programming language or the difficulties in pursuing world peace. Unfortunately all of these discussions degrade to one of two things.

One end is the predictable "Godwin's Law", which states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

The prevention of comparing SSL to the SS (the SSSSSL?) is achieved by announcing, out loud, "Godwin". It's a geeky punch-buggy to the brain, without the satisfaction, or whining, of actually hitting.

The other eventual degradation is, well, jokes told in Grade 7. By boys.

We have come up with a new law in order to make our workplace one of less chance of harassment, embarrassment and one where we find new parts of the human anatomy to compare projects. It is called "Neuman's Law", which states "As a discussion between nerds grows longer, the probability they will make crude innuendo approaches 1."

We named it after Alfred E. Newman, of MAD magazine. We opted not to use the term "Heffner" as it would self-Neumanate. The result of the new law has shortened most of our conversations from a session of Parliament to 3 sentences.

The benefit is that most of us guess what the next joke would be, so we call out "Neuman" and then giggle at what we could have said. Our maturity is still pre-high school, but at least we're quiet about it.

Unlike those blasted Hab fans...