Autocommit Sun Dec 08 10:01:22 NZDT 2013

Finagle's Third Law:
	In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
	beyond all need of checking, is the mistake

Corollaries:
	(1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
	(2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
	    don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
Autocommit Wed Dec 11 20:10:55 NZDT 2013

		The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
	'Come, muse, let us sing of rats.'
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
	No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
	'Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
	And the grey roof reddened and rang;
	Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
	The tip of my ear.  Flash! bang!'
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
	'... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk...'
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
	'The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
	The crippled pea alone that cannot stand.'
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
	'And I was ask'd and authorized to go
	To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co.'
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
	'So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
	While in this world, are liable to leak.'
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
	'I've measured it from side to side;
	Tis three feet long and two feet wide.'
		-- Stephen Pile, 'The Book of Heroic Failures'