In my Strangling Legacy Code presentation and article (Better Software, Oct 2005), I coined the term: "The Costanza Principle" (TCP). TCP It refers to the Seinfeld character George Costanza, and is basically a funny way of saying "learn from past mistakes". Anyway, I was doing some "strangling" research, and came across this interesting reference to TCP on Villane Bardak's site. Although he's a Java developer, the post has nothing in particular to do with software:

"Secondly, Seinfeld is way above Not Too Shabby. You can simply tell that from the various contexts it is often referenced in. The jokes are often quite unique, compared to other sit-coms. Or even if they aren't, they sure fooled me. For example, google for "Costanza principle" and download the powerpoint file "Strangling Legacy Code", then search for "Costanza" in the file again. It shows how a joke from one the episodes can apply to solving a real-life software engineering problem."

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Correction: I thought I had uniquely coined the term for my presentation, but when I run the Google search he suggests, I come up with a million (OK, actually 109) similar "coinages". Bummer. Well, I can honestly say that I independently coined it, but not that it was a unique.