Thermodynamic Laws--Say what?

The book shown to the right is one I have been reading for awhile and trying to apply to regular daily life.  One comment made in the chapter on ENERGY referred to the First Law of Thermodynamics.  That would have been something I could have overlooked had a friend on a recent energy conference call not used the same terminology.  So off I went to Wikipedia to attempt to add to my understanding.    

Well there were pages of definitions and references but the comment below is the one that met my needs today for both simplicity and humor even with the criticism attached:-)

Chemist and novelist C. P. Snow once remarked that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics was "like having never read a work by Shakespeare." The following simple expression of the four laws has been attributed to Snow

• Zeroth law: You must play the game
• First law: You can't win
• Second law: You can't break even
• Third law: You can't quit the game.

This jocular mnemonic gives a gravely misleading idea about the laws, because it utterly fails to recognize that as long as you live you can very profitably exploit the energy supply from the sun, and nuclear energy from radioactive elements on earth. You don't have to play a zero-sum game such as the joke asserts.

Here is a more formal definition of the First Law--

The first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of conservation of energy, adapted for thermodynamic systems. The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant; energy can be transformed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.  (You can't win.)

There are lots of AMAZING things in this book and the world of technology but as my braniac friend on the conference call reminded me--You can't break the laws of physics.

Seemed like a good thing to understand as we race forward into the future.  There are chapters in the book on energy, finance, health, transportation and more which is why a guy like me would be able to comprehend the application of these laws of physics at all. 
Below is a link to Michio Kaku talking about some of this stuff.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHhj8BirXEE