Skip to main content

murphy’s law and corollaries

Murphy's Law ("If anything can go wrong, it will") was born at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949 at North Base. It was named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, designed to see how much sudden deceleration a person can stand in a crash. One day, after finding that a transducer was wired wrong, he cursed the technician responsible and said, "If there is any way to do it wrong, he'll find it."

The contractor's project manager kept a list of "laws" which he called Murphy's Law. Over the years, many people have made their own additions, and the compilation is pretty impressive. Take a look.

  • MURPHY'S LAW – If anything can go wrong, it will.
  • O'TOOLE'S COMMENTARY – Murphy was an optimist.
  • MURPHY'S FIRST COROLLARY – Nothing is as easy as it looks.
  • MURPHY'S SECOND COROLLARY – Everything takes longer than you think.
  • MURPHY'S THIRD COROLLARY – If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
  • MURPHY'S FOURTH COROLLARY – Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.
  • MURPHY'S FIFTH COROLLARY – Every solution breeds new problems.
  • MURPHY'S SIXTH COROLLARY – It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
  • MURPHY'S SEVENTH COROLLARY – Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
  • MURPHY'S EIGHTH COROLLARY – Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
  • MURPHY'S CONSTANT – Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
  • BOLING'S POSTULATE – If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
  • MURPHY'S LAW OF MULTIPLES – If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
  • THE ORDERING PRINCIPLE – The supplies necessary for yesterday's work must be ordered no later then noon tomorrow.

One of my favourites is the Law of the Perversity of Nature, which says, “You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter”.

Which one is your favourite law?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

the most boring page on the internet

Some people are born boring; others like John Ingram, thrust boredom upon the rest of the world. And so as we tread upon the gargantuan bog called the Internet, we slip and wonder: why? Why did John Ingram create a site that has nothing but just 413 (exactly) words of text? Why did he create a site that has no meaning, no reason to exist, and no way to earn him even a cent, forget a fortune? But it takes all kinds, and Ingram is one of those. He is rational in his thought, grammatically correct in his writing (although) for some reason he hates capital letters), and has enough reasons to keep the world’s most boring site alive at all times since its “founding” in 1996. Is that why his site has now been translated into 12 languages including Finnish, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and, hold your breath, ladies and gentleman, Pig Latin? World War II is obviously history since here we have a German as well as a Hebrew translation sitting right next to each other. The site, Ingram informs us...
2 comments
Read more

abort, retry, ignore poem

The infamous Abort, Retry, Ignore message box of Windows, with no option given to close it. Found this classic and fun poem about the "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. I have been able to trace back the source to Annoyances.org. Here it is: Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more. Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
 Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
 But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
 "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
 One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
 Just, "Abort...
Post a Comment
Read more

folding the brick - talent wasted on perfecting crease on glass

It is such a demeaning thought. A smartphone that has been able to do nothing more than pick up calls and take photos for nearly 20 years now, is on a new race. To get folded. A dumb expensive brick that it already is, today's so called smart-phones are the epitome of anti-innovation and waste of Earth's resources. A company today chooses to advertise its camera compared to its own from last year; and call it innovation. Obviously, siring five thousand talented staff from around the world means at least one line of improvement deserves to come out in the camera department. The same in the processor. But is this innovation? Innovation stopped on the day smartphone was made public. To give it a little credit: today's cameras take better pictures, but other that that, it's nothing. It has become a a slab, a brick! And now companies are on a new race to fold this brick. What could be more humourous and pathetic at the same time? Wasting so much of Earth's resources plus...
Post a Comment
Read more