Murphy's Law (MUR-feez law) noun

   The facetious proposition that if something can go wrong, it will.

[Americanism, after a fictitious Murphy, allegedly the name of a bungling
mechanic in U.S. Navy educational cartoons of the 1950s.]

   "In the original, Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis played the Kellermans from
   Ohio, a nice couple whose trip to the Big Apple becomes the ultimate
   fulfillment of Murphy's Law when they lose their luggage, their hotel
   room, their money and their good names."
   Dann Gire, Get out & stay out!, The Daily Herald, Apr 2, 1999.

Here is a second opinion on Murphy's Law. This one is from The New Hacker's
Dictionary, Third Edition, compiled by Eric S. Raymond.            -Anu

   Murphy's Law /prov./ The correct, *original* Murphy's Law reads:
   "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can
   result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of
   defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms
   less descriptive of the challenges of design for lusers. For example, you
   don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP'; if
   it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design
   asymmetrical.

   Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled
   experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test human
   acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a
   set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body.
   There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody
   methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the
   original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John
   Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.

   Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures
   connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by
   variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went.
   Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong, will"; this is
   correctly referred to as Finagle's Law. The memetic drift apparent in
   these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!

This week's theme: syndromes, paradoxes, laws, and principles.

.............................................................................
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake
when you make it again. -Franklin P. Jones

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