Murphy's Law and Resultant Others

Pompey Magnus · 10-04-2003 12:50pm #1

Murphy's Corollary:
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy's Corollary:
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious

Murphy's Constant:
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value

Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law:
Everything goes wrong all at once.

O'Toole's Commentary:
Murphy was an optimist.

Ralph's Observation:
It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry.

Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage

Firestone's Law of Forcasting:
Chicken Little only has to be right once.

Manly's Maxim:
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Moer's truism:
The trouble with most jobs is the job holder's resemblence to being one of a sled dog team. No one gets a change of scenery except the lead dog.

Cannon's Comment:
If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Scott's Second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been correct in the first place.

Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the experiment's result, there will always be someone eager to:
(a) misinterpret it.
(b) fake it.
or
(c) believe it supports his own pet theory.

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

Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse.

Gumperson's Law:
The probability of anything happening is in inverse ratio to its desirability.

Rudin's Law:
In crises that force people to choose among alternative courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.

Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't quit.

Ehrman's Commentary
Things will get worse before they will get better. Who said things would get better?

Commoner's Second Law of Ecology:
Nothing ever goes away.

Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving Systems Dynamics:
Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a bigger can.

Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.

Klipstein's Law:
Tolerances will accumulate unidirectionally toward maximum difficulty of assembly.

Interchangeable parts won't.

You never find a lost article until you replace it.

Glatum's Law of Materialistic Acquisitiveness:
The perceived usefulness of an article is inversely proportional to its actual usefulness once bought and paid for.

Lewis' Law:
No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

If nobody uses it, there's a reason.

You get the most of what you need the least.

The Airplane Law:
When the plane you are on is late, the plane you want to transfer to is on time.

Etorre's Observation:
The other line moves faster.

First Law of Revision:
Information necessitiating a change of design will be conveyed to the designer after - and only after - the plans are complete.
(Often called the 'Now They Tell Us' Law)

Second Law of Revision:
The more innocuous the modification appears to be, the further its influence will extend and the more plans will have to be redrawn.

Corollary to the First Law of Revision:
In simple cases, presenting one obvious right way versus one obvious wrong way, it is often wiser to choose the wrong way, so as to expedite subsequent revision.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
I. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
II. Any given program costs more and takes longer.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
III. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.

LAWS OF COMPUTER PROGRAMMING:
IV. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.