Remembering Murphy- Murphy's Law

I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

Everything is either said for a reason or for no reason at all. It is noteworthy how certain sentences say just what they're supposed to and never fail to astound us with their truth. Every person, unless he's dumb says something. Even the dumb who have been deprived of their power of speech say things by their actions. The responsibility of understanding what has been said is ours entirely and it is only us - who understand - who can actually propagate what we heard so that others can hear what we say.

One such man who said something worth pondering over was Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an engineer by profession. I respect him not only because he was an engineer but because of that something he said. His statement is called Murphy's law today and it exhibits the firmness of the grasp of this man on the ways of the world. He had understood what every living person had to live with and though many people might have realized the same, I salute him for he was the first one who said so.

Murphy law states,
“Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”

Isn't it true? People might brand me a pessimist for repeating the statement but name calling never helps, so I suggest such people to save that energy and use it for nobler pursuits. Once seen in the right light, Murphy’s Law actually starts making sense: Shit happens in this world. Subtract the number of times you've succeeded from the number of times you've tried and if you're human you are bound to get a non-zero result. That my friend is the quantitative measure of Murphy's law holding. Upon dividing this result by the number of trials, you get a better estimate. And if the quotient of the previous division has no fractional part, you my friend are one specimen of either of the two species- God or the author's true alter ego (if the latter is the case, get in touch with me. Let's hang out together sometime.)

Now some people might have qualms about the involvement of science in this law. Well, doubts in the verity of a statement are good signs, both for the person who has doubts and for the person who stated the law. Since Murphy's been dead for quite sometime, I take on the prerogative to answer for him, to the best of my ability. ( If you think I am bullshitting you, I might have done that. Do not hate Murphy for what I say because these thoughts are mine in their entirety and they do not reflect what Murphy had in mind when he said what he said.) Ask yourself what science is. I've found texts to support that science is the quest to know. In this sense history is science, right? Isn’t history a little something when it comes to gaining knowledge? In all these years history has been an important tool to the achievement of this objective- knowing. Time and again we have turned the pages of the past to satisfy our quest to know. And history has shown us that things have gone wrong when they could've gone wrong. So, there is science in the law. It might not have a hundred percent chance of holding, but no law has that luxury. Ask someone who knows, is V=IR always? Ohm's law doesn't hold always : even the textbooks show that the characteristic straight line is a curve in the practical sense, but you call that a law.

There have been many stated versions of the this law and I will list a few of them, in my style of writing. Forgive me if you find the language blasphemous, for it is just intended to bring in some humor. I've made additions at my discretion in places to bring about the same effect.

1.If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time. It will all be your fault and everyone will know it.
2.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.
An extreme version would be,
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST one to go wrong.
3.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
4.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. The hidden flaw doesn't remain hidden for long. And then people find out it was your fault.
5.Mother nature is a bitch.
6.The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
7.You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. ( Try and relate this to the four lines that mark the beginning of this composition.) Now, read the next point.
8.The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

The following statements could be classified as Murphy's Laws of Selective Gravitation:
9.A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
10. An unbreakable object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
11. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
12. A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
13. If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
14. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example.)
15. The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the pet dog will throw up on it.

The following statements form the equivalences in shopping:
16. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
17. The other line always moves faster.

The statements pertaining to love:
18. All the good ones are taken.
19. If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.
20. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
This constant is always zero.
21. "This won't hurt, I promise." is not true.

The statements for a computer:
22. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
23. Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.
24. Line number 108 : m=n;
Line number 109 : assert ( m==n);
Output : Execution Aborted. Assertion failed in line 109.
25. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
26. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
27. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
28. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user. And the end user can do nothing about it than wait for the next version of the software. The next version of the software will have bigger bugs.
29. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
30. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
31. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.
32. Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found (it is conservative).
33. Whenever you're in a hurry, the server is down.

There are more statements- thousands of them, all stating the obvious. All of them support the law. For instance, Steven Right once said,“If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.” Since nothing of that sort has happened so far, you might be tempted to think Murphy's law doesn't hold. Well the good thing about Murphy's law is, even when it doesn't hold, it holds, “If Murphy's Law can go wrong it will.”

I'd like the readers to write down similar statements in the comments section. It'll be an amusing exercise.