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"Murphy's Law"

Yes, but if you had lots of cats each with a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back, the system would fail because each cat would be trying to lick the butter off the toast strapped to the back of the neighbouring cat.

Carole
 
And nobody has even tried to make anything useful about a cats affinity for computer keyboards, expecially falling asleep on them :D
 
carole said:
Yes, but if you had lots of cats each with a slice of buttered toast strapped to its back, the system would fail because each cat would be trying to lick the butter off the toast strapped to the back of the neighbouring cat.

Carole
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Which is why you have to put them in separate boxes. If you don't, when you open the box to go down, you'll collapse all of their wave functions at once, and you will plummet.

This is not unrelated to how cats can climb up trees, but have so much difficulty getting down again.
 
Update ...

In 2003 - the year following the last post above - an Ig Nobel Prize was awarded Murphy (yes - _that_ Murphy) and his colleagues who publicized his rule and entered it into the American popular vocabulary ...


ENGINEERING: The late John Paul Stapp, the late Edward A. Murphy, Jr., and George Nichols, for jointly giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, someone will do it "(or, in other words: "If anything can go wrong, it will").

REFERENCE: "The Fastest Man on Earth," Nick T. Spark, Annals of Improbable Research, vol. 9, no. 5, Sept/Oct 2003.] VIDEO

WHO ATTENDED THE IG NOBEL CEREMONY: (1) Author Nick T. Spark , on behalf of John Paul Stapp's widow, Lilly. (2) Edward Murphy's Edward A. Murphy III, on behalf of his late father. (3) George Nichols, via audio tape.
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SOURCE: https://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2003
 
Mythopoeika said:
What about Sod? Did he get a co-credit for his very similar law?
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Sod's Law is slightly different, in that in canonical form it implies maximum possible impact on a particular victim.

Crudely stated, and exaggerated for illustration:

Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong it will (in general)
Sod's Law: If it can go wrong it will, and it will go wrong in the manner that's worst for YOU.

This is why Murphy's Law is sometimes cited as being of more general scope than Sod's Law, and vice versa.

Personally, I prefer the version of Finagle's Law Larry Niven repeatedly cited from the late 1960's onward:

"The perversity of the universe tends toward the maximum."
 
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EnolaGaia said:
Sod's Law is slightly different, in that in canonical form it implies maximum possible impact on a particular victim.

Crudely stated, and exaggerated for illustration:

Murphy's Law: If it can go wrong it will (in general)
Sod's Law: If it can go wrong it will, and it will go wrong in the manner that's worst for YOU.

This is why Murphy's Law is sometimes cited as being of more general scope than Sod's Law, and vice versa.

Personally, I prefer the version of Finagle's Law Larry Niven repeatedly cited from the late 1960's onward:

"The perversity of the universe tends toward the maximum."
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I'd quite forgotten about Finagle's Law. :)
 
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