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17 comments to "The Real Story of Murphy’s Law."
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Eugenio MartÃnez Sierra
May 10th, 2007 at
5:01 am
If anything can´t go wrong, it will go wrong.
Oh godness.. a paradox!
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A Grue Not Here
May 10th, 2007 at
8:04 am
Finagle’s Law:
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximumHanlon’s Razer:
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity -
Chris
May 10th, 2007 at
8:42 am
Cole’s Law: thinly slice cabbage
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Dave
May 10th, 2007 at
9:56 am
Stapp’s body is believed to have endured forces equivalent to 40G, or 40 times the force of gravity. But no one will ever know for sure, because all 16 of the sensors failed, each one giving a zero reading for the test… Because of a simple human error, Stapp’s life had been put at risk in vain.
Seems silly that the first run of the test would run at forces that high. Seems that a more logical approach would be to run the sled up to a lower speed & hit the brakes to ensure that all was working as it should. With a newly designed & previously untested set of sensors in place, that’s how I would’ve done it anyway.
Then again, as they say, “hindsight is 20/20″.
Murphy’s Law is why two-pronged electrical plugs are now designed with one prong slightly larger than the other - so they can be plugged in the proper way.
Not so. Electrical plugs are designed that way now to avoid the possibility of electrical shock from ungrounded appliances. On any appliance that operates on AC and has a two-pronged plug, one of the conductors attached to the plug is also attached to the frame of the appliance. Likewise, in the house wiring and the receptacle, one of the conductors is tied to ground (the wider of the two slots in a 110VAC receptacle in the US) and the other is tied to one of the 110VAC busses in the breaker box. If not for the difference in size of the prongs, the frame of the appliance could have 110VAC applied to it. The appliance would still work, but it could pose a danger to whomever is using it.
The danger is most notable in lamps and devices with standard light sockets on them; if the plug were inserted backwards, the 110VAC would be applied to the metal socket on the outside of the lamp that you’d touch to turn the thing on & off. When properly connected, the 110VAC is only applied to the center contact at the bottom of the socket.
Without the different sized prongs in the plug, the user would have no way of knowing which way to plug it in. That was the case in years past, but we’ve learned from our mistakes. I guess you could argue that Murphy’s Law prompted the change, but it’d be a stretch.
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Alex
May 10th, 2007 at
12:32 pm
Hahaha chris - it took me a while to figure it out!
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Jason
May 10th, 2007 at
3:39 pm
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Bryan
May 10th, 2007 at
3:59 pm
We have an old refrigerator that I plugged in the wrong way and *youch!* did I not ever make that mistake again. It’s easy to forget how much power is in house current until it’s shooting through your body.
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earl
May 10th, 2007 at
4:34 pm
Socks only get lost when they are taken out of the drawer to be worn. Since a sock without a mate would never be taken out to wear, it has a 100% chance of not being lost.
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Tim
May 10th, 2007 at
4:59 pm
Ginsberg’s Theorem is actually a philosophical take on the three basic laws of thermodynamics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_laws_of_thermodynamics#First_law
As for the lost sock, check the inside front of your dryer, right behind the lint trap: the place you don’t normally see that’s just big enough to hide one sock.
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Cori
May 10th, 2007 at
7:14 pm
Sometimes it is mildly useful that I keep a pocket mirror at my desk.
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Chris
May 11th, 2007 at
9:06 am
This posting seems to be missing a header. There’s just a blank space between this one and the “Futuristic Hotels” post above it.
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Chris
May 11th, 2007 at
9:09 am
Never mind. It showed up after I whined about it.
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T Bone
May 11th, 2007 at
9:43 pm
Fred’s Law
In the end,we’re just losers. -
Alex
May 12th, 2007 at
1:06 am
Murphy’s law in action, Chris.
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Widgett Walls
June 6th, 2007 at
9:58 am
My own Law of Relative Development states that every book, every comic book, every television show, every magazine article and every video game ever created has a movie adaptation in development hell somewhere in Hollywood. This covers all known films, as they have a remake pending as well.
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Uncle Rich
June 11th, 2007 at
9:56 pm
“The chances of someone watching you are directly proportional to the foolishness of your action.”
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Chick-e
September 15th, 2007 at
3:52 pm
Just about everthing is covered by the proceeding laws, with one exception. As proposed years ago by a friend, so we should probably call it Zev’s Law, “You can HAVE anything you don’t want.”
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