Murphy's law

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

We've all used this excuse or cited this adage whenever something big is due, it's 1AM the night before and suddenly, Word doesn't open, the printer is out of ink, and the paper is exactly the wrong shade of the colour pink.

Murphy's law is a bit of a joke which generally states that when things are more urgent or important, they are more likely to go wrong.

But if you read the wiki (Murphy's law), you'll find a lot of amusing links at the bottom.

For instance, there's the classic example of Murphy's law: The fact that buttered toast always lands butter-side-down when dropped. The more expensive the carpet, the more likely this is to happen.
Tumbling toast, Murphy's law and the Fundamental Constants

This article follows a serious experiment in 1996 by the author, who claims to have shown that, due to torque and all that physics nonsense, toast dropped from normal table-height has a natural tendency to complete approximately half a revolution during the fall and therefore to more often land butter-side down.

He goes on to explain that tables are made that height for humans' convenience, and that humans' heights are determined by fundamental particles which were determined moments after the Big Bang, so therefore the fact that toast lands butter-side down is a natural property of the universe. (very cute)

There is also a link to an article by a team of "experts" [2] who claim to have found the mathematical rule for Murphy's law:

((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
where U is urgency, C is complexity, I is importance, S is skill, F is frequency, and A is aggravation, a constant set at 0.7.

They claim that you can input all your factors here to find out the risk of falling victim to Murphy's law in any one case.

There is also (on the wiki) the classic joke that if you strap a piece of buttered toast (which always lands buttered-side-down) to a cat's back, buttered-side up (cats known to always land on their feet), and drop the cat out of a window, the cat/butter will fall to the ground then hover there spinning, since both are naturally trying to land with their side down.

Have a read of that page, its a good one.

I'll conclude with Murphy's Ultimate Corollary:
(and hope that the blogger doesn't crash when I click send).

"If it could have gone wrong earlier and it did not, it ultimately would have been beneficial for it to have."
- Murphy's Ultimate Corollary