BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 06:50 PM

LTS...soon as my back is better, I'll see what I can do. ☺ (If you stick to Watney's, you'll not drink enough to be dangerous)

(you know, they make plastic covers for keyboards)

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: HuwG
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 07:27 PM

Archimedes' Principle: When a body is immersed in a bath, the telephone rings.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 08:00 PM

what is 2/5ths of 5/8ths of fuck all?

2/8ths, or 1/4 Fuck all

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jan 10 - 10:42 PM

Some folks are lucky, and some seem luckless.
Some are fuckwitted, while others are fuckless.
Some sodomize, and celebrate oddness,
Others more mannerly seem to be sodless.
Some beggars bugger, ignoring their beggarness,
Some buggers beg, but still remain buggerless.
Life's such a puzzle, a whatness of whichness,
Life is a bitch, but some must go bitchless.
I guess the answer's to be glad for your bod,
And never mind bugger, and ignore fuck and sod..

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 11:27 AM

Amos, PLEASE tell me you wrote that!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 11:39 AM

It could be no other... it is excellent.

(I was going to say he was channeling Ogden Nash, but Ogden never quite got up (or is it down?) to that quality)

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 11:47 AM

You are all fortunate in that you seem to know who everyone is, who are the distinguished people hidden behind all these nicknames. I have worked out who kytrad is, & Eliza is not much disguised: but who Amos, Kendall, BillD, & so many other obviously prominent people on here really are is something concealed from me — tho Peace has been in contact & so I have rumbled him. Come clean, some of you, why don't you? Which of you is really Madonna? Amy Winehouse? President Obama? The Queen? Paul McCartney? Come out...

- Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 12:08 PM

LOL...we are all really ministers the the English parliament, coming here to confuse things~

Actually, if you do a search on FSGW Getaway (or ust 'Getaway') you will find many of us there, with 'some' links to pictures of this annual event.

here is my pictures page at "My Opera", which includes pics from the 2005 & 2007 Getaways, with many folks identified under each individual picture. Amos & Kendall, and I are all in there at odd places. Also, various folks from the UK who have attended are also in many of the pics.

(My wife & I are going to a birthday singing party in 30 minutes, but others may be here to fill in more details.)

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 12:12 PM

Wow, thanks a gr8 big BUNCH in ♠♠♠♠♠♠, Bill. Boy-oh-boy, am I EVER enlightened now! 〠〠〠〠〠

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 12:14 PM

"Enlightenment is as enlightenment does", he said tautologically.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: paula t
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 12:23 PM

I remember a TV programme about 15 years ago. It was all about Murphy's Law. They finished by trying to prove the particular Murphy's Law that buttered bread always lands butter-side down on the floor if you drop it.They buttered a slice of bread and dropped it...........It landed butter side UP .(Thus proving Murphy's law that if you try to prove the inevitability of Murphy's law , Murphy's law will inevitably ensure that you fail!)

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 12:33 PM

Nice one, Paula - now let's see how you get on trying to disprove Murphy's law of proof of Murphy's Law ∞∞∞

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Tangledwood
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 05:35 PM

You are probably familiar with the follow-up experiment. Buttered bread lands butter side down; a dropped cat always lands on its feet. If you fix a slice of bread, butter side up, on a cats back and drop it you have an anti-gravity machine.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Paul Reade
Date: 17 Jan 10 - 06:25 PM

If the bread lands butter side up, you've buttered the wrong side!

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 04:07 AM

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

Everything takes longer than you think.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Micca
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 04:25 AM

This is the set I had framed on my office wall above my desk so that visitors (especially Academic staff) could read them

Murphy's Laws

1.        If anything can go wrong, it will
2.        If two things go wrong the worst will be screened by the less bad incident
3.        Nature sides with the hidden flaw.
4.        It always costs more than you have.
5.        It always takes longer than you expect
6.        Everything you want to do, you have to do something else first
7.        If you fool with something for long enough it will eventually break
8.        Never underestimate the power of stupidity
9.        If a slice of bread is dropped it will land butter side down if the carpet is expensive or the floor is dirty and it is the last slice.
10.        If you think there is some good in everyone, you haven't met everyone
11.        You can make things fool proof but you can't make them idiot proof.
12.        If you think you've covered all possible flaws, there is always one more you didn't think of.
13.        There is never time to do it right but there is always time to do it over
14.        Forward planning is useful for preparing you for what can go wrong but does not tell you what will go wrong
15.        An expert is not someone who is always right, they are just wrong in more sophisticated ways.

For Management
16.        When in doubt, mumble
17.        When in charge, delegate
18.        When things go wrong, blame
19.        Simple solutions only fit simple problems and appeal to those who do not understand the problem anyway.
20.        You can fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time and that's usually enough.
21.        If you pay peanuts you get monkeys or garbage in equals garbage out
22.        An extra pair of hands can help out but if they have knowledge they can transform and enhance
23.        Just because you are paranoid it does not mean they are not out to get you.
24. Expertise is not transferable, just because you are good at your job does not mean you are good at, or even understand, mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 04:53 AM

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.

So far, the Universe is winning.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 05:38 AM

I once, I remember, formulated several Grosvenor-Myer's laws: e.g.

He won't ring back, you'll have to call again.

It won't get better after the interval.

You can't get through that way, you'll have to come back

The quality of any performer is in inverse proportion to his/her popularity.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: GUEST,strad
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 06:51 AM

From a competition in a magazine (possibly Mayfair) the winning law was "Everything takes longer". I haven't come across anything to disprove this, yet.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Micca
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 08:15 AM

Tangledwood, with referenc to the Cat/buttered bread concept when this was tried under laboratory conditions The cat landed on its feet then promptly rolled onto its back!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 09:06 AM

For every complex problem, there is ONE solution which is clear, easily understood and thus obvious----- and wrong!

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 12:15 PM

"Distrust all generalizations."

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: GUEST,Bob L
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 01:02 PM

Murphy's Law is recursive: washing the car to make it rain doesn't work.


If you *really* insist on seeing the definitive story (which was awarded the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for Literature), it's at http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy0.html.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Lighter
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 01:09 PM

Similar and familiar: "You can't get there from here."

Originated, IIRC, as the punchline of a joke about a tourist trying to negotiate the NYC subway system or the like.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:05 PM

I think it goes back further, to an old Punch cartoon of traveller asking yokel the way — the best example of which, IMO, somewhat related to topic, has caption like —

"Is this the road for Cottenham?"
"Dunno."
"Well, does that road go to Impington?"
"Dunno."
"Well how do I get to Wilburton?"
"Dunno."
"You don't know much, do you?"
"Maybe — but I ain't lorst!"

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bert
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:24 PM

Isn't there a verse in Arkinsaw Traveler that tell a similar story?

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:49 PM

Right on, Bert - good thinking

♫♫ Ti tiddly-um-tum tum-tum-tum ♫♫

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:54 PM

Sure,...Arkansaw Traveler....but in several old versions of the Cottenham story in the USA. I knew a couple where the farmer/hick sends the traveler off with directions, only to have him reappear in a couple hours, and the punchline IS: "Well, I guess you cain't git thar from here."

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Micca
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 05:42 PM

BillD and Lighter, I first heard that back in the60's as the Irishman at Oxford Circus story
Oxford Circus on the London Underground has different 3 tube lines interchangeable there and is Very Busy
Someone asked an Irishman there for travel directions to somewhere out in the suburbs and ,after studying the Tube map for several minutes he said, with imprccable (Irish)logic

" Now, if I wanted to go there I wouldnt' start from here"

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 07:53 PM

"You can't get there from here" may well show up in versions of "The Arkansas Traveler," but I suspect they're modern folkie versions. A search of various databases doesn't turn up the wisecrack, in those words, before the late 1920s, and it doesn't seem to have become really common till after World War II.

Ogden Nash used it as a book title in 1958. That could have doubled its popularity.

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 12:09 AM

The trouble with supposing that 'sod all' comes from 'sodomize' is that the kind of people who say 'sod all' have probably never heard the term 'sodomize.'

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: Tangledwood
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 02:55 AM

Tangledwood, with referenc to the Cat/buttered bread concept when this was tried under laboratory conditions The cat landed on its feet then promptly rolled onto its back!!!!

Yet another example of the contrary nature of cats. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Laws of Sod & Murphy
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:08 AM

leneia - sorry, can't make heads or tails or any sense whatever of your last post. Do you claim to know the precise derivation or etymology of every word you use? If not, don't you know what it means?
Bemused!