Murphy's Law--a correction

Gerald Cohen gcohen at UMR.EDU
Sat Dec 16 02:00:50 UTC 2000


   Re: Murphy's Law, I suppose it is only appropriate that when
treating this topic I should make an embarrassing mistake.  In my
last message on "Murphy's Law" I mentioned that the earliest known
attestation (1955) was noticed by Barry Popik. The correct
attribution is the _Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs_; this is
clearly given right before the 1955 attestation in the Feb. 1999
article which Popik and I wrote, and I will not even try to explain
how the error crept into my earlier e-mail.
    The rest of the treatment seems okay, though, at least until the
next correction comes in.

----Gerald Cohen



More information about the Ads-l mailing list