Murphy's Law

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Grant Barrett wrote:

> The Annals of Improbable Research have a long four-part series on
> Murphy and his law:
>
> http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/
> murphy0.html

I had planned to post a message about this.  This is an interesting series
that has no major new information to offer, has no documented early
printed citations, but is based on talking with surviving witnesses to the
standard account of the origin of Murphy's Law and succeeds in bringing
out some of the contradictory aspects of the anecdotal record.  This
series coincidentally duplicates my conversation with George Nichols, with
whom I had just talked when I discovered the URL above.

Fred Shapiro


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