Saturday, January 12, 2008

Murphy's Dummies

Murphy's laws are awesome would be an understatement and I love reading them as they really do strike a chord with reality. I'm a member in orkut's Murphy's law community where countless Murphy's laws are listed. Recently, I came across a few Murphy's laws which I strongly believe don't actually qualify as Murphy's Law. There are two so called Murphy's law that I would like to contradict :

1. One never gets an engaged tone when he dials a wrong number.
2. Ones nose starts to itch when his hands are greased.

There is this Murphy's law that states "one never gets an engaged tone when he dials a wrong number". Well for starters, one can never know that he has dialed the wrong number if he gets an engaged tone. It is only after the call is attended, the person gets to know whether he has dialed the correct number or the wrong number. If the call goes unattended or if the caller get an engaged tone, the caller is least bothered to verify the genuineness of the number dialed and proceeds to make the call again. So I think this so called Murphy's law sucks.

There is another Murphy's law that states "ones nose starts to itch when his hands are greased". This law sucks too. This is because, it is only when a persons hand is greased and his nose starts to itch, he realises that he can do nothing about it other than to ask someone for help or clean his hand and itch his nose. Under normal circumstances, even if ones nose starts to itch, he makes no notice of it as he is free to use his hands and itch his nose.

Basically most of the Murphy's law rocks and are very practical but the above two laws can never fit in as a Murphy's law. One can have several million reasonings before stating something but must see to it that there is no room for reasoning after stating something.

Some of my personal favourite Murphy's Law are:
1. Everything takes longer than you think.
2. You never run out of things that can go wrong.
3. Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
4. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
5. If you think education is expensive -- try ignorance!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

why dont u write often dog?periya superstarnu nenapa?there is hardly 9 posts in ur blog and ur blog is 3years old.i dont know who murphy is so im not sure what to comment.write another blogpost and ill make a good comment.that would be in...well another 10to11 months from now :P

Ganesh Prabhu said...

@Srikanth
It is not that I willingly don't write often. It is just because I do not find time to blog. :)

@ Burphy, b/o Murphy aka Venkat

I don't know about Murphy but I sure am jobless.

Raghuveeran said...

"he makes no notice of it as he is free to use his hands and itch his nose."

Only if he sense/notice the "ITCH" he can use his hands...

Anonymous said...

great reasoning dude.5 star rating to you.

Anonymous said...

man i like the old blog layout it was different.anyway gud reasoning but tell me who in the hell cares abt these laws

danas said...

good one

Ganesh Prabhu said...

@Raghu
You took the literal meaning of that sentence. Read it contextually.

@Narendar
Thanks.

@Aswin
Thanks but I thought this layout was better than the previous one. Hey, there exists a huge mass of people who know about Murphy's laws and are very passionate about them.

@Dhana
Thanks.

Karthick said...

hey nice post man...some good logical questions..i wonder y should Murphy take credit for all this laws this r things which any human with normal thinking ability should make out...

Ganesh Prabhu said...

@Karthick
Thanks for your comment. Murphy was the first one to make such laws and as a matter of fact, he has quoted only about four or five laws himself. These laws were named Murphy's Law as a tribute to Murphy.

Anonymous said...

oh i like murphy's laws. have both his books.. lemme know if u want me to mail them to ya..
good job:D

Ganesh Prabhu said...

@Divya Srinivas
Finally there is a comment on this post from someone who knows about Murphy's laws. :) And ya about the books, mail them to my id. Thanks for dropping by and posting your comment.