Browse Murphy's Laws

The last man entering an elevator going up goes to the lowest floor.

- Dimple Venigalla

An alarm clock can cause even the most passive of us to become violent.

- Brad Johnson

The least irritating alarm is the most inefficient.

- Brad Johnson

No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, it will be sold somewhere cheaper after buying it.

A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).

- Ralph

Radio clocks never go off.

- Brad Johnson

Putt's law: Technology is dominated by those who do not understand it; corollary: hierarchies invert competence

Peter principle: Employees rise to their level of incompetence.

Dilbert principle: Ineffective employees are promoted to management to minimize harm.

Never argue with a fool; people might not know the difference.

Nothing is right. Therefore, if everything is going right, something is wrong.

The alarm will never go off whenever you have something important to do the next morning.

- Brad Johnson

Van Loon's law: Mechanical development is inversely related to the availability of slave labor.

Try not to discuss "your day" at the family dinner table.

Corollary: Smashing an alarm clock to pieces is a healthy and cheap way to relieve tension.

- Brad Johnson

The snooze bar is the greatest invention by man.

- Brad Johnson

Wirth's law: Software is getting slower more quickly than hardware is getting faster

Wiio's laws: Communication usually fails, except by accident.

Twyman's law: Interesting data are usually erroneous

Tesler's law (law of conservation of complexity): Every application has an irreducible amount of complexity.

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crud.

Streisand effect: Attempts to suppress information often lead to greater publicity

Spearman's law of diminishing returns: Predictive power of general intelligence decreases at high IQ levels.

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy: Bureaucracies end up run by people serving the bureaucracy rather than its goals.

Parkinson's law: Work expands to fill the available time.