This article is classified "Fictional"
Not many people know that, just like the law of gravity can be expressed by a gravitational field, Murphy's law [1] can have a field associated with it: the Murphic field. The amplitude of this field at a specified coordinate indicates the probability of something going wrong at that location. The Murphic field covers the entire planet, or rather, everywhere anyone lets his or her mind wander [2]. That the intensity variations seem to have maxima at the locations of supermarkets has already been adequately explored. Just as the electric field is generated by sources (electric charges), the Murphic field is generated by situations. The Murphic field strength depends on the severity of the consequences of a "happening", where a happening is defined as a spontaneous collapse of the Murphic field at a specific location. I will give an example later on. The study of the Murphic field is still in its infancy; it has not yet been defined how to quantify situations. It is, however, already reasonably simple to compare field strengths of situations. If one takes two identical pieces of buttered bread, then smears one with syrup on the buttered side and puts cheese on the other piece, then the slice of syruped bread is far more likely to fall on the buttered side when it hits the ground than the other one. This is common knowledge. After some training it is easy to detect the Murphic field strength in daily life. A happy and innocent little child playing close to some dangerously moving very heavy cast-iron swings is for instance easily identified as a situation with a large local Murphic field strength. Luckily the Murphic field can just as easy be diminished by simple manipulations, like telling the kid to play somewhere else. The tricky thing is that the manipulation itself disturbs the Murphic field, temporarily creating a significantly higher amplitude. Some people even go so far as to utilise the manipulation to create highly entertaining [3] home movies [4]. In fact, careful manipulation of the Murphic field is the principle on which magic, the real magic, is based. A company, which declined to be named, has sponsored research into how the Murphic field acts in business environments. Important files were placed on blank unlabeled floppies and checked periodically to find out how long it took for someone to accidently delete them. All floppies were tracked for five years, but the program was aborted when it appeared that all the tracking data were accidently erased. [1] Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong... eventually [5]. [2] Realising that something can go wrong somewhere, even on places where there isn't a living soul in sight (like Mercury), will be a sure way to increase the Murphic Field there. It is interesting to compare the role of the observer in Murphic and Quantum Mechanics. [3] To critics I say: did you laugh when you saw the teeth knocked out of that little Japanese kid falling of the curb on TV? (!) [4] If you feel disturbed by these images you can replace the child with an expensive Indian carpet, and the swing with a glass filled to the rim with aggressive black currant juice placed on the edge of an extremely wobbly antique table. The home movie of this happening is not quite as entertaining, though (some say) [6]. [5] Ben Stern (bstern@heatwave.dorm.umd.edu) claims that this law is actually Finagle's Law, Murphy's being "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways will result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." The misquote comes with the field, I guess. Beware: there are a whole lot of other Murphy-related laws out there to get you, my dear readers! [7] [6] John Murphy (JMurphy42@aol.com): unless, of course, the following circumstances exist: 1) You are viewing this home movie on television whilst on vacation; 2) This is the first you've ever seen or heard of this video's being taped; and 3) The Indian carpet in question is, without a doubt, the one in your parlor. [7] (Another footnote!) You can read all about this in The New Hacker's Dictionary, edited by Eric Raymond. Finagle's Law is in there too.