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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Thursday, March 28, 2002
From the Jargon dictionary, www.jargon.net:
Murphy's Law /prov./ The correct, *original* Murphy's Law reads: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it." This is a principle of defensive design, cited here because it is usually given in mutant forms less descriptive of the challenges of design for lusers. For example, you don't make a two-pin plug symmetrical and then label it `THIS WAY UP'; if it matters which way it is plugged in, then you make the design asymmetrical (see also the anecdote under magic smoke).
Edward A. Murphy, Jr. was one of the engineers on the rocket-sled experiments that were done by the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test human acceleration tolerances (USAF project MX981). One experiment involved a set of 16 accelerometers mounted to different parts of the subject's body. There were two ways each sensor could be glued to its mount, and somebody methodically installed all 16 the wrong way around. Murphy then made the original form of his pronouncement, which the test subject (Major John Paul Stapp) quoted at a news conference a few days later.
Within months `Murphy's Law' had spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before too many years had gone by variants had passed into the popular imagination, changing as they went. Most of these are variants on "Anything that can go wrong, will"; this is correctly referred to as Finagle's Law. The memetic drift apparent in these mutants clearly demonstrates Murphy's Law acting on itself!
Extract from:
Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on the M-16 Rifle Program of the Committee On Armed Services
House of Representatives Ninetieth Congress First Session
May 15, 16, 31, June 21, July 25,26,27, August 8, 9, and 22, 1967
Begin extract:
Mr. Morgan: On the ammunition, Mr. Chairman, I have just two more questions. Are you familiar with the reasons stated by the Army for the changeover from the IMR to the ball powder? Do you have any first hand knowledge or second hand knowledge of that?
Mr. Stoner: Well, the only - I have a little first hand knowledge because I was approached after this ammunition inspection was made by a person, I think it is the Secretary of Defense's Office, in looking at the technical data package.
Mr. Ichord: When was this?
Mr. Stoner: This was at the time, I forget how long it was, but it is at least a couple of years ago. He asked me my opinion on it, and I asked him why they were holding out for the ball propellant and they said, well this was more or less, as I could gather, a policy within the Army. They wanted to have everything ball propellant that they could in small arms.
Mr. Morgan: Because of the cost savings or what?
Mr. Stoner: Well, I think this was one of their reasons, and the fact that it burned a little cooler and so forth.
Like I said before, I didn't advise it because we had already had over 1,000 weapons in Vietnam that had gone through I thought, very well. These were the weapons that were sent over by ARPA, you know, prior to the adoption. I'm not sure of these times, but in that area of time.
Mr. Morgan: 1962?
Mr. Stoner: These were using the older cartridges which I didn't hear any complaints on in that particular test, and these were used by the Vietnamese troops who knew very little about any kind of a weapon. And based on that, and all the tests we had for years - in other words, this went on from, like I say, the first test was in 1958. There were quite a few years of testing all over the world. All of our experience was with the other cartridge, with the other propellant, and I didn't quite see changing horses in the middle of the stream without an awful lot of testing before we did it. And I advised this person of that, and also let it be known to other people, but it didn't seem to do much good. They went ahead anyway.
End extract.
The "Mr. Stoner" in the above excerpt is Eugene Stoner, the developer of the AR-15 rifle, adopted by the U.S. military as the M-16. A perfect example of two ways to do things, IMR or ball powder, one of which will cause catastrphic results--high gas port pressures, stuck cases, and thousands of lives lost when soldiers found themselves in firefights unarmed.
4:47 PM
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Hanlon's Razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
9:42 AM
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