Views From The Breezeway
Saturday, May 12, 2018
posted by Phy @ 5:03 PM
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
posted by Phy @ 4:07 PM
I now post over at http://phywriter.com. Cya there!
Sunday, January 18, 2004
posted by Phy @ 5:25 PM
s94662209.onlinehome.us
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
posted by Phy @ 10:51 AM
http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume9/v9i5/murphy/murphy0.html
The Fastest Man on Earth (Overview and Index)
Why Everything You Know About Murphy's Law is Wrong
by Nick T. Spark
whatcangowrongwill@yahoo.com
www.Regulus-Missile.com and www.eyeballoverload.com
Los Angeles, California
Whatever you might think about Murphy's Law, one thing is certain: it is as ubiquitous an expression as there is in American English. Over the years it has been cited in thousands of articles, websites and news reports, been the subject of several books, appeared as the title of at least one bad Charles Bronson movie and a TV show, and inspired about a dozen zillion corollary Laws. Just about every time something goes wrong somewhere, the Law gets its two cents in. Fortunately my expertise owes very little to actual adversity - I'm not writing this from a hospital bed - and almost everything to research. Historical research. Which is to say I have become the expert on the origins of Murphy's Law. This happened by accident...and if I'd known what the consequences would be of sticking my nose into it - how I'd draw the wrath of Chuck Yeager, get caught in the middle of a nasty 20-year feud, and nearly wind up in a hospital bed - I probably wouldn't have bothered.
(snip)
"The Law's namesake," Nichols wrote, "was Capt. Ed Murphy Jr., a development engineer... Frustrated with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gauge bridges caused him to remark - 'if there is any way to do it wrong, he will' - referring to the technician who had wired the bridges. I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the associated variations..."
That appeared straightforward enough, and piqued my interest. I subsequently did some research and I discovered to my surprise that the story of the origin of Murphy's Law was not something generally agreed upon. Accounts in fact varied wildly. Some sources gave the credit solely to Ed Murphy Jr., a man they praised for his wisdom, insight, and panache, but said almost nothing about. In other places, Nichols' letter appeared - often word for word - explaining how he had come up with "the statement." And at least a few writers suggested that Colonel Stapp, also known as "the Fastest Man on Earth," had invented the Law.
It made my mind race. What were the real facts? Exactly who was Capt. Ed Murphy? What on earth was the point of Stapp's rocket sled tests? And what the heck is a strap transducer? I decided I had to find out. How hard could it be? I thought. Murphy's Law might be something of an urban legend -- like the story about the guy who strapped rocket bottles to his car and accidentally launched himself into a mountainside - but thanks to my neighbor I had apparently stumbled upon a real, living, tangible link.
(snip)
Nichols insists the error had nothing to do with DeMarco, Hollabaugh or anyone else on the Northrop team. The gauges hadn’t been installed wrong — they’d actually been assembled incorrectly at Wright Field and delivered as defective merchandise. Perhaps Murphy had designed the gauges incorrectly. Or perhaps he’d made his schematic in such a way that it was unclear, causing his assistant to wire them backwards — yet if the assistant had actually done that, then he’d truly had bad luck. On the face of it, the fellow would have had a 50% chance of wiring each gauge correctly. But he’d managed the hat trick, wiring all four wrong. Either way, Nichols figured, Murphy was at fault because he obviously hadn’t tested the gauges prior to flying out to Edwards.
“When Murphy came out in the morning, and we told him what happened,” remembers Nichols, “he was unhappy.” But much to Nichols’ surprise, Murphy almost spontaneously blamed the failure on his assistant at Wright. “If that guy has any way of making a mistake,” Murphy exclaimed with disgust. “He will.”
At the time Murphy’s comment didn’t seem like much of anything except a declaration of frustration and, in Nichols’ view, an expression of extreme hubris. Certainly no one knew a eureka moment — a “Watson, come here!” or “The reaction is self-sustaining” — had just taken place. No one realized that the miswired transducers were like a singular destined apple, falling free of a branch and landing square on Newton’s head, raising a bump and revealing a universal truth.
According to Nichols the failure was only a momentary set back —“the strap information wasn’t that important anyway,” he says — and regardless good data had been collected from other instruments. The Northrop team rewired the gauges, calibrated them, and did another test. This time Murphy’s transducers worked perfectly, producing useable data. And from that point forward, Nichols notes, “we used them straight on” because they were a good addition to the telemetry package. But Murphy wasn’t around to witness his devices’ success. He’d returned to Wright Field and never visited the Gee Whiz track ever again.
Long after he’d departed however, Murphy’s comment hung in the air like a lonely cloud over the ancient dry lake. Part of the reason was, no one was particularly happy with Murphy, least of all Nichols. The more he thought about the incident, the more it bothered him. He became all but convinced that Murphy, and not his assistant, was at fault. Murphy had “committed several cardinal sins” with respect to reliability engineering. He hadn’t verified that the gauges had been assembled correctly, he hadn’t bothered to test them, and he hadn’t given Nichols any time to calibrate them. “If he had done any of those things,” Nichols notes dryly, “He would have avoided the fiasco.”
As it was Murphy’s silly, maybe even slightly asinine comment made the rounds. “He really ticked off some team members by blaming the whole thing on his underling,” Nichols says. “And we got to thinking as a group. You know? We’ve got a Murphy’s Law in that. And then we started talking about what it should be. His statement was too long, and it really didn’t fit into a Law. So we tried many different things and we finally came up with, ‘If it can happen, it will happen.’”
So Murphy’s Law was created, more or less spontaneously, by the entire Northrop test team under the supervision of Nichols. In one sense, it represented a bit of sweet revenge upon Ed Murphy. But George Nichols rapidly recognized it was far more than that. Murphy’s Law was a wonderful pet phrase, an amusing quip that contained a universal truth. It proved a handy touchstone for Nichols’ day to day work as project manager. “If it can happen, it will happen,” he says. “So you’ve got to go through and ask yourself, if this part fails, does this system still work, does it still do the function it is supposed to do? What are the single points of failure? Murphy’s Law established the drive to put redundancy in. And that’s the heart of reliability engineering.”
The Fastest Man on Earth (Overview and Index)
Why Everything You Know About Murphy's Law is Wrong
by Nick T. Spark
whatcangowrongwill@yahoo.com
www.Regulus-Missile.com and www.eyeballoverload.com
Los Angeles, California
Whatever you might think about Murphy's Law, one thing is certain: it is as ubiquitous an expression as there is in American English. Over the years it has been cited in thousands of articles, websites and news reports, been the subject of several books, appeared as the title of at least one bad Charles Bronson movie and a TV show, and inspired about a dozen zillion corollary Laws. Just about every time something goes wrong somewhere, the Law gets its two cents in. Fortunately my expertise owes very little to actual adversity - I'm not writing this from a hospital bed - and almost everything to research. Historical research. Which is to say I have become the expert on the origins of Murphy's Law. This happened by accident...and if I'd known what the consequences would be of sticking my nose into it - how I'd draw the wrath of Chuck Yeager, get caught in the middle of a nasty 20-year feud, and nearly wind up in a hospital bed - I probably wouldn't have bothered.
(snip)
"The Law's namesake," Nichols wrote, "was Capt. Ed Murphy Jr., a development engineer... Frustrated with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gauge bridges caused him to remark - 'if there is any way to do it wrong, he will' - referring to the technician who had wired the bridges. I assigned Murphy's Law to the statement and the associated variations..."
That appeared straightforward enough, and piqued my interest. I subsequently did some research and I discovered to my surprise that the story of the origin of Murphy's Law was not something generally agreed upon. Accounts in fact varied wildly. Some sources gave the credit solely to Ed Murphy Jr., a man they praised for his wisdom, insight, and panache, but said almost nothing about. In other places, Nichols' letter appeared - often word for word - explaining how he had come up with "the statement." And at least a few writers suggested that Colonel Stapp, also known as "the Fastest Man on Earth," had invented the Law.
It made my mind race. What were the real facts? Exactly who was Capt. Ed Murphy? What on earth was the point of Stapp's rocket sled tests? And what the heck is a strap transducer? I decided I had to find out. How hard could it be? I thought. Murphy's Law might be something of an urban legend -- like the story about the guy who strapped rocket bottles to his car and accidentally launched himself into a mountainside - but thanks to my neighbor I had apparently stumbled upon a real, living, tangible link.
(snip)
Nichols insists the error had nothing to do with DeMarco, Hollabaugh or anyone else on the Northrop team. The gauges hadn’t been installed wrong — they’d actually been assembled incorrectly at Wright Field and delivered as defective merchandise. Perhaps Murphy had designed the gauges incorrectly. Or perhaps he’d made his schematic in such a way that it was unclear, causing his assistant to wire them backwards — yet if the assistant had actually done that, then he’d truly had bad luck. On the face of it, the fellow would have had a 50% chance of wiring each gauge correctly. But he’d managed the hat trick, wiring all four wrong. Either way, Nichols figured, Murphy was at fault because he obviously hadn’t tested the gauges prior to flying out to Edwards.
“When Murphy came out in the morning, and we told him what happened,” remembers Nichols, “he was unhappy.” But much to Nichols’ surprise, Murphy almost spontaneously blamed the failure on his assistant at Wright. “If that guy has any way of making a mistake,” Murphy exclaimed with disgust. “He will.”
At the time Murphy’s comment didn’t seem like much of anything except a declaration of frustration and, in Nichols’ view, an expression of extreme hubris. Certainly no one knew a eureka moment — a “Watson, come here!” or “The reaction is self-sustaining” — had just taken place. No one realized that the miswired transducers were like a singular destined apple, falling free of a branch and landing square on Newton’s head, raising a bump and revealing a universal truth.
According to Nichols the failure was only a momentary set back —“the strap information wasn’t that important anyway,” he says — and regardless good data had been collected from other instruments. The Northrop team rewired the gauges, calibrated them, and did another test. This time Murphy’s transducers worked perfectly, producing useable data. And from that point forward, Nichols notes, “we used them straight on” because they were a good addition to the telemetry package. But Murphy wasn’t around to witness his devices’ success. He’d returned to Wright Field and never visited the Gee Whiz track ever again.
Long after he’d departed however, Murphy’s comment hung in the air like a lonely cloud over the ancient dry lake. Part of the reason was, no one was particularly happy with Murphy, least of all Nichols. The more he thought about the incident, the more it bothered him. He became all but convinced that Murphy, and not his assistant, was at fault. Murphy had “committed several cardinal sins” with respect to reliability engineering. He hadn’t verified that the gauges had been assembled correctly, he hadn’t bothered to test them, and he hadn’t given Nichols any time to calibrate them. “If he had done any of those things,” Nichols notes dryly, “He would have avoided the fiasco.”
As it was Murphy’s silly, maybe even slightly asinine comment made the rounds. “He really ticked off some team members by blaming the whole thing on his underling,” Nichols says. “And we got to thinking as a group. You know? We’ve got a Murphy’s Law in that. And then we started talking about what it should be. His statement was too long, and it really didn’t fit into a Law. So we tried many different things and we finally came up with, ‘If it can happen, it will happen.’”
So Murphy’s Law was created, more or less spontaneously, by the entire Northrop test team under the supervision of Nichols. In one sense, it represented a bit of sweet revenge upon Ed Murphy. But George Nichols rapidly recognized it was far more than that. Murphy’s Law was a wonderful pet phrase, an amusing quip that contained a universal truth. It proved a handy touchstone for Nichols’ day to day work as project manager. “If it can happen, it will happen,” he says. “So you’ve got to go through and ask yourself, if this part fails, does this system still work, does it still do the function it is supposed to do? What are the single points of failure? Murphy’s Law established the drive to put redundancy in. And that’s the heart of reliability engineering.”
Monday, September 22, 2003
posted by Phy @ 10:15 AM
Gabe wrote the following in today's Penny Arcade blog:
"The only thing I really don't enjoy about Savage was that in order to repair something or really bash down a building with melee attacks, you have to click rather a lot, over and over, for a very long time. It's tedious. Luckily, Nilt came to the rescue here as well. Bring down the console with the ~ thing, and enter "bind key toggle button1" where "key" is whatever key you want to hold down. See? That wasn't so bad."
Beauty.
"The only thing I really don't enjoy about Savage was that in order to repair something or really bash down a building with melee attacks, you have to click rather a lot, over and over, for a very long time. It's tedious. Luckily, Nilt came to the rescue here as well. Bring down the console with the ~ thing, and enter "bind key toggle button1" where "key" is whatever key you want to hold down. See? That wasn't so bad."
Beauty.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
posted by Phy @ 10:00 AM
I was reading one of the stories this weekend and came across the genesis for his acting career - he was working in the coal mines with his father and brothers and saw that Actors made more money, so he got a small part in a stage production because he figured that that's where the money was. Hollywood wasn't making many films when he was young, so he ended up working in Europe. He became a legend over there but he didn't make it back over to America until he was 50.
I've seen tough-guy actor Charles Bronson in a number of roles (including The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven) but my favorite Bronson role was as Harmonica from Sergio Leone's sprawling spagetti western film, Once Upon a Time in the West.
I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen for a festival in Santa Fe. Wow.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1015561/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=1&rid=14046
[b]Once Upon a Time in the West[/b]
Directed By: Sergio Leone
Starring: Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Lionel Stander, Keenan Wynn
(PG, 165 min.)
[i]Leone’s elegiac masterpiece is a classic Western tale about railroads, land grabs, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Ennio Morricone’s haunting score befits the movie’s operatic scope. An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history.[/i]
I've seen tough-guy actor Charles Bronson in a number of roles (including The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven) but my favorite Bronson role was as Harmonica from Sergio Leone's sprawling spagetti western film, Once Upon a Time in the West.
I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen for a festival in Santa Fe. Wow.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1015561/reviews.php?critic=columns&sortby=default&page=1&rid=14046
[b]Once Upon a Time in the West[/b]
Directed By: Sergio Leone
Starring: Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards, Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Lionel Stander, Keenan Wynn
(PG, 165 min.)
[i]Leone’s elegiac masterpiece is a classic Western tale about railroads, land grabs, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Ennio Morricone’s haunting score befits the movie’s operatic scope. An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history.[/i]
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
posted by Phy @ 3:11 PM
1. Start with something happening or the promise that something will happen.
2. Move from the end of one scene directly to something happening in the next one.
3. Cut and/or combine scenes.
4. Use exposition to describe events subordinate to the main action.
5. Eliminate pointless repetition and overly involved sentence construction.
2. Move from the end of one scene directly to something happening in the next one.
3. Cut and/or combine scenes.
4. Use exposition to describe events subordinate to the main action.
5. Eliminate pointless repetition and overly involved sentence construction.
posted by Phy @ 2:37 PM
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/000165.html
William Ellery Channing
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.
William Ellery Channing
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most previous thought, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books.
posted by Phy @ 12:08 AM
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/advrobinhood.html
The ideal hero must do good, defeat evil, have a good time and win the girl. "The Adventures of Robin Hood" is like a textbook on how to get that right.
The ideal hero must do good, defeat evil, have a good time and win the girl. "The Adventures of Robin Hood" is like a textbook on how to get that right.
