Broadcast on COAST TO COAST: November 20, 2003

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster — letters from listeners.

RS: Our segment on the origin of Murphy's Law — which states that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong — drew some responses. One came from Nick Spark, associate editor of Wings Magazine, an aviation history magazine. He spent the last year studying the origin of Murphy's law and wanted to add a few points.

AA: Nick Spark says the history of Murphy's Law is, in effect, a victim of Murphy's Law. We know it came out of a test of a rocket sled in the 1940s. The test involved a famous Air Force colonel, John Paul Stapp, and, among others, an engineer named Ed Murphy. A simple wiring mistake caused an acceleration meter to fail.

RS: Beyond that, Nick Spark says there is no way to know definitively who said what and who deserves what credit for Murphy's Law. He also says Murphy's Law was actually more of an optimistic statement, not the pessimistic view of things as we now use it. John Paul Stapp, a doctor, went on to improve automobile safety.

SPARK: "'If it can go wrong, it will go wrong.' Well, look to prevent it from going wrong. Make it so it can't happen, then it won't go wrong. And John Paul Stapp himself who's involved in putting seatbelts in American cars certainly looked at it in that respect. He saved a lot of people's lives by putting a seatbelt in a car so when something did go wrong, people's lives were saved. And, I mean, it's actually very funny, because Murphy's Law is by now far more famous than John Paul Stapp himself, and he was on the cover of Time magazine in the 1950s."

AA: Nick Spark says Stapp didn't like to talk about his role in the coining of Murphy's Law.

SPARK: "He viewed it as a real distraction from the real message that he wanted to send out in the world, which is: look everybody, buckle up."

RS: We also asked our listeners to suggest their own versions of Murphy's Law. Our friend Sebastiao Albano in Lavrinhas, Brazil, wrote: "I have the feeling that Mr. Murphy was a Brazilian. I say that because here, everything that works all over the world is yet to be constructed. Moreover, that law gets me every day:

"1. When I am alone at home, completely soaped under the shower, the telephone or the door bell rings.

"2. When I am in a hurry to type at work my computer refuses to turn on. I have to try between 20 and 50 times to turn it on.

AA: "3. When my computer definitely refuses to work I go to a cybercafe downtown and it is crowded.

"4. If I pass by the cybercafe some days later, with nothing in the world to do, it is completely empty.

RS: And "5. When I say everything right all my students are sleeping, but if I say something wrong they are completely awake.

AA: We also heard from William McGehee, who wrote: "I coined a phrase that I used when I was working in Saudi Arabia, because of so many different things that used to come up that I didn't know about: 'the knowing how is in the doing.'"

RS: This next letter has to do with a hand gesture we talked about with Melissa Wagner, author of "The Field Guide to Gestures."

AA: You put your pointer finger and little finger up, then hold down the two middle fingers with your thumb. In Texas, it's a way to mimic longhorn cattle, to show support for a college football team, the Texas Longhorns.

RS: And, as Melissa Wagner went on to explain, it's also become a popular gesture of affinity among fans at rock concerts.

WAGNER: "But the funny thing I found out is that in other parts of the world, it can actually mean your wife is cheating on you."

AA: And why is that? "I send you this e-mail in order to explain the connection between the horns gesture and infidelity," writes our friend Daniel Ortega in Madrid.

"It has its origin in the Greek myth of the Minotaur, a man with a bull's head, kept in a Cretan labyrinth and fed with human flesh. Before he ascended the throne of Crete, Minos struggled with his brothers for the right to rule. Minos prayed to the sea god Poseidon to send him a white bull, as a sign of approval by the gods for his reign. He promised to sacrifice the bull as an offering, and as a symbol of subservience.

RS: "A white bull emerged from the sea, but Minos liked the bull so much that he neglected to sacrifice it. As a punishment, Poseidon caused the king's wife to fall in love with the bull. The offspring of their lovemaking was a monster called the Minotaur. When Minos saw the newborn horned creature he discovered his wife's infidelity. That is the reason why in certain Mediterranean countries, such as Spain or Italy, horns are related to infidelity.

AA: "In Spanish, we say the husband of a faithless woman is 'horned.' Furthermore, if a woman cheats on her husband we say that she 'puts the horns on him.' Of course, the horns gesture means infidelity in Spain. Curiously, the animal that represents Spain is a bull. Sincerely yours, Daniel Ortega."

RS: And that's all for Wordmaster this week. Our e-mail address is word@voanews.com, and our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti, I'm Rosanne Skirble.

詞匯點津：

今天詞匯大師向我們詳細講述了“Murphy's Law”也就是墨菲定理。這可是西方最著名 的定律之一，不能不知！它的定義是這樣的：“If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.”就是說，“凡是可能出錯的事必定會出錯”，指的是任何一個事件，只要具 有大于零的機率，就不能假設它不會發生。

墨菲定律的歷史可追溯至1949年間，由當時美國空軍高速載人火箭雪橇 （Rocket sled ）MX981發展計劃的研究員提出，以研發工程師愛德華·A·墨菲 （Major Edward A. Murphy, Jr.）命名。當時模擬實驗已清晰要求參與者把夾子用正面夾好，結果還是有人 連續47個夾子都夾錯了，故此引申出一個理論：一件事可以差得很離譜的時候便會差到極限。

墨菲定律是管理哲學的一個論點，包含著悲觀主義的元素，但當代又衍生出了許多積極 的版本，我們亦可從樂觀一方去看待墨菲定理：“若要成功，早晚總會成功”。

而后AA和RS又談到了“horn”手勢，在不同的地方，它的寓意可是大相徑庭。比如，在美國德 克薩斯州，球迷常用它表示對球隊的支持，后來這個手勢泛指了對偶像的喜愛與支持。 但在地中海沿岸，“horn”由希臘神話而來，代表婦人的不貞，在西班牙，人們更是用 短語“put the horns on him”來表示女人的出軌。