Miscellaneous Murphy

As a rule of thumb...

...adding a couple stalks of celery to a pot of beans while cooking will remove the gassy component.

...if your back hurts while climbing stairs, walking up a hill, or getting out of a chair, you need to do back extension exercises.

...if your feet are cold, wear a hat.

You can find these and over 200 pages of other "rules of thumb" here.

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MISCELLANEOUS MURPHY'S LAWS

No matter who gets elected, government wins.

Your golfing skill deteriorates in proportion to the number of people watching you.

The job you want is well-paying, interesting, fun, rewarding, conveniently located, or attainable. You can only pick one.

Your current boss is the worst one you've ever had ... until you get the next one.

When you're convinced everything works just fine, you've overlooked something.

Paper is always strongest at the perforations.

If you watch a television show only twice during a season, the second time will be a repeat of the first episode you saw.

If you drop an unbreakable object, it will always land on something breakable.

The first person needing to get off an elevator will always be at the rear.

The squeakiness of floor boards is directly proportional to your need to remain unnoticed.

You cannot stop the ongoing love affair between pasta sauce and your white shirt.

[selected from murphys-laws.com; many paraphrased and rewritten by Mark Raymond]

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WORD for YOUR WEEK: So where does "rule of thumb" come from? Many believe it came from Old England where a man was permitted to beat his wife, providing the switch or stick he used was no wider than his thumb. All my etymology sources, however, say that is certainly an urban legend. More probably it comes from even farther back, when people used body parts for measuring things. We got the "foot" measurement by pacing distances. We still measure horses in "hands" and the distance from the tip of your thumb to the first knuckle is generally about an inch. So the "rule" part of the phrase actually refers to "ruler," not a general principle.

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