Muphry’s Law and broken browsers

@daphne diaphanous said:
Heavens above JimmyT! I think you might have lost the aforesaid button yourself.

It took me five minutes to spot it but, yes, the literal is there and I won’t edit it out as a reminder of my own shame.

There’s an old principle in journalism called Muphrys Law – which is that, in trying to correct someone else’s mistake you invariably make one yourself. 

The most commonly quoted example is the newspaper that had messed up when trying to describe a retired military leader as “battle-scarred”. 

The apology went something like:

“In yesterday’s edition we referred to General So-and-so as being “bottle-scarred”.  Obviously we intended to say “battle-scared” and apologise for any embarrassment caused.”

I have worked on several newspapers that all claimed to have run that story.  I think it’s an urbane myth.

Oh, and there should have been a comma after “heavens above”.

@kiwipaul said:

I use Firefox both now and at home and so their must be some setup wrong or maybe an upgrade missing at home. I’ll try at home using IE (aargh). Your spell checker is trying to spell check that.

Your efforts are appreciated.  

I gave up on Firefox a while ago because their incessant upgrades stuffed up all the other software that was browser dependent, at least until they upgraded too … and then there was another Firefox upgrade.  And as for Internet Explorer, I agree … aaaaaargh!

This site is built and managed on Chrome which seems to just get on with the job and I wouldn’t willingly use any other browser now (although I do have to use IE for the Australian Tax Office website, for some reason).  Give it a try … but be prepared to be seduced into Google’s version of the Apple ‘walled garden’.