Why does bread always fall butter side down?

Why do you always take the wrong turn, over and over again? Why is the song you hate most the one you can't get out of your head? Why, when you lose something, do you always go looking for it in the same place? And why does it suddenly appear there, after the fourth or fifth time you've looked? You've certainly heard of Murphy's Law. The one that says that if something can go wrong, it surely will. There are so many situations in which the unfathomable seems to be against us that even those who have never heard of Murphy have certainly experienced the effects of these irritating everyday frustrations. Some believe that only the negative side of the law of averages is at play. Richard Robinson prefers to view such phenomena through the lens of science and psychology. For him, understanding how Murphy's Laws work—originally formulated by technicians working on crash tests at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1949—helps us better understand how the human brain works. Programmed to respond to much simpler situations than those faced by our Stone Age great-great ...