By Graham Hayday, 9 October 2002 13:05
NEWS The vast majority of the UK population believe that Sod's Law really does exist and blame it for a whole range of household disasters. According to research from Direct Line Home Response 24, seven in 10 of us believe it's for real. Furthermore, if you're married, live in the West Midlands and own a toolkit, you are most likely to be a victim of Sod's Law. In a crucial quest to understand whether this phenomenon can be defined by a rational explanation - or whether it is simply a figment of our imagination - Direct Line approached Heinz Wolff, the Professor of Bioengineering at Brunel University and TV personality. He offered two possible explanations. "Firstly, things go wrong all the time, but unless the potential or real consequences of the failure are serious or embarrassing, they do not leave the same scar on your memory as the one time when it really mattered," he said. And secondly, "If an important event is in the offing, it is not uncommon for you to be more stressed, to work at a faster pace, be less careful, and at least pretend to yourself that you are acting in a more brisk and decisive manner. "This changed behaviour transmits itself to your inanimate helpers turning on all the lights in the house to give it that opulent welcoming look, blows the main fuse, because the immersion heater is also on, to reheat the water used by that last minute bath." He added: "Combine the selective memory and the extra stress you impose on your inanimate environment, and you have the makings of the phenomenon of Sod's Law, without having to invoke the supernatural." Glad to have cleared that one up. Sod's law dictates that "if anything can possibly go wrong it will, and it will happen at the worst possible moment".
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