I’m in a rough stretch at work so no real post again this week, but I thought I’d share something my dad sent me that he found in my grandfather’s things. Apparently he used to send one out with each of his orders. He was the original stats blogger in the family, and I’ve talked about his work before here and here.

I fed this in to ClaudeAI to see if there was a source for this, and it told me the first one was in fact Parkinson’s law, but the rest were from other sources/unknown origin. Claude’s take:

1. Genuine Parkinson’s Law — C. Northcote Parkinson, 1955
2. Murphy’s Law — Edward A. Murphy Jr., ~1949
3. Murphy’s Law corollary — widely circulated, no single author
4. Unknown origin — a common folk saying of the era
5. Unknown origin — another widely circulated folk adage
6. Possibly a medical/diagnostic aphorism — origin unclear
7. A variant of Murphy’s Law — folk origin
8. Unknown — general folk wisdom
9. A variant of the “calm before the storm” principle — possibly related to management theory
10. Unknown — general pessimistic folk wisdom
11. Very old proverb — versions exist going back centuries
12. Often attributed to various people including the military — no definitive source
13. Unknown origin — but a very relatable universal truth!

This led me to an interesting discussion with Claude about my grandfathers business and newsletter, which ran from 1974 to 1985. I digitized it about 10 years ago and when I have a minute I may upload it in to AI to analyze and see what Claude can pull out. I’ll post any interesting parts of that project here.

While I’m not sure where AI is taking us, the ability to upload old documents and look at them in new ways is certainly a fun benefit. My grandfather would have hated it, but I’ll admit I’m getting a kick out of it.