AMERICANA: Our Beasts and Burdens

People generally react to complexity in one of two ways: inducing rules to explain what is happening, or confecting jargon to obscure what is happening. Thus in this best and worst of times, with Murphy's law (If anything can go wrong, it will) as the only constant in a world of nonviable alternatives, two unusual guidebooks have become hits of the winter season.

One of them is by Paul Dickson, 39, a founder of the Murphy Center for the Codification of Human and Organizational Law, which is actually a filing box in which...

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