Just because "shit happens*" does not mean that all occurences are of this kind. Obviously there is order (marvelously complex order) in the universe at many points or I would not be typing this. But sometimes one is just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and like Burns observed with his poem about a mouse, not all the preparation in the world can make you immune to misfortune.

The engineer's job is to reduce this negative outcome in the mechanical world to the absolute minimum. His motto: make sure very little shit happens, with the metaphysically unreachable goal being zero.

*Sorry, but nothing else rolls out right. "Excrement happens" sounds so foppish.