Last week was the vernal equinox, and even though it would probably pass unnoticed if no one said anything about, a lot of news broadcasts trumpeted the (fallacious) first day of spring.
That includes NBC’s Today show, which managed to not only somehow botch the countdown to the moment of the equinox, they also just had to try to stand an egg on end. The results were, well, unsatisfactory, as you can see in this video.
They should’ve watched my video instead. Or they could’ve gone to the cool magazine Mental Floss, which just so happened to link to another video of me from a few years back on the local news.
March 27th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Boy has NBC got egg on its face!
March 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Does it mean something that the Youtube page showing Phil’s video also shows an ad about a killer 2012 comet?
March 27th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
No Brains Channel?
March 27th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Er… Phil, since that event had already occurred last week, it would have been more grammatically correct for you to state: “Last week was the vernal equinox, and even though it would probably [have] pass[ed] unnoticed if no one [had] said anything about [it], a lot of news broadcasts trumpeted the (fallacious) first day of spring.”
If you’re gonna nitpick about the seasons, I figure that I can nitpick about your grammar.
March 27th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Ivan, I believe that he wasn’t speaking about the specific vernal equinox from last week, but rather about the day in general, past and futures. Would that make a difference in grammar considerations?
March 27th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Now on yolktube.
March 27th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I think IVAN3MAN hangs out on this page: http://www.charman.co.nz/essays/grammar2.htm
March 27th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Ryan:
Well, in the first line, at the beginning of the sentence, Phil specifically refers to “Last week was the vernal equinox…”; therefore, past tense.
@ Larian LeQuella,
You may very well think that; I could not possibly comment.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to refute The Egg Thing. Quite a few people saw it on the West Wing and absorbed it into the nebulous cloud of things seen on television that are therefore true (even though it wasn’t presented as true within the context of the show).
March 27th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Pistachio, the funny thing is that West Wing quoted my website verbatim at the very end.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Was in Ecuador a few weeks ago, at the equator. They do the egg-balancing thing there too. And a bunch of other woo.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
RE: Cross-woo.
At about two (2) seconds to go, the camera panning the crowd shows one sign: Texas (hearts) the Today Show. Ironic, with this previous blog post here on BA.
J/P=?
March 27th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
The Today show has like 21 hours a week to fill time. I tend not to take anything that the Today show does seriously.
March 27th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Media…meh.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Heathen! Spawn of Satan! How dare you say NBC is wrong! Of course eggs can only be balanced on the first day of spring. And it isn’t the equinox either; according to Dave Letterman (at least in a show back in the 1990s) it is actually the solstice. SO: the solstice comes in late March, is the first day of spring, and is the only day of the year that you can balance an egg on its end.
Well, seriously now – I knew someone who had all the wrong ideas about bonsai plants because she watched “The Karate Kid”. I thought I’d have half a chance of straightening her out because I had many Japanese and Chinese friends who had trained bonsais for most of their lives and I had a few current neighbors who were into it as well. No such luck; Miyagi from the movie is right, real people who have spent decades on the discipline and have dozens of plants in their back yards were all wrong. Can we change this situation or are there simply hopeless morons who will never change their mind despite the evidence.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
The Today Show can wipe a good bit of that egg off with a little dose of Dr. Nancy Snyderman. She’s my newest hero. Did any of you BAblogees see her take on Matt Lauer a month ago regarding the antivax nuttiness. Matt tried 2 or 3 times to cast vaccinations as controversial. She stopped him each time and forcefully denied that there was any controversy. She absolutely ROCKS!
March 27th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
“I knew someone who had all the wrong ideas about bonsai plants because she watched “The Karate Kid”. ”
Can you elaborate?
March 28th, 2009 at 1:07 am
@Jack Mitcham:
Since I’ve never seen the movie in question and this was a few years ago, I’ll see what my (usually faulty) memory can conjure up.
I was told that bonsai were plants specially selected from a harsh environment like the sheer face of a cliff and then nurtured – no need for any special attention to train the plant because growing on the side of the cliff had somehow imprinted a small twisted shape to the plant – so just pluck it out, put it in a pot, and instant bonsai. While plants growing in cracks on a sheer rock face are often dwarfed because of lack of nutrients or water and may often be trained as a bonsai, there is really nothing special about plants in such an environment. All you need to start with is the same species plant that you see struggling on the cliff face if you want that particular plant as a bonsai. After all, take a dwarfed plant from the side of a cliff and put it in good soil and most of the time it will grow like any other plant of its species (I’ve taken numerous interesting plants from cracks in rocks). So this person in question refused to believe that lowering yourself over a precipice to get a scraggly plant is not the usual method for starting a bonsai, despite two people telling her how they’ve started a number of their own pet trees. Movie:2 Hobbyists: 0
Of course since those 2 people were good friends of mine, it was obviously a conspiracy.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Apparently Pawnee Indian had an egg balancing event at their Equinox party in the park March 20 http://www.pawneeindiana.com/parks-and-recreation/activity-guide/