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Shark, jumping the
Oct. 8th, 2011 06:16 pmOK, I'm no cultural authority on precisely what constitutes jumping a shark, but I just watched a Mythbusters episode where they rigged a machine to drop eggs into boiling water in a random sequence (with randomized time delays so the eggs couldn't anticipate when the next one would drop) and hooked a houseplant up to a polygraph to detect emotional disturbances in the plant as it mourned in sympathy for the eggs.
It was very scientific, as they made sure to put the plant on foam to reduce vibration and inside a shipping container for electromagnetic shielding, and the human crew left the area to let the plant focus on the feelings of the eggs.
(Actually it wasn't really very scientific. They didn't even specify whether the eggs came from free-range chickens or if the plant and the eggs had been given the opportunity to interact in social situations in order to strengthen the emotional connection. Seriously, you expect a plant to give a flying crīsāre about a dozen eggs straight from the supermarket shelf without even a passing "How do you do?"?)
It was very scientific, as they made sure to put the plant on foam to reduce vibration and inside a shipping container for electromagnetic shielding, and the human crew left the area to let the plant focus on the feelings of the eggs.
(Actually it wasn't really very scientific. They didn't even specify whether the eggs came from free-range chickens or if the plant and the eggs had been given the opportunity to interact in social situations in order to strengthen the emotional connection. Seriously, you expect a plant to give a flying crīsāre about a dozen eggs straight from the supermarket shelf without even a passing "How do you do?"?)
