Episode Report Card Miss Alli: B | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Tea and Treachery
By Miss Alli | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 09.25.2001
Rob dimly points out that "life is a game of minutes." Oh, go sew a mother-of-pearl button on your fly, Mr. Dramatic-Flairy-Pants. I admit that you're hot, but you're not too bright, so smile pretty and don't talk a lot.
Pat and Brenda reach the wheel. They're giddy -- they're ahead, they found the clue, they have all kinds of time! Things are going so well for them!
Phil explains that once they reach the Ferris wheel, the teams have two choices. The first is an "Easy Walk," which leads to a Foucault's pendulum with a statue of a cat next to it. I should point out here, that in normal use, a "Foucault pendulum" isn't a single thing, like the Arc de Triomphe. A Foucault pendulum is like a Mobius strip or a Rubik's Cube. There are lots of pendulums in the world, and any one that's properly built can display the Foucault effect (which has to do with building a pendulum long enough to demonstrate the rotation of the earth), so it’s not as simple as finding a named landmark. At any rate, in keeping with this fact, the Easy Walk has a specific trick to it -- there are two fairly well-known Foucault pendulums (pendula?) in Paris. One is at what Phil translates as the Museum of Arts and Crafts (ah, yes, they had a divine exhibit on Popsicle Stick Houses, and they have one of the world's finest collections of Macaroni Jewelry), and that's the one you DON'T want. The pendulum you want, the one with the cat statue next to it, is at the Pantheon. On one hand, this is a trick. On the other, if you find somebody who happens to know that one of the pendulums has a cat statue next to it and one doesn't, or even if you ask somebody who knows that there are two pendulums in Paris, you can improve your situation, so it isn't as if you're helpless at the cruel hand of fate. Furthermore, a little research has suggested to me that the pendulum at the Pantheon is the more historically significant -- it is the original site of Foucault's demonstration. On the other hand, the one at the Museum of Arts and Crafts was immortalized by Umberto Eco, so who's to say which is more "famous"? I think all we can say for sure is that finding the right pendulum would be challenging indeed. Aren't you glad we explored this subject?
The second, pendulum-less option is a "Tough Climb," which involves climbing to the top of Notre Dame to ring Quasimodo's bell. The Tough Climb is pretty straightforward (although at 297 steps, it ain't for sissies). There's only one Notre Dame, and Lenny and Karyn have, of course, already been there, so I'm thinking that might be the easier choice.