Image credit: xkcd

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present to you clear and convincing evidence that Randall Munroe is wrong on the Internet. As Exhibit A, I present to you the comic above, wherein he labels it both “Lawful” and “Good” to shepherd ones’ as-yet unused eggs into the middle of the carton. He further asserts that splitting eggs as evenly as possible between each end of the carton is “Neutral” but “Good”, and that somewhat evenly distributing the eggs throughout the carton is also “Good”, if “Chaotic”.

He is wrong.

The correct, “Lawful”, and “Good” way to to shepherd eggs is in fact demonstrated in the very same webcomic, though Mr. Munroe has incorrectly (scandalously and libellously) labeled it “True Neutral”. A demonstration that this is, in fact, the correct way to store eggs may be made in nearly any household in America. You, right now, get up and go to your refrigerator. Are the eggs arrayed so that one end (short side) of the carton faces out of the refrigerator? If so, when you grasp the carton to remove it from the refrigerator, will you not grasp the protruding end (short side)? When you so grasp the carton, it becomes a lever, and eggs placed farther down the carton require more force to support than those closer to your hand. Therefore, it is most advantageous that the greatest possible bulk of eggs be placed in the carton as close to that end (short side) which will be closest to the front of the refrigerator and the hand of the person who will remove said carton from said refrigerator. ∎

TL;DR: Place the eggs at the end of the carton to receive mechanical advantage when you remove the carton from the refrigerator.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.