In this talk, we will discuss various ways in which Eisenstein series of low weight/level are "defective", exhibiting cohomological phenomena which disappear for higher members of their family. The classical example is that E2 is non-holomorphic, while Ek, k > 2, are holomorphic. We will explain generalizations of this to Hilbert-Siegel modular varieties in terms of toric geometry and the Borel regulator of totally real fields. We will conclude by discussing how integrals of Shintani generating functions might unify the study of real-analytic and p-adic defects.