http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php All comments for What a Knot is Not en-us 2007 nyc_daveh Tue, 05 Jun 2007 18:32:49 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss daveh@gothamist.com daveh@gothamist.com 60 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22561 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22561 Comments Wed, 12 May 2004 08:51:23 -0500 <p>Just to be more specific, a nautical miles is the span of a minute of a degree of longitude at the equator. The distance between each degree will change with your latitude: the further north you are, the closer the degrees will be. At the poles, this distance is zero.</p> http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22560 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22560 Comments Mon, 10 May 2004 22:22:31 -0500 <p>Furlongs? A furlong, of course, is equal to 40 rods. Henry Limpet would appreciate nautical miles and knots. The shortest route on a sphere is to travel via a great circle, an imaginary circle around the earth, like the equator, whose center passes through the center of the earth. Sailors, like Mr. Limpet's buddy George, used nautical miles because they could precisely measure latitude and longitude.</p> http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22559 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22559 Comments Mon, 10 May 2004 20:31:20 -0500 <p>also: what about furlongs? i know they're not weather-related, but they are tangentially related via the obscure(-ish) forms of measurement connection. kind of like reaumurs, eh joe?</p> http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22558 http://www.gothamist.com/2004/05/10/what_a_knot_is_not.php#comment-22558 Comments Mon, 10 May 2004 20:29:26 -0500 <p>trying...really hard...not to make...Don Knotts joke...</p>