Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: ignorance: political vs scientific 
Message-ID: <elnaE7n236.5s8@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <5gf2fd$1b4@oden.abc.se> <332BD4CF.6D00@lonnds.ml.com> <5h6ni7$asq@oden.abc.se>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 06:59:30 GMT
Lines: 23
Sender: elna@netcom13.netcom.com

m9548@abc.se writes in a recent posting (reference <5h6ni7$asq@oden.abc.se>):
>Julian Pardoe <pardoej@lonnds.ml.com> wrote:
>
>In the European I once learnt that the day is only 6 hours in
>September in Helsinki, Finland. It is as far north as Uppsala, more or
>less and here the day is something like 11 hours at that time of the
>year. A Finnish journalist would not have written such a thing.

FWIW this reflects a general ignorance of basic science: any journalist
from any country is just as likely to make this kind of error. Although
any reporter living in the far north (or far south) of the planet ought
to have experienced the changes of the seasons well enough to know that
the day is 12 hours long *everywhere* on equinox, which occurs every year
in late September and late March.

BTW the length of the day plotted against the day of the year creates a
nice sine wave whose altitude is a function of the latitude of the source 
of the data.
-- 
Miko SLOPER              elna@esperanto-usa.org       USA  (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la          http://www.esperanto-usa.org  fax (510) 653 1468 
Centra Oficejo de la     Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A.   Write to above address or call:  1-800-ESPERANTO
