On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 15:01:21 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:



Stubby wrote:

There was a famous story of gold shippers that moved quantities of
gold from San Francisco to Anchorage in the 1800s. Of course they
carefully measured the gold before and after, presumably using a
spring scale rather than a balance. The bankers concluded a little
bit of gold was being lost from every shipment. After a lot of
finger-pointing, they identified the difference in gravity as the
source of the difference.
Shouldn't that be the other way around? the gold would weigh less as you
approached the equator due to the spinning of the Earth causing
centrifugal force on it.

Plus the surface is a little farther from the center, reducing the
apparent weight further. Maybe he means from Anchorage to San
Francisco, perhaps from the Klondike.