Louis Epstein
Graeme <graemecree@aol.compost>wrote: : Corvus wrote: :>>You had the roughly pear-shaped geoid in mind? Ie. a sphere, flattened : somewhat at the equator by the Earth's spin into a hardly perceptible : oblate-shape, and further modified into something thicker below the

: than above [1] when you get into the details? :>>

: Yep, that's it. It wasn't until the 1950's that we really knew what the

: was shaped like. Until around 200 BC, it was considered flat. Though

: this answer was, in a sense, NEARLY right, considering that the

: the earth is only about 8 inches to the mile, and the measuring

: the time were rather crude.

: Then the ancient Greeks decided that it was round. But that was wrong

: we moved to the idea that it was an oblate spheroid. Only that wasn't

: right either, since we found out in the 50's that the bulge was slightly

: (and by slightly, I mean measured in *yards*, not miles) south of the

I'll mention here that I have always considered palantiri to be somewhat oblate spheroids.Both because it seems more practical to have something that will sit still when placed on a desk,and because having objects so special be "mere" crystal balls seems far beneath them.