Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:18:13 -0600, HeyBub wrote:

As for the earth being flat, it is if you're building a house,
surveying a lot, plowing a field, laying out a road, building a
railroad (except for the hills), and so on.

I can assure you that surveyors do take into account the curvature or
the Earth because the distance between lines of longitude varies with
the distance from the equator. I did surveying software back in the
'70s and know whereof I speak :-).

Correct. Surveyors DO take into account curvature. But not for "surveying a
lot."

For small distances (say, surveying a section) the difference is
undetectable. I did map creation back in the 60's for marine seismic
surveys. For most surveys, up to about 100 miles or so, there was no
discernable difference even when using different projections (Mercator,
Universal Transverse Mercator, Lambert, etc.).