The Equator for the Scientifically Dumb

International Date Line

 Ahh, yes, back in the friendly confines of the eHow.com canon (as imagined by Leaf Group's niche team). After a week or so of plumbing the depths of dumbassery at other content farms, we're back to the mother lode of misinformation. In particular, we're at Sciencing.com, where we found prolific freelancer Nikki Saint Bautista attempting to answer the question, "What Is the Equator's Latitude?"

As even Saint Bautista apparently knew, the latitude of the equator is a big fat zero. Nikki's problem, as was the problem of many a scientifically illiterate in eHow's halcyon days, was that she had to pad that answer our to about 300 words in order to collect her fee. And, as was so often the case, the bogosity lay in the padding. Take, for instance, this notion, so common among eHow contributors:

"Horizontal lines of latitude and vertical lines of longitude make up this grid system, slicing up the Earth in quadrants and angles."

Say what? "horizontal... and vertical"? "quadrants and angles"? Once more, with feeling for all the scientifically illiterate J-school and English-Lit grads who hacked away at eHow, horizontal is defined as parallel to the surface of the Earth and vertical is defined as perpendicular to it. only on (some) maps are the lines horizontal and vertical! As for the "quadrants and angles" bullshit, That simply has no meaning.

Saint Bautista expanded further (she needed more words) by explaining that,

"A line drawn from the center of the Earth to the equator would yield an angle of 0 degrees, and therefore, the equator’s location is said to be at 0 degrees latitude."

Apparently, Nikki was unaware that a single line cannot form an angle. Instead, she seemed to be unaware that the equator is, by definition, an arbitrary plane equidistant from the planet's two poles. Latitude is a measure of the angle between that plane and a point (or locus of points) on the surface. Duh. She further misquoted her alleged source, claiming that, "...longitudinal [sic] lines perpendicularly intersect lines of latitude. For instance, a line running from the north (or south) pole to the equator yields an angle of 90 degrees, geologist Steven Okulewicz explains." Again, Nikki, a line by itself can't "[yield] an angle"; the intersection of a line of longitude and the equator is a right angle. And finally, Nikki "informs" her readers that,

"...lines of longitude range from 0 degrees to 180 degrees from the Prime Meridian (0 degrees) in England to the International Date Line (180 degrees). Geographic coordinates are determined when lines of longitude intersect with lines of latitude. These coordinates determine the location of a place on Earth, such as the equator."

Although Saint Bautista didn't mention it, there are 180 degrees of longitude in both directions from Greenwich, not to mention that the International Date Line isn't the same thing as 180° from Greenwich.: it zig-zags – a lot.. And second, coordinates aren't defined as "when lines of longitude intersect with lines of latitude"; and even if they were, the equator doesn't have coordinates: it has only latitude.

Why can't people like our Dumbass of the Day understand something that simple?

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