The whole spinning water equator thing does work, and I've seen it work and in fact, should anyone be that interested, I actually have a video of it. It's not just an 'insanely stupid' tourist attraction, it's a fascinating experiment, and works irrefutably.
I was in Kenya, and the Equator passes through that country. It was a simple enough experiment a tupperware box with a hole in the bottom, only the guide floated a matchstick on the surface.
He did the experiment in three ways, he started above the equator line, filled the box, placed the matchstick and it clearly spun in one direction. We went to the other side of the equator line (Marked by a sign like this (
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Equator_sign_kenya.jpg), and he filled it and placed the matchstick, and this time, sure enough, it spun the other way. Then, as a final point he went and stood under the sign, filled the box once again, and placed the matchstick, and this time the match didn't spin, it just drifted on the surface while the box drained out.
Don't give me any rubbish about the sign being in the wrong position or anything like that, because this experiment worked. There were no tricks, he used a normal matchstick, a normal, unremarkable box with a rough hole punched in the bottom, and tap water. We went probably around 20 feet either side of the equator, and for the final time, the experiment worked beautifully.
Explain it. This site has fascinated me because I didn't think there were people on this planet who still thought of Earth in this way, despite the fact that thinking in such a way would make basically all known geological and astronomical proven facts absolutely false.
After seeing a few posts, where advocates of the FET responded to people who said things like "yes the earth may look flat on the horizon" by saying "there you've said it, the eath is flat!" it just makes me think that the people on this site don't want to explain themselves or give any real evidence, just bluff and waffle.
I've not seen anything convincing yet, so someone, please, explain this phenomenon (the spinning matchstick), and how it works in relation to the FET. As I've said, if people want to see the video, I'll put it up on Youtube and post the link.
The video is being uploaded as I type this, and I will post a link in a subsequent post once it has been done.