"A pendulum clock brought from the equator to a northern country will run fast. Arctic rivers cut deepest into their right banks, and hunters lost in the north woods unconsciously veer to the right as the Earth turns beneath their feet.

"And in the north, the dangerous storms from the west often begin with an east wind.

"All of these things are related to the Coriolis, the reeling gyroscopic effect of the Earth's spin that creates wind and flow of weather, the countering backwashes and eddies of storms."

From "The Shipping News," the Pulitzer Prize winning book by E. Annie Proulx. She lives in Newfoundland and Wyoming.