Tom, the duration of sunsets/sunrises are not exactly what we were discussing. We were discussing the motion of the sun across the entire sky over the period of a day. The sunset is from the moment the disk touches the horizon to the moment it completelly dissapears. Even taking that into account, the differences were about what.. 2 or so minutes? And as you have pointed out, there are explanations for these discrepancies. In any case, you don't even need precise measurements to do this, observation will suffice. Go outside tomorrow, grab your videocamera and a few extra tapes or discs, and record the sun's procession across the sky for the entire day. Then play it in fast forward on your TV. You'll notice that its motion through the sky is appreciably constant throughout the day. Now, the next time you see a plane on the horizon coming in your direction, notice how slow its movement appears when it's near the horizon as compared to when it's directly above you. Unless you're seriously challenged with respect to observing motion, I guarantee you'll see the difference.
Catfish, if you're just messin with us, ignore this lol.. I've read some pretty idiotic stuff from FEs so it's a bit hard to tell which arguements are serious. But if you were being serious, perhaps you should read all that 'jibber jabber' first and then post your comments. I've explained it already, and others have done it with diagrams and animations. Perspective CANNOT explain the setting of the sun as we observe it. And have you ever considered that you didn't lose sight of land because.. oh i dunno.. you weren't out far enough??