Dr Unne's post sounds weird, because if you think 2 dimensionally, flying to Alaska, then to the Philiphines is very long (you transverse the diagonal length of N. America). However if you realise that the earth's rotation forces the "height" of the earth down, you'll realise that N. America stretches very far to the side while N/S wise it is much shorter.

And if you look at the map from Alaska to the Philipines you will see that it is shorter to reach there than from, say, California.

--

Anyway, I don't have ANY idea how far the north and south poles are from each other, or how the earth "bends" so the relative location of Austrailia/NZ and Russia is completely confusing me at this moment.

Perhaps the best course of action is to forgo spherical geometry and get a subterrainean man-driven drill. That way you can go in a straight line for Scotland and forget all this math mumbo jumbo.