If you've perused the latest issue of the New Yorker, you may have noticed a rather long letter to the editor about a January cover (by Mark Ulriksen, pictured above). If you didn't, here's how the letter starts:
Mark Ulriksen’s “Winter Pleasures,” an impressionistic rendering of Grand Central Terminal’s main concourse, depicts the famous golden clock bathed in sunlight (Cover, January 28th). Note that this can be only an eastward morning scene, not a westward afternoon. The angle of the long axis of the concourse, following that of Manhattan’s east-west streets, is not 90° but 119° east of north, and aligns with the sun through its “west” windows only from late May to early July, and then only at an elevation of less than 3°. But aren’t those the south-side ticket windows at the left of the picture, with the tracks and trains therefore on the right? And doesn’t the clock seem to read three-fifty, hardly a time for the morning sun?You can read the rest here, after your head stops spinning.



