Dear Mike,
Gee, what amazing sundials. I particularly enjoyed (!)
what you so eloquently list as Crap_002.jpg (with the
cat and mice). These sundials, or at least your snaps
of them, are ideal for showing at lectures. You can
say: `OK, now you understand sundials, see how many
mistakes can you find in these in two minutes!'
I looked at your poems page. By chance, I spent the
first three afternoons of this week assessing a sundial
exercise I set to 465 first-year scientists. Some of
the candidates included little poems in their write-ups.
[Don't ask me why!]
These were mostly pretty poor but one, from a guy
at Queens' College (noted for its moon dial), lent
itself to heavy editing and comes out like this:
An applicant visiting Queens'
said I simply can't tell what it means.
The sundial says seven,
Yet it's just on eleven.
Oh what a mistake to choose Queens'.
If you want to attribute this to anyone, you could say
`Inspired by Oliver Shortle of Queens' College.' The
limerick illustrates the difficulties faced by a novice
user of a moon dial.
I regard moon dials as the strangest of curiosities.
If you need to tell the time at night, use a nocturnal!
Frank King
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