Simultaneously Up to Date and Later Than You Think

Occasionally I'm blindsided by Daylight Savings. It doesn't happen often, not every decade, but once in a while, yes, I'm thrown by the clear difference between my conception of the hour and the authorized count itself.

It happened this morning when, waking, I looked at the time on my phone. Nearly 7:30 somehow, though I never sleep much past 6:00.

Soon enough the black hands of the clock on the bathroom wall brought some clarity to the situation. They pointed to 6 and 27, just about where they would if I'd slept no longer than normal. Could the bathroom clock have stopped working an hour ago? No. The clock operated still, evident in the continuing motion of the narrow red hand sweeping along in its remorseless course of seconds.

Therefore, let's see. The phone displays what it's told is the perpetually updated time in the real world according to some reputable agent out there. The time in the real world is therefore almost certainly being displayed on the phone.

The bathroom clock is almost certainly wrong, then, if concordance with the real world is our standard. But, clearly, just an hour off. There is a procedure for rectifying the difference between the time displayed on the phone and that displayed on the bathroom wall around this time of year. It is called Daylight Savings.

Thus, guided by the tenets of of rational inquiry, I successfully resolved this morning an instance of the most pressing problem — the hour itself — before directing the full brunt of my so recently awakened attentions to the rest of the day's interests.