Two Wrongs Finally Make Aright - Part I

Stephen noticed the two digital clocks on his desk each morning as he ritually sat down in the rocking chair in the bedroom and began to put on his shoes. The digital clocks were identical and had been “gifts” given to him for his prompt response to the renewing of his subscription to the weekly news magazine that he despised so much. He despised the mag because it never gave a true account as to what was really happening in the world, but rather emphasized the bizarre phenomenon of American culture where he perceived that the so-called “normal” American reader was beginning to believe things that she or he read and that could not possibly contain an ounce of truth in the reporting of either politics, entertainment, or sports. There just were not any truly believable facts any more. For instance: The story on Greg Lemond winning the Tour de France contained a lingering hint that perhaps doping was involved. It wasn’t outrightly stated, but the inference was there. So did he or did he not dope? Or the story on Michael Jackson that reported his implication in a sex scandal with little boys that implied that even if he, Michael Jackson, were found to be innocent, he probably was still guilty. So did he or did he not grope? All the while, the two digital clocks, side by side, silently changed the time; the one on the left reflecting Central Standard and the one on the right showing Central Daylight Savings time. This setup precluded Darjeeling from having to either “spring forward” or “fall back”, to reset time from one to the other and back again, a biannual event that caused him a lot of discomfort in readjusting his own biological clock to the new time. If only there was a grand solution to this problem of time. Stephen called it “El Grande Problemo del Tiempo.”
But on this day, the 9th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death, or Jerry Day as Stephen and others had named it, the problem wasn’t with time. He laughed to himself as he thought about Jerry and how he had once described how he and the other members of the Grateful Dead were able to stretch time in order to play more notes in any given time measure. If a second of time is expanded then there is more space for music, and space was the key ingredient in Jerry’s guitar playing and in the Dead’s concert performances. So more time equals more space and more space means more freedom to move and more freedom ultimately leads to liberation from the mundane. Darjeeling’s thoughts turned once more, not to the problem of time, but to the current problem at hand: Temperature. Each digital clock contained a built-in thermometer that registered, in this case, room temperature. He hadn’t expected to get a free thermometer with each clock but there they were in the bottom right hand corner, able to register either Celsius, which did not register with him at all, or Fahrenheit with which he was more familiar having adjusted to it first since his arrival. As he stumbled toward the rocking chair he looked at both time and temperature: 6:15 am CST on the left (South) and 5:15 am CDT on the right. 74.6 degrees Fahrenheit showed on the left and 75.2 degrees on the right. What? An anomaly in the temperature? It was bad enough that there was a problem with time. But now there was a problem with different temperature readings within one foot of each other. He looked at the desk to discern what the cause might be. Could it be the Kachinas? He had given them ample corn pollen from the garden and had invited them to come and knock at the back door anytime, promising to faithfully let them in. He breathed a sigh as he noticed a cold Mickey’s in close proximity to the southern digital and moved it over to the ice cream parlor chair he used as a table next to his rocking chair and his Les Paul wannabe guitar and vintage reproduction Kustom amp. “That should explain the temperature variation,” he breathed to himself. He even felt between the two gauges to see if he could determine the difference. He thought he did. Then it was all solved to his satisfaction. He reached behind the Kustom for the power switch, took a swig, and played a couple of blues runs.
The Mickey’s was long gone and the bottle empty and warm when he looked up and discovered that that had not been the problem The two thermometers still showed a variance in room temperature of 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit. What could it possibly be? A poltergeist? A crack in the fabric of reality? How about this: One of the thermometers must be wrong. He then settled in with the acceptance of that possibility and began to determine which of the two was correct. There were three possible statements that could be made about this problem:

1. The Southern thermometer gave a false reading and the Northern gave a true reading.
2. The Northern thermometer gave a false reading and the Southern gave a true reading.
3. Neither the Southern nor the Northern gave a true reading.

The only way to prove which, if either, was correct was to read another thermometer and verify which digital thermometer it matched. He walked around the corner to the air conditioning thermostat. Not good enough, he realized as he looked at the analog dial. He quickly ruled out the Torricelli gauge on the piano. Not accurate enough to read to tenths of degrees, he thought. Darjeeling then realized that he did not have any other thermometers that could measure the temperature accurately enough. The only solution was to get yet another digital clock with thermometer and compare the three. He called the digital clock company and ordered another digital clock, overnight express guaranteed next day air delivery. It came within 24 hours. He unpacked it and set it directly between the two. He scoffed at the fact that the new one might give yet another reading, knowing full well the rigorous ISO 9000 regs that governed this type of instrumentation. He waited patiently one more day. It was like the pagan Christmas holiday he had observed since his arrival. He was giddy and couldn’t sleep with tomorrow’s anticipation of a problem solved. And in order to make the experiment unbiased, he did a curious thing: He split the difference in time on the middle clock making it read exactly one-half hour before and one-half hour after the clock on either side. He did not want quantum influences to negate the outcome of the verification. He punched the digital clock sleep alarm next to his bed and set it for 5:00 am. The soft Zen chime helped him fall into REM sleep.