When one is reading an article in the New York Times on
seasonal affective disorder, and playing the matching game one plays with horoscopes ("Ten hours of sleep a night? Fondness for carbohydrates? Overuse of the verb 'to hibernate'? Why yes, that DOES sound like me!"), and pauses to think that one would not be terribly harmed by shifting one's alarm earlier to coincide with winter sunrise, and might even derive salutary effects, it is rather depressing to realize that this would constitute an official shift of approximately fifteen minutes.