Writing 101

I didn’t make it past the lede on this AP story before my head started spinning:

After a century of nearly uninterrupted medical improvements and longer lives, it looks like the baby boomers could screw things up. A new government study shows deaths from heart disease, cancer and stroke continue to drop, but it also shows that half of Americans ages 55 to 64 _ including the oldest of the baby boomers _ have high blood pressure, and two in five are obese.
This means that this large group of aging Americans is in worse shape in some respects than those born a decade earlier were when they were the same age.

I summoned the courage to read further, but it didn’t get any better. That’s a real piece of work; one a Comp 101 teacher could use as a case study in how not to write.

Bring Back The Pony Express

With Christmas approaching, a lot of people are shipping packages these days. A natural question is: how long will it take this to reach its intended destination?
I don’t think it’s “normal” shipping is this slow, but if you happen to have something shipped by the United States Postal Service’s slow service, it might take a long, long time.
Recently I placed an order at Performance Bicycle. I’m not 100% sure where it ships out of, but I’m pretty sure it’s North Carolina, since that’s where the company is located and where returned products are sent. The order was shipped on November 2. Here’s the tracking information:

DELIVERED – KNOXVILLE,TN 11/15/2005 12:02 PM
ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL TO POSTAL FACILITY – DDU CEDAR BLUFF – 379239998 11/10/2005 12:00 AM
DEPARTED – APX ATLANTA 11/8/2005 3:16 PM
SCANNED AT INTERMEDIATE HUB – APX ATLANTA 11/7/2005 11:55 PM
DEPARTED – APX NORTH EAST 11/6/2005 7:40 AM
SCANNED AND ENROUTE – APX NORTH EAST 11/4/2005 9:08 PM
LOAD RECEIVED – APX NORTH EAST 11/3/2005 9:23 AM

That’s right–it took two weeks to go travel to an adjoining state. Once en route, it took a week to get from Atlanta to Knoxville.
I could have ridden my bike over to Chapel Hill, picked up the order, and ridden back in considerably less time than it for the carrier to deliver. So much for that notion of the world getting smaller, eh?

Other Side Of The World

You gotta love the Internet. Without it, where would we get fun time-wasters like this.
And here I incorrectly thought all these years that if I dug a deep enough hole, I’d end up in China.