Traffic World magazine is the latest publication to use the correction as a gateway to humor. The following is from an article that offers a listing of corrections to various editorials during the magazine's 100 year history:
For instance, we wrote in 1988 the "Railroad Lobbyists' Preservation Act" was killed. Near as we can tell, rail lobbyists look to have been pretty well preserved.
We wrote in 1972 that Congress "shows no interest in coordination of government agency actions with its own." Sadly, government agencies also are uninterested in coordinating their actions with each other.
We suggested in November 1965 there was a "consensus that criticism of carriers whose services fall short of meeting shippers' needs should be coupled with sincere efforts to understand the carriers' problems and to give them such cooperation as may properly be offered." That should be offered, of course, only when written into a binding contract.
We said on Dec. 25, 1972, that "students of all ages" should understand "it is not possible for us to comply with their requests that we mail to them all of the information we have about piggyback service (or railroad abandonments, or the Department of Transportation, or any of various other broad subjects)." We stand by that.
In January 1953, we applauded the "orderliness and on-time schedules" that had come to various traffic club dinners that "springs in no small part from the abolition of the miscellaneous and numerous cocktail parties that normally precede these affairs." We want to reverse that stance and stand, albeit wobbly, behind those "numerous libatory welcomings."
In October 1994, we lamented "the constant attacks to which the Interstate Commerce Commission has been subjected in recent months." We can find no other reference to this so-called commission nor what it did.
In August 1945, with transport capacity finally freed from wartime obligations, we suggested the "truck operator who distributed his limited capacity equitably among the shippers who had built his business in the first instance, and who did his best courteously to help the shipper solve his problems, is likely to find himself with a pretty healthy backlog of civilian traffic." We neglected to mention that would be true as long as the spot market held up.
We wrote in July 1980, "Among the great needs of the hour toward making freight transportation more efficient is the upgrading of main highways that have been allowed to deteriorate." We should have noted it would take more than an hour.
In December 1941, the week after Pearl Harbor, we noted on this page, "True patriotism does not consist in merely to assenting what an administration does because 'we are at war now, you know.' ... We still have the right to say what we think should be done and how it should be done." We'll correct that when someone can tell us how.
