Re: CHAT: postcodes

Stephen Mulraney scripsit:

> So the issue is usually not one of ambiguity, but efficency: if your
> mailpiece is being sorted manually (say, if it's of a nonmachinable
> form factor), and the sorter doesn't know where the address refers to,
> they'll put it in a mystery box, awaiting the coming of the geniuses
> who know every townland name in Ireland, in both languages (quote:
> "Rathnalurney? Sure that's on Tory Island in county Donegal!").
The U.S. Postal Service refers to such items as "nixies".  (Technically
so only if they can't be delivered at all, but informally anything
that takes specialized knowledge to route it can be labeled thus.)
A few years back, one of them made the news, having apparently been
in the bottom of a mailbag since 1927, or some such date.  When found,
it was duly deciphered and delivered.

How many of these geniuses are there?  Not many, I'll warrant.

> Clonee,
> Co. Meath,
> via Dublin 15.
The problem is even worse in London, where no locality names are required
at all (just the street address, "London", and the postal code) and
the location can be in any of four counties.  County addresses are not
required by the Royal Mail, but it's nice if they are at least correct.

> In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
Ho!

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration
is exchanged. So it was at King's Bench in common law England; so it was
under the common law in the American colonies; so it was through more than
two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today.
       --_Specht v. Netscape_

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