Bad Timing

Pity the poor journalist who works at a daily. He's got to grab his reader in the first line, and even with multiple layers of checks and balances, the editing can still leave something to be desired.

For example, the latest LA Times has a piece on the band She & Him. It starts:

Neither member of She & Him has a tremendous amount of time to dedicate to the band: Zooey Deschanel, the singer, is an actress with upcoming roles in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" and the Jm Carrey vehicle "Yes Man,"...

And here's the third paragraph:

"As an actor, you have a lot of free time," Deschanel, 28, explains over lavender tea at a Brentwood cafe.

Then in the Health section, we get this first sentence in an article about Salvia, a legal hallucinogenic:

It's been almost 50 years since a generation of young people were urged to "turn on and tune out" with the aid of psychedelic drugs.

Almost 50 years? The phrase was first popularized in 1966. Just how many young people does the writer think were into psychedelics in the 50s?