Saying that state shapes are still in flux because 19 properties were shifted from state X to state Y earlier this year is a bit like saying you've got a new computer because you replaced your mouse.
Ah well, at least the map makers got some work to do. There's also a number of other examples besides what they mentioned. It's a nice documentary series, of you're interested.
You can see the transfer of a few square miles on a continent-scale map like the ones in the article?
The North/South Carolina border change represents about 700 sq miles changed over. The smallest state in the US is Rhode Island, with 1.2M sq miles - four orders of magnitude more. South and North Carolina are 30M and 50M sq miles respectively - five orders of magnitude more than this parcel of land.
Do you think that miniscule corrections every few decades are really enough to counter the author's claim that the state shapes were 'drawn in the distant past'? Seems excessively pedantic to me - especially since the shapes involved didn't change all that much.
In any case, if you were born several generations ago and still don't consider your childhood to be in the distant past, remind me not to get on your bad side :)
But, less than sixty years hadly seems like the distant past. However, that's mostly an addendum. You may not have clicked the Wikipedia link but, if you do, you'll see quite a few changes.
It turns out that I'm older than the State of Alaska and Hawaii. I'm am pretty old, but, damn it! That's not the distant past. Dinosaurs roamed in the distant past. I am not a dinosaur. Well, I'm not a fossil.
Edit: By the way, not all of the Hawaii territory is part of the State of Hawaii. And some islands are changing their borders all the time.