Running out of space

California is always one step ahead of the rest of us. Now I read that they are considering digital auto license plates. When your car has been at a stop for four seconds, your license plate will change. Instead of showing the same old boring number, it will flash a paid advertisement for the amusement and edification of the driver waiting behind you. When you again begin to move, the plate will switch back to displaying your license number.

I'm trying to think of any possible way in which that might sound like a good idea. (Of course, our state up here in the Northwest isn't yet bankrupt.) Aside from providing a revenue source, I see only reasons to avoid like the plague the idea of any commercial bearing license plates.

I'm confused enough by the new seven figure plates now being issued by Washington. Because of the legislature's recent requirement that our plates be replaced every seven years, together with our spiraling population growth, we have now run through all 17,576,000 three-letter, three-number combinations. So the Department of Licensing is now starting to issue seven-character plates.

Back in the day, Washinton's plates bore a letter followed by several numbers. The format was a simple but elegant system. Our 39 counties were ranked by population and assigned a letter code, from King County (Seattle) with an A, to Pierce County (Tacoma) with a B, to Spokane County (duh!) with a C, and so on. The smallest counties were assigned double letter combinations (e.g., San Juan County (Friday Harbor) with an SJ) -- but the population of those counties was so small that one would rarely encounter double letter plates. (Photo to the left shows an F license, representing Whatcom County(Bellingham), the sixth most populous county at whatever date the system was initiated .)

Then we copied California, and went to a three-letter, three-number format. We preserved the county code system, incorporating it into the three letter combination. ARG 130 would be King County. SJB 248 would be San Juan County. GKH 162, pictured below, came from Clark County (Vancouver).

Learning the county codes and identifying the counties of cars seen on the highway was a good way for a 10 or 12 year old to keep himself amused while sitting in the back seat as the family drove across the state.Finally, however, King County exhausted all the A combinations. It expanded into the O's and then the I's -- letters that originally had not been assigned, because of their resemblance to zeros and ones.

Finally, the whole county identification system became unworkable, due to the disproportionate growth of Seattle and other cities in the Puget Sound area compared with other parts of the state. The system was scrapped, and licenses began being issued sequentially, regardless of county. For a while, the plates were reissued every five years or so, reversing colors each time they were reissued: green on white, then white on green. In 1976, we celebrated the bicentennial by switching to red, white and blue. We've never looked back, and we've never had a general reissue of plates since that date.

To me, a decent numbering system results in a plate number that I can remember after someone has driven me into a ditch, or has hit me and run. Obviously, the four or five digit numbers of yesteryear were easiest to recall, but three letters and three numbers, separated by a dash, also stuck in my find fairly well.

Adding just one more number, however, crowds the plate to overflowing. Beyond the fact that seven characters are harder to remember than six, the fact that the seven are packed together with no separation between letters and numbers makes the combination almost impossible to read in an emergency situation, or to remember later.

And I really don't think adding a commercial for Preparation H into the mix would help matters.

De gustibus ... and all that

The Northwest Corner is absolutely not a sports blog, and I feel weird typing the word "soccer" in two consecutive posts. But the World Cup has, of course, filled the headlines for the past week or two. So let me toss in my couple of red cents -- it'll hardly be an essay -- on the subject.

Not on the subject of soccer per se, but on the peculiarities of American sports reporters when they observe soccer.

Why -- I ask -- do so many of these writers feel compelled to churn out an entire column explaining to their readers whyAmerican football is far superior to soccer? Do they feel that soccer somehow endangers the continued existence of American football? That some kind of zero-sum relationship exists between the two sports? Aside from the fact that most of the world calls it "football," soccer doesn't even much resemble our homegrown variety. If you're looking around for similarities, soccer seems more like hockey (ice or field, take your choice), or even polo, than anything like the NFL game.

Where on the sports pages can we find learned columns explaining the vast superiority of NFL football over NHL ice hockey, or vice versa? Everyone has his own preferences, but most of us can watch the Cubs play the Giants without feeling a need to explain to everyone within shouting distance why baseball is inherently superior to basketball.

I personally would rather spend an evening at a concert than at a WWF wrestling match. But I don't therefore feel the need to go onto WWF message boards and explain to their readers my reasons for preferring a night listening to Joshua Bell play his violin over one watching William "Refrigerator" Perry being hurled out of the ring.

Relax, guys. It's a big world, with six billion sports fans. Plenty of room out there for all kinds of football, both foreign and domestic. If you don't like soccer, don't watch it. Or write about it.

As on a darkling plain ...

Twenty lessons I've learned recently (there are more, many more, but 20 is a nice round number):

1. If you're a kid, don't try to climb a mountain. If you're a parent, you should be arrested if you permit your kids to try.

2. Ditto with sailing around the world.

3. In fact, don't try anything that will attract media attention. Standing out from the crowd shows that you're selfish, self-centered, and have too much time and money. Anyway, everyone knows you're just trying to get your 15 minutes of fame.

4. Don't get 15 minutes of fame. (Presumably, this admonition refers also to Nobel laureates for any accomplishment whose immediate advantage to the average person isn't immediately apparent to that average person.)

5. Soccer sucks. It's boring, it's un-American, we don't need it. The networks are trying to ram it down our throats, but we aren't buying it.

6. Soccer players are effeminate, despite the fact that the best athletes of most countries devote their athletic lives to playing the sport. "Q. What's the hardest part about playing soccer? A. Telling your folks you're gay." (Reader comment.)

6. Despite #5 and #6, above, Team USA is vastly superior to the wimpy soccer teams of all other countries.

7. The French and Italians are losers in every respect, and their failure in soccer this year is just more evidence of that fact.

8. FIFA should have its collective head examined for playing the World Cup games (in a sport which, as we already know, sucks and is effeminate) anywhere in Africa. Africa also sucks, is dirty and dangerous, and is full of primitive tribesmen. Vuvuzelas suck.

9. Light rail and mass transit are forms of European socialism. Democrats and elitists are trying to make us European. But we are American and we'll stay American. "I've never set foot on a light rail, and I never will." (Reader comment.)

10. Corollary to #9: Automobiles are American. Driving is American. Driving big cars is especially American. Any discouragement to the use of automobiles is un-American.

11. Ditto with guns.

12. Mexicans who in desperation flee Mexico and try to cross the border are common criminals. They shouldn't be surprised when U.S. border patrols shoot to kill. (But when Iranian border patrols arrest errant hikers, this action proves that Iranians are barbarians. Their barbarism is tempered only by the stupidity of hikers in general, and those hiking near Iran in particular.)

13. It follows that the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States are also common criminals. They should serve time and then be deported. All 11 million. The mere fact that an illegal immigrant has spent decades in the United States and has become a pillar of his community doesn't justify offering him amnesty.

14. If a child born in the U.S. (and thus a citizen) and being schooled in the U.S. has parents subject to deportation, that's just tough for him. We have orphanages -- or, better yet and cheaper for us, he can go back to Mexico, where he belongs, with his folks. (Also, see #16, infra.) If a kid born in Mexico was brought illegally as an infant to the U.S., speaks only English, got A's in high school, and is now attending an American university, he should be expelled from school and deported back to Mexico. The law's the law.

15. Fifteen year olds who have a record of assisting illegal immigration deserve to be shot.

16. The Fourteenth Amendment doesn't mean what it says. It was intended to refer only to black kids.

17. No one should object to being required to carry an internal passport. Doing so would assist the government in fighting illegal immigration. The ACLU sucks.

18. Kids who excel at an early age at music, dance, and other performing arts have been deprived of a well-rounded, normal childhood. Their parents have pushed them -- in order to win fame and fortune for themselves, or because they are living their pathetic lives through their children, or both. (See also truths about parents of young mountaineers and sailors, supra.) The freaky kids are to be pitied; the parents, censured.

19. President Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, an un-American cosmopolitan, a "sock monkey." He was born in Kenya, or maybe it was Indonesia; his Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake. He is ignorant; he's an Ivy League elitist. He has not served in the military and therefore does not have the background to be commander in chief; he's never had to make a buck and therefore does not understand economics. He thinks it's always "us Americans' fault." He apologizes. He bows to Emperors; he shakes hand with Chinese officials. He's not "one of us."

20. Shut up and keep your head down. The protruding nail gets hammered flat.

Yup, I've learned all this good stuff just from reading the comments to news stories on Yahoo, MSNBC and Fox News.

But the biggest lesson I've learned is this: The kind of folks who write these on-line comments have been around since George Washington's time. They've been sitting in front of the general store, leaning back in their chairs and sneering at every new idea, every new development, every new leader that has appeared throughout American history. These are the folks who called slavery a natural institution. They said you'd never be able to dig a canal through Panama or put a man on the moon (or would want to). They called Teddy Roosevelt "that damn cowboy." They laughed at the horseless carriage. They sneered at Wilson's Fourteen Points. They called FDR a "class traitor" and a dictator.

I could go on.

It's just that now they can mutter and sneer to a worldwide audience, thanks to the Internet. And I can live with that. Ignorant speech is best defeated by intelligent speech -- that's the conceptual basis of the First Amendment.

I'm hopeful that, in the end, the thoughts and ideas of wise and optimistic writers will overcome the prejudices and negativity of the sneerers in the "marketplace of ideas." I'm not absolutely certain that they will -- but if they don't, it means a defeat for our form of government, and for the men like Jefferson and Madison who gave us that government.

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(6-28-10) Percipient readers will have noted the disturbing presence of two #6's. So be it. I refuse to destroy one of my painstakingly crafted paragraphs simply keep the number of my "lessons" at a round 20. That's no more unethical than increasing your margins, so that your English paper will have the minimum five pages. And you know you all did it.

Footsteps of Roman legions

A large package arrived yesterday from England. It contained all the informaton I need -- presumably and hopefully -- to cross Great Britain from east to west next month. I'll be following Hadrian's Wall, for a distance of 84 miles.

The materials, and the handy guide book that accompanies them, were written in England for the English. Only 3.5 percent of the registered hikers on the trail are American, by last count. These materials, therefore, are written in a British tone of constant amused understatement, a tone that I find unfamiliar, but quite congenial.

My first day of hiking will barely get me across the urban sprawl that is Newcastle, starting from an area near the North Sea coast and continuing to the western city limits. The guidebook warns that:

one or two trekkers have also been subjected to insults and threats from local kids ... and have written to say that they felt threatened in these areas. We should, I suppose, be thankful that the abuse has so far been just verbal and that these incidents, as unpleasant as they are, are still quite rare.

Oh, fantastic! I'll begin my pastoral wanderings by having to contend with coal miners' kids with Geordie accents. At least, thankfully, guns are illegal in England.

The remaining days of the trek, however, sound fascinating, replete with historical remnants and references -- days that will find me strolling across meadows and moors, stopping to eat and sleep in picturesque inns and pubs.

This trek will be no wilderness hike in the American -- or even the Himalayan -- sense of the word. The official trail parallels at varying distances a modern road that in turn follows the course of a military road built in the mid-1700's, back when it was necessary to rush troops from Newcastle to border areas where they were needed to contend with the troublesome Scots. That military road, in turn, followed in parts a military road constructed by the Romans themselves, and in other parts was actually built atop certain more or less leveled portions of Hadrian's Wall itself. The trail's route is a palimpsest: layer upon layer of military and civil construction dating back at least 1,900 years.

Although I'm hiking "alone," I'll hardly be alone on the trail. Many British hikers of all ages visit portions of the trail just for a day hike; others come to hike for two or three days, camping in designated campsites. In 2006, there were 6,667 hikers who trekked the wall from beginning to end, with July and August being the most popular (and, not so coincidentally, driest!) months.

The trek, therefore, will not be a wilderness hike; instead, it will be more like an 84-mile tour through a crowded museum of history and archeology -- but a museum that's also lived in by farmers, innskeepers, villagers and townspeople, interesting English folks who call it home in the 21st century.

The wall is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the trail itself has been designated a National Trail since 2003

I leave in five weeks. I'm excited, and rarin' to go

Masked intruder

I sit quietly at night, reading a book. Suddenly, I notice my cats tense up. I hear a rustling in the kitchen. I tiptoe toward the sound, my heart pounding. I see a door to the outside slowly open. A face cautiously appears. A masked face!

I yell. My cats, tiptoeing behind me -- encouraged by my yell to be aggressive -- hurl themselves at their cat door.

The face quickly draws back and disappears. Another intrusion by Procyon lotor has been repelled.

Yes, the neighborhood raccoon is gone for now, but he'll be back.

Readers will recall the filming of a new movie, The Details, at my house last summer. (The film's rumored to be released this autumn, by the way.) Nicknamed "the raccoon movie," the action is set in motion when raccoons drive a new homeowner to distraction by their nightly foraging in his newly turfed back yard.

Raccoons have been an on-going problem in this neighborhood, but ironically, they had never bothered my yard until the movie company returfed it after completing their filming. All fall and winter, I awoke each morning to see that the raccoons had spent the night rolling back the turf to get at whatever it was they were getting at underneath. Luckily, springtime brought strong root growth, and the lawn now seems impervious to molestation.

But access to my house through my cat door remains an issue.¹ Urban raccoons really have no fear of humans, although I can make a loud enough noise to annoy them and chase them away. My current intruder enjoys entering the kitchen and browsing for cat food. I try to avoid serving as a raccoon restaurant by moving the cat dish out of the kitchen and into the back room while I'm there using the computer or watching TV. On at least one occasion, however, I was so involved in something I was researching and writing that only belatedly did I tune into the sound of crunching and notice movement out of the corner of my eye -- the cheeky devil was leisurely dining in the same room with me.

If I'm going to be gone for a long weekend, I have to leave out three times the normal amount of food, knowing it may have to feed a large raccoon, in addition to my two cats. My only alternative would be to close up the cat door and keep the cats penned up inside for several days.

My adversary has become so brazen that I've even found signs that he sacks out on my living room couch while I'm gone. What next? Will I come home to find him dressed in my robe and slippers? Smoking my cigars, drinking my brandy?²

Raccoons are highly intelligent. When they work out a solution to a problem, they remember the solution for several years afterward. They have extremely dexterous and sensitive "fingers." They are preternaturally cute. They douse their food before eating it (in my cats' water dish!). Their name in English comes from an Algonquian Indian phrase meaning "[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands." They usually co-exist reasonably peaceably with house pets, and will befriend them if they see any advantage to themselves in so doing.

They are smarter -- and certainly cuter -- than lots of people I know. And probably, all in all, less annoying.

I could never kill my neighborhood burglar. I just have to learn to live with him -- and figure out how to do so without serving as his primary fast food emporium.

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¹Yes, I know about electronic cat doors, and I've perused ads for them on-line. But they're expensive, and none seems to fit the hole already cut in my door.
²Just kidding. I don't have cigars or brandy.

Diplomas in hand

Seattle's first really nice June weather -- sunny and warm -- greeted University of Washington graduates as they received their degrees today, as their parents looked on with pride and -- in some cases, no doubt -- exhausted relief.

The carillon in the square gothic tower of Gerberding Hall (née "Administration Building") chimed non-stop in the background; a fully costumed bride and groom posed for photos before a backdrop of Drumheller Fountain and Mount Rainier; graduates strode briskly across campus, their black robes flapping open at times to reveal Bermuda shorts and t-shirts underneath; recipients of advanced degrees strutted proudly in their colorful hoods and faux-medieval caps; foreign students and their proud families were everywhere, wearing a wide array of dress styles and speaking innumerable languages; graduates' younger brothers and sisters dashed about exuberantly while their smiling parents and grandparents walked quietly, seeming a bit shy and perhaps uncertain how now to relate to their newly degreed offspring.

More than ever, ethnic Asians seemed represented among UW graduates far out of proportion to their share of the general population. Some of these graduates were foreign students, of course, but most were fully-assimilated Asian-Americans. The notable success of Asian-Americans at the university level, and in post-graduate work, suggests, to me, at least, how valuable this segment of our population is becoming to our nation; in future years, Asian-Americans will be represented more and more heavily in fields such as science and engineering, medicine and law. The talents these highly talented graduates bring to American society demonstrate Congress's wisdom in passing the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, the statute that abolished a prior system that discriminated against Asian immigration.

The Class of '10 faces a struggling economy and an unpromising job market. The recent recession may be just one more blip in a cyclical economy, or it may mark the beginning of a secular decline associated with worldwide economic and political changes. I sympathize with the nervousness and uncertainty that today's graduates must feel. But whatever the future holds, today's UW grads will be better able to face it with the educations they've received.

Pac-10 -- R.I.P.

Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado. Those are the schools that supposedly are about to be admitted to the Pac-10 conference.

My feelings, and the feelings of other alumni or fans of existing Pac-10 teams, obviously mean nothing. This decision is all about Big Bucks for Big Athletics. The academic quality of the schools being considered (often cited as a highly prized asset of teams in both the Pac-10 and the Big Ten, although an asset whose reality often seems somewhat dubious), the geographic proximity of the schools, the student culture of the schools, and the history of traditional rivalries -- all mean nothing to those making the decisions.

The two Arizona schools were the first break in the Pacific Coast tradition, although Arizona at least adjoins California. None of the new schools is located in a state that adjoins a Pacific coast state, although, of course, Arizona does touch Colorado at a dimensionless point. The traditions and customs of the Texas and Oklahoma schools and their student bodies -- although no doubt precious to themselves -- seem bizarre and foreign to students on the coast. The idea of a rivalry -- outside a bowl game -- with a school that yells "Hook 'em, horns" or one that rolls a prairie schooner out onto the field, is enough to make a Pac-10 alumnus cry.

Colorado at least shares academic and culturally liberal features with the existing conference members. Colorado would be an acceptable addition to the Pac-10 if it weren't on the other side of the Rockies. Texas is an academically reputable school, but lives in a different world culturally. (By which I don't mean that UT is uncultured musically, artistically, etc. -- simply that I find the mass culture of its student body incomprehensible.) The other schools? Probably fine regional schools, but out here -- in our neck of the woods -- they're nothing more than names of football teams whose scores we find listed in the sports section.

Resistance is futile. What the athletic departments want, they'll get. But they're trading a cohesive athletic conference that boasts -- under one name or another -- a long history and tradition for an uncomfortable combine of teams that share nothing but big athletic budgets and a lust for bigger ones. What next? Penn State moving to the Ivy League? If there were any other logical place to go, I'd be willing to see my alma mater bid its historic conference adieu.

This alumnus isn't happy.

Whom the gods would destroy ...

Tea Party candidates did only so-so in this week's Republican primaries. Still, in a number of states this year, the Tea Party seems to have hijacked the party away from the Republican "establishment," defeating candidates preferred by party leaders and presenting voters in November with a Republican party that has swung strongly to the right.

We could end up with a strongly conservative Congress in November -- or, to the contrary, the Tea Party may end up helping Democrats snatch a November victory from the jaws of expected defeat.

I thought of the Tea Party this week, strangely enough, as I read an article describing the life cycle and psychological effects of a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. (Economist, 6-5-10.) This interesting parasite's life cycle requires it to alternate between cats and mice as its host. It reproduces in the cat, forms a cyst in the cat's intestine, is defecated, and is then ingested by mice (primarily, but also occasionally by certain other mammals, including humans). In order to complete the cycle, the little feller needs to return to a cat, preferably by having a cat eat its mouse host. How to encourage this happy result? T. gondii apparently has evolved the ability to change the personality of the mouse, once inside its body, by triggering the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in motivation and behavior.

A mouse infected with T. gondii begins showing un-mouselike behavior around cats. He will begin wandering around aimlessly, behaving in ways that appear designed to call the attention of any nearby cats to himself. He finds the smell of cats to be actually attractive -- and thus is lured willingly to his own doom, like a moth to a flame, while in the process perpetuating the life of the parasite he's carrying around.

The writer of the Economist article was interested primarily in the effects of T. gondii on humans who are infected by, for example, eating poorly cooked meat -- increased neuroticism, decreased interest in novelty, poor reaction times, shorter attention spans, and some correlation with schizophrenia. An earlier study showed that men harboring T. gondii were more likely to be aggressive, jealous and suspicious, while women became more outgoing and showed signs of higher intelligence (!). (The Guardian, 9-25-03.)

About 80 percent of the French, but only 33 percent of the British, are infected. Make of that whatever you will.

Anyway, it occured to me that Republican primary voters this year -- like mice begging to be devoured by cats -- seem to be voting (egged on by the Tea Party) in ways that will increase the odds of their party's being devoured by the Democrats in November. Is it far-fetched to view the Tea Party as a parasite that seeks to succeed as a species at the expense of its host -- and does so by altering the host's behavior? Is the Republican party going even loonier because it's been infected by T. partii?

Ok, ok. It was just a dumb thought. A stupid metaphor. I'm sure it has no relationship to reality.

Along for the ride

Incompetence pays off at times. Last weekend, ten of us chipped in to charter a sailboat, setting sail from the Berkeley marina and heading out onto San Francisco Bay. (Many of us were the same folks who set out on an earlier sail in November 2007.)

Chris was once again our captain, assisted by one of his local sailing buddies. Denny, who has been taking sailing lessons, stood in ably as their apprentice.

The remaining seven of us lay back and watched the Bay, its bridges, its ships and boats, and its occasional wild life. And we watched our three competent sailors rushing about, raising and lowering sails, unfurling the jib, securing lines, putting out and bringing in bumpers, sailing before the wind and tacking against the wind, and whatever other nautical things such people do. And we discussed our upcoming lunch stop in Sausalito. It was quite relaxing and very entertaining.

For the Incompetent Seven, our primary task was to keep out of everyone's way and avoid being conked on the head by the swinging boom as the boat came about. Now and then, one of us would be invited to take the wheel. When things were well under control. A bit like being 15 and invited to take the wheel of your dad's car -- but only in a large, empty parking lot where there was little damage to be done.

Much fun. I'm a bit jealous of the Competent Three. But only a little. Sometimes in life, it's quite enjoyable to be just a passenger.