Anorak alert!

OK, now I know this post might get me in trouble by finally confirming my status as an anorak, but I'll go ahead with it anyway.

For those of you who don't speak British and don't know what an anorak is, wikipedia has a good summary here. By the way, the word anorak comes from the Inuit (Eskimo) language. A highlight from the article:

slang, an anorak is a person, typically a man, who has an unfathomable interest in arcane, detailed information regarded as boring by the rest of the population - and who feels compelled to spout said detailed information to anyone within earshot.

(The closest American slang is nerd which is applied to bookish students. Anorak is not generally applied to students; and the anorak is more of a trivia freak than an overly-studious worker. A geek is a person typically expert at, and intensely focussed on, technical equipment, particularly computers; again this is not really an anorak - the anorak offers us overly-detailed discussion and arcane trivia on "hobbyist" topics.)

The word can be qualified by the area in which the person takes an excessive interest.

As you can see, there doesn't appear to be any American equivalent to the British usage of "anorak".

So, I'm now exposing myself fully as a license plate anorak.

When in New Mexico, you'll see that all the license plates show "New Mexico USA". The USA part was added so that geographically-impaired Americans (approximately 95-99% of the population) who don't know the 50 states would know that New Mexico is part of the US and not part of Mexico.



I remember a good story of how during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a few people from New Mexico were denied buying tickets reserved for Americans. One sample story:

Wade Miller of Santa Fe, New Mexico, called the office for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to get tickets for the volleyball event. When Miller gave his address as New Mexico, the agent told him that they couldn't sell tickets outside the United States. Miller explained to the agent that New Mexico is part of the United States. Then he tried to explain this to her supervisor. The supervisor told him he'd have to try the Mexican Olympic Committee, or maybe the Puerto Rican committee--whichever his home country was.

So, I guess it's only right for New Mexico and New Mexicans to do all they can to convince their countrymen that they are indeed Americans and not Mexicans. I wonder why New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York aren't forced to do the same.

I really like the New Mexico state flag. Very simple and elegant.



The symbol on the flag, which also is on the license plates, is the "zia", which is the sun symbol of the Zia people. The symbol now appears on a hot air balloon on the current license plate, as New Mexico is famous for its hot air ballooning (which we unfortunately did not have time to check out).

Four is the special number of the Zia and so there are four lines pointing in all four directions. Each of the group of four lines represent:

- the four points of the compass (north, south, east, and west);
- the four seasons of the year (spring, summer, autumn and winter);
- the four periods of each day (morning, noon, evening and night);
- the four seasons of life (childhood, youth, adulthood and old age);

And getting back to my favorite topic of license plates, I'm also struck by how many of the US states now put their state government or state tourist board websites on the license plate. Just by travelling around the country, we saw no fewer than 6 states with websites on their plates (Pennsylvania, Indiana, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska). And there's sure to be a few more as well.

I found this article where a few designers rated the best and worst designed license plates in the country. Their favorite was Colorado, which I also like.



The worst? Kentucky (the one with Mr. Smiley Face that looks like it was done by a 4 year old), and I have to 100% agree with them. Apparently the people of Kentucky were so appalled by the design that it only lasted for two years before it was recently replaced.