CHAT: postcodes (and hurricanes)

Roger writes:

>A permanent number would certainly simplify life-- here in the US, we have
>to renew our plates every year, for a price of course; when you buy a new or
>used car, you have to get new plates, for a price of course.  A very
>lucrative racket for the state. How does it happen the French/English etc.
>haven't discovered this easy source of revenue?  Or do they have some other
>way to collect a yearly tribute?
As someone else mentioned earlier, it's called bone-crushing income
tax. In my neck of the US, if a car changes owners, it's time for new
plates. If an owner changes cars (as in a new car), you can transfer
the old plates (your same number) to the new car. If an owner changes
states, duh, new plates. A monetary transaction is indubitably
involved regardless of what you do.

I think John mentioned a Florida quirk. My parents are on the
6-months-in-Florida/6-months in New Hampshire plan. If voter
registration means anything, they're Florida residents, but my
mother's car has NH plates fore and aft while my step-father's has
two FL plates, and no one's been manacled yet.

What I originally wanted to say, though, was that in Japan, you took
your phone number with you. You were considered to have "bought the
line", so if you moved from Kagoshima to Sapporo, it didn't matter;
your phone number stayed the same, rendering the notion of the
"exchange" rather moot. Now *that's* convenient. I've heard that we
have the technology here in the good ol' US of A and that you *can*
do it, but I've never heard of or seen it being done.

By the by, it's hurricane season down south. The latest of import is
named "Isadore", but they're tracking two storms: "Kyle" and "Lily".
Question: Did a "J" storm die out before it even got started when I
blinked, or do they not use "J" in hurricane nomenclature? And if so,
why?

Kou

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