Saturday, May 01, 2004

oh-vla-di, oh-vla-da

This morning, I went to brunch with my friend from Beauxbaton, and in the parking lot at Bluephie's was a green SUV with the license plate VLA FAN. Who's/what's VLA? The first page you get when you Google VLA includes: Very Large Array (astronomy), Virginia Library Association, Veterinary Laboratories Agency, Valuation & Lands Agency, Virtual Learning Arcade, and Verkehrsgemeinschaft Landkreis Aurich. None of these seem likely contenders. I've searched through my increasinly moldy mental Rolodex of popular/high/indie culture, and no one with these initials came to mind. Anyone know, or have a good guess? E-mail me.

BTW, there is a car that parks in my lot on campus that has the license plate MLE FAN. At first I thought the person must be, like me, a fan of Maximum Likelihood Estimation. Then I thought that maybe they were fans of some performer named Emily (em-el-ee). Dickinson, maybe, or the more talented of the Indigo Girls. As it turns out, the car belongs to someone on the social sciences computing staff who is a huge Melissa (L.) Etheridge fan.

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