When the British government invited commercial proposals for the digging of the Channel Tunnel between England and France, one man submitted a bid for only £10,000. “How can you possibly dig under the English Channel for only £10,000?” asked the project manager.
“It’s simple,” replied the low bidder. “My partner takes a spade, goes to France and starts digging. I take another spade and start digging from England. We’ll both keep digging until we meet in the middle.”
“Hm, I see. But what happens if, through a miscalculation, you two do not meet?”
“That’s even better for you!” replied the bidder enthusiastically. “In that case you will have two tunnels!”
S T R I P
C H I N A
R E G A L
A T O N E
P A R E R
Across
STRIP (Remove the outer layer of, perhaps) — Counterpart to SCALD.
CHINA (Region on a globe) — Counterpart to POLAR.
REGAL (Like some movie theaters; e.g., Regal Cinemas) — Counterpart to ARTSY.
ATONE (Command to a lawbreaker) — Counterpart to CEASE.
PARER (Rhyme for Tom Lehrer /'lɛrər/) — Counterpart to ERROR.
Down
SCRAP (____yard; scrapyard is a common sci-fi setting) — Counterpart to SPACE.
THETA (It goes something like this: Ꮎ) — Counterpart to CORER.
RIGOR (Feature of liturgy, often; strictness/adherence to rubrics) — Counterpart to ALTAR.
INANE (It's vacuous, in a sense) — Counterpart to LASSO.
PALER (Fino is paler than Pedro Ximénez sherry) — Counterpart to DRYER.
It's not just government use either. There are private companies that scan vast numbers of license plates (sometimes by driving around parking lots with a camera), build a database of what plate was seen where at what time, then sell access to both law enforcement and I believe private investigators.
Want to know if your spouse is having an affair? Those databases may well have the answer.
Here is a Wired story from 2014 about Vigilant Solutions, founded in 2009: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/license-plate-tracking/
I believe Vigilant only provide access to law enforcement, but Digital Recognition Network sell access to others as well: https://drndata.com/about/
Good Vice story about that: https://www.vice.com/en/article/i-tracked-someone-with-licen...