Nobles and knaves

Noble: Spirit and its creators, for a remarkable rollout onto a red planet.

Looking backward is rarely a sign of progress. But looking backward after rolling onto a new world — not to mention a voyage of 300 million miles — is a pretty progressive thing to do. Early Thursday morning, Spirit rumbled onto the Martian surface after receiving instructions. Then as previously planned, it stopped, looked backward and took a photo of the landing platform it had left behind and its two tracks in the sand.

Spirit didn’t travel too fast or too far — less than one-tenth of an mph over about 10 feet — but it took Spirit’s scientists and engineers years to reach that point. They had to build it to be capable of surviving the bumpy liftoff from Earth and bouncy landing on Mars, sturdy enough to traverse both sand and rock and function in the planet’s extreme conditions, and sophisticated enough to search for evidence of ancient water flows.

Spirit and its controllers are expected to spend three months exploring the salmon-colored sandbox of Mars. If all goes well, Spirit will be joined by its sister craft Opportunity a week from today.

In many respects, Spirit embodies the current status of the space program — rolling forward, with halts and hesitations — onto great discoveries. For a short traverse and an awesome transition, Spirit and its creators are the Nobles of the week.

Knaves: The cursing enforcers of the Portland Police Department, for establishing an obscenely silly policy.

Once they swear in, Portland police officers must swear off swearing, unless they have a good !##$% reason.

The problem began last year, when two police review groups conducted profanity audits of the department. Over a year-and-a-half, they discovered 63 complaints of what could be described as “assault with profanity.” In 2002, Portland also had 20 murders, 354 rapes, 1,294 robberies and 2,844 cases of aggravated assault, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.

Portland Police Chief Derrick Foxworth apparently concurred with the idea that the profanity of police officers was a serious public menace. Instead of burying the reports under the police blotter, the chief agreed to change the policy. Last month, he issued a directive proclaiming that officers can only use obscenities in “very limited” and “exceptional” circumstances, such as when it would permit them to avoid the use of force. Then have to write a report explaining why they did so.

The department even installed a new computer program to track and monitor complaints about profanity. Officers who receive too many citations are subject to disciplinary action.

This family newspaper scarcely condones the liberal use of profanity. Yet certain professions and certain circumstances sometimes give rise to obscene amounts of vulgarity. The members of the thin blue line shouldn’t have to worry about swearing a blue streak as they are streaking after a suspect, much less after they capture him.

For making patrolmen watch their tongues — instead of their backs — the profanity cops of the Portland Police Department are the Knaves of the week.