Morning Ramble: Parsing the DHS Barber Pole

Lately on the Metro I've been seeing a lot of the Homeland Security alert stack -- that barber pole of five colored bars that has become so familiar to all Americans. In ads on the train, the stack is prominently featured, alongside the TA's own oracular counsels of vigilance and fervent hopes that passengers will do the right thing when terrorism strikes.

It got me to thinking about the DHS's barber pole itself, and how useful it really is. I will grant you that the ordinal stack of colors -- green on the bottom, yellow in the middle, and red at the top -- does work; one has the gut feeling that Code Red is . . . well, bad. But the actual words, the labels and legends that are set out to "explain" these color bars -- that's another story. Code Green is about the only one that lacks any ambiguity: a "Low" risk means exactly that. But what about the shades of meaning we're asked to parse for anything above that? (This seems like a reasonable question to ask, since it's unlikely, at least in this administration, that we're going to ever see anything lower than Code Yellow.)

For example: Although we can probably tease out what's meant by "Guarded," it seems much harder, in as strict etymological sense, to distinguish between "Elevated" and "High,". And look at the glosses beside each bar: Is a "significant" risk of terrorist attack really less alarming than a "high" risk? And what about the legend beside Code Blue -- "General risk of terrorist attack." A "general risk" sounds pretty significannt to me!

Worst of all, the DHS's current slate has no real normative component -- nothing that tells us precisely what to do or how we should feel when the alert comes in. In an effort to address that shortfall, I offer the slightly revised version to the left of this paragraph for discussion and possible adoption. I point out a number of advantages to this approach. Note first that the brief labels on each of the color bars enable the user to calibrate their emotional reaction to the DHS threat announcement in terms pretty much anyone can understand. And the legends to the right of the color bars provide practical advice on how to respond constructively, as good citizens, to the announcement.

Anyway, just a thought.