Bright Colors

It seems an entirely reasonable proposition to change the Homeland Security Department's color coding system for threat alerts. It's always struck me as proof of ineffectiveness that the colors have always had to be translated into words to communicate the actual level of the threat. Yellow or orange doesn't actually mean anything to us. It doesn't stop people getting on planes, because we don't know what the threat is, or where it's concentrated. It's not a useful tool.

And I tend to think that color-coding in general isn't particularly helpful. It's possible to get obsessively fine-grained, but a three-color system, as in agency performance ratings, doesn't actually communicate meaningful difference in performance ratings either. I think the same is true with the Homeland Security ratings, which are so useless they've become background noise.