Maybe it's an obtuse analogy, but the colored level-of-warning scheme used by the Department of Homeland Security reminds me of an episode in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (chapter 12).

The Allies have a map with a red line marking how far their troops have progressed. Yossarian, the book's protagonist, is able to inspire troops by moving the line forward at night, and demoralize them by moving it back. Of course, this has no bearing on the actual progress of the Allied liberation of Italy; the soldiers mistake an arbitrary symbolic representation for the life-and-death reality it ostensibly represents.

In the same way, our color-coded alert system is not only childish in its oversimplification, it is apparently quite inaccurate.

(link via Anil Dash)

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