Recently, we saw a white coyote the size of a fawn just walking down the street in broad daylight. They are supposed to be nocturnal and afraid of people.
Nothing abnormal about that; I see that pretty commonly in coyote territory. Coyotes aren't actually nocturnal, and while they tend to avoid contact with humans, they are pretty well adapted to living near them. Those lone coyotes you see on the side of the road are probably scouts for the rest of the pack who are a safe distance away.
I'm not sure what this "balance" thing is that people keep on talking about. It's as if they believe that ecosystems without humans are in some kind of stable equilibrium, which is bizarre and counter-factual. Not only do new species show up now and then without human intervention, environmental conditions change, and species-interactions occur, that prevent anything remotely resembling stability beyond the very basic level required for the moderately long-term persistance of life.
And it seems that you believe that because absolute statism is impossible, all changes are equal.
No there's no such thing as "balance" as some kind of permanent thing. Yes ecosystems change without human intervention. But when stated as such absolutes, these statements are essentially meaningless. You are quite deliberately not drawing a distinction between the mountains eventually eroding, and them being bulldozed into the ocean in a week.
If you don't take a literal absolutist definition of "balance" as "statism", then it's obvious that there is a balance in our ecosystems. Yes they change, borders between ecosystems move, species adapt, yet these things all happen together, maintaining over time a balance despite change. Because they aren't mutually exclusive opposites in the real world of shades of gray. The whole reason why these introduced plants are a problem is because they didn't evolve here. Thus their impact in this ecosystem clearly differs from that of any organism that did evolve here, or with their impact in the ecosystem they did evolve in.
That is the kind of balance we're talking about. Not an absolutist balance, but the natural kind where species co-evolve. No you can't maintain anything like this over the long term in the face of ice ages and other geologic/climate changes, no you can't prevent any species from ever being introduced to an environment where it did not evolve and has a disruptive effect, but that's fine, nobody is saying we must. But there's a reason the last major extinction event occurred after humans arrived, with millennia of relative stability before even in the face of advancing or retreating glaciers.
So just because change is inevitable, that does not mean we humans should not try, nor be concerned with, avoiding being the instrument of rapid and destructive change. That's a foolish, irresponsible view which is what absolutism always is.
If you value ecosystemic "balance" then you should be rooting for the weed (as it were) because the sooner humans stop interfering with its spread the sooner a new quasi-equilibrium will be established.
Ridiculous, as the shortest path to "quasi-equilibrium" is to return to the one that the introduction of this weed by humans disturbed. Introduce an invasive species, then don't "interfere" with it -- this is exactly the kind of thing this strawman-based absolutist "logic" leads to.
If, on the other hand, you are simply a conservative, and value the world as it is because that is the world you know, you should say so and argue on that basis, and not impute your conservative beliefs to some equilibrium principle that is false to fact.
Oh please. If you can't see any consequences to destroying the ecosystems that evolved on this continent in the blink of an eye beyond economic inconvenience and sentimentality, then you have no business lecturing others as if you understand the issues here.
You are missing the point. It is not about respect for the law, it is about respect for and fear of authority. The law really has very little to do with it.
Fear, sure. Respect, not so much. I guess that's okay from their point of view.
Well if you like style in your fascism -- and your sense of style is synonymous with "blindingly gaudy" -- then you need look no further than our neighbor to the south.
Brown Shirts? Black Shirts? Bah! GOLD Shirts is where it's at!
Mexican Fascism -- because dystopia doesn't have to look dark and depressing.
Wonder how much the treatment will cost? How many kids don't get to eat at school so that someone gets this treatment.
Don't worry, the people who can't afford lunch for their kids will be the same ones who can't afford this treatment. So nothing you would be concerned with.
Space combat with laser weapons in a world of Newtonian mechanics just isn't interesting, because it consists of
Victory is entirely determined by who has the most power behind their shields and lasers. You spend the majority of your time in the early stages of Frontier avoiding combat because you'll be whiffed out of existence like a water balloon hitting the sun. Then when you have enough cash to beef up your ship, you are effectively untouchable.
Short-range particle bolt weapons and etheric rudder may not be realistic, but they are a lot more fun.
Well it's not like lasers and Newtonian physics are a package deal.
Terminus used Newtonian physics and particle bolt weapons (and torpedoes), and it was hella fun, such that I find "etheric rudder" (nice term btw) games to be boring. If I wanted aerodynamic flight, I'd be playing a combat flight sim!
3D circle-strafing (sphere strafing?) ruled. Get 4 or more ships involved in the dogfight and you had some seriously awesome space ballet going on as everyone tried to dodge out of the other's lines of fire. And you really could take the lightest, cheapest fighter and smoke the biggest, heaviest gunship just by being faster -- though in practice that was very risky, since the heaviest gun could blow your ass to pieces in one decent hit and your ship still had momentum.
Terminus had its own set of problems (mainly not being popular enough to have 4+ ship battles be very common) but it showed how fun Newtonian physics could be in a space sim. I'll never play another space sim that doesn't do it.
And hey, at least theoretically you could have lasers and other light-speed weapons... that would just mean combat would take place at distances far enough that you still have a chance to dodge (or rather, move erratically hoping the beam you can't see heading towards you isn't going to hit you). So well out of visual range and with completely automatic aiming, so maybe that wouldn't be as fun.
Perhaps this will teach some people that if you don't want to pay the fines for breaking the law, then don't break the law!
Well it's teaching me that if you break the law, you'll have to pay fines for things you didn't do.
That doesn't really encourage respect for the law, you know.
He didn't create the vulnerabilities, he exploited him. Punish him for the illegal computer trespass, but fix your own damn security holes, because those were your fault.
If all they succeed in doing is reducing legitimate commercial trade in such products, they're hurting themselves but at the same time improving the market tremendously for illicit dealers (note this observation applies to drugs as well, hmm).
Yeah, that's why the export restrictions were lifted in the late 90s. Because all it was doing was hurting our domestic encryption companies. Back then, when Mozilla was still Netscape, you had to assert that you were in the U.S. or download a version with weaker encryption. Free software that used strong encryption had to be hosted on sites outside the U.S.
That was over 10 years ago. Now we still have restrictions about exporting to certain not-our-friend countries, but ultimately that's because (despite more cynical interpretations) we know that they can get this technology without our assistance, but that doesn't mean we're going to hand it to them.
But while that makes sense for some technologies, it doesn't make much sense for a free software browser implementing SSL because for one there are plenty of other SSL implementations out there and for two us not handing it to them only leaves, oh, about a billion others more than happy to allow downloads from Iran.
So look at that -- perhaps technically against the rules, but practically meaningless, and in the spirit of the law they decided there was no problem. Someone in the Commerce Department was wearing their thinking cap! Good for them, and good for Mozilla.
Ex post facto is about changing the legality of actions taken in the past, relative to their legality when the action was taken.
At the time the actions in question were taken, they were illegal. After this bill is passed, they will be equally illegal. That there was some interim period in which that legality was changed due to an actual ex post facto law does not affect the constitutionality of this law. Nullifying an ex post facto law isn't itself ex post facto.
To use a Van Damme analogy, Time Cop isn't breaking his own rules against changing the timeline when he restores the time line after someone screws with it.
I'm quite capable of figuring out when to wank on my own ("all the time", roughly)
Well, then when they announce it's time you can just say "Way ahead of you, DHS!" as you sit in the airport bathroom stall.
Oh but you probably shouldn't be doing it roughly, at least not all the time, or you can get callouses and reduced sensitivity. Just fyi.
They'd be complaining that women masturbate too, so using a word like "wank" is sexist.
I've heard "wank" used as a term for female masturbation as well. But that's fine, we could just say "wank or -" and add in an appropriate term. I like "pet the bunny".
I suspect a few more atoms were used for the lasers that generate the optical containment and the device that applies the magnetic field and whatever was used to cool those two atoms to near zero Kelvins.
Well okay, but on the other hand a 4 cylinder engine involves more parts than just those 4 cylinders -- some of those parts even being of a cylindrical nature! "4-cylinder" engine has more than 4 cylinders, wtf?! And while for a liquid-cooled engine the radiator is an essential component, you don't normally include it when talking about 'the engine'.
So sure from one point of view "two atoms" is poppycock. From another viewpoint you can say that much like the pistons in an ICE, its these two atoms what convert some other source of energy into motive force, thus "two atom motor". I think it's rather obvious which view they were speaking from -- the one that is correct.:P
Yeah I'd say more that, at least as far as protecting yourself from embezzlement goes. If your money isn't just frozen by the government, but gone, you're going to be one little guy in a long line of folks trying to get it back. There might not be any left by the time you get to the front of the line and the government is under no obligation to care. I had a friend who was in this situation... it suuuucks.
Journalism profs should save that article for class discussion.
Yeah and they'll point at this article and say "See this? This is how you do it. Remember that your target audience has no idea what these egg-heads are saying, so it helps if you don't either. You can't spell 'dumbed down' without 'dumb'!"
Beyond that, when you're talking about bank failure (instead of fraud or stupidity), you've got the FDIC.
True, but a lot of people don't realize that FDIC only covers them in the case of bank failure -- even if the fraud comes from within the bank (embezzlement) and will probably eventually lead to the bank's failure. Just because the law allegedly protects you in case of fraud, that protection works at the speed of justice. If your account is one that the fraud affected, it could be frozen for years while the case is under way.
I was alarmed when I was searching for a new bank that the major banks do not offer authenticators or usb dongles to use for online banking for normal consumers. Why can I protect my WoW account better than my bank account?
The solution seems obvious... convert all your cash to WoW gold to keep it safe.
On an unrelated subject, I have the best exchange rates between dollars and gold, and the speediest delivery! Money mailed to you within the hour!
So, on a public spectrum, I agree with the change that the public only need to know our code awareness level from "Guarded" on up.
Actually RTFAing, I see the proposed levels and while still almost certainly useless bullshit, they seem less like useless bullshit than the current system. They aren't just scrapping the lowest two levels, they're changing their meaning.
# Yellow = Guarded - "A constant state of vigilance to protect against a terrorist attack." # Orange = Elevated - "Increased protective measures based on specific threat information regarding a known or suspected terrorist plot." # Red = High Alert - "Maximum protective measures to protect against an imminent or ongoing terrorist attack."
Okay, that makes a little sense. Yellow would be the default state and it'd basically never change. Then, rather than scaling it based on vague "high risk" criterion, they only elevate it when they (claim to but hey) have specific knowledge of a potential attack. And it only hits red when the shit has basically hit the fan.
Still not sure what the average citizen would do with a Yellow alert vs Orange -- I assume law enforcement has specific procedures/behaviors they are trained for when their own personal 'threat level' goes up, but nothing other than "be more alert, frightened, and obedient" gets taught to us civies.:P
It's not useless. It's simply a symbol of control, and a way to keep people cowed.
Yeah, I meant useless from our point of view (which the OP seemed to suggest wasn't the case), not useless from its creator's point of view. I think we all know the use of the Be Scared Alert for them, long before Tom Ridge spilled the beans.
Government WANK alert system. Whereby the wankiness of a government
Lame. This should have been about the government warning us of an imminent need to wank.
See, the problem with the current Terror Alert is that there is basically nothing you or I can or should do differently in response to its changing level. So what good does it do other than make us nervous and stressed? But that's no good, stress is bad and leads to people making stupid mistakes that could let a terrorist attack in. So the warning should basically be "DHS has set the current Wank Level to Orange, meaning you're probably tense and stressed and should probably go have a nice wank to let some steam off." Now that would be useful. Though on the other hand, it already gets crowded enough in airport bathrooms; can you imagine the line to the men's room after the TSA announcement?
Okay, so here's a better idea: Just like today, the TSA guy recording is played over the intercom "The DHS Terror Threat Level is orange!" but he says it in a reeeally sarcastic voice. That's the signal that everyone in the airport should stand up and make exaggerated wanking motions with their hands, optionally while sticking their tongue out to the side or making monkey noises.
That'll show the terrorists what we think of them!
If it's orange (I've flown once during orange) then there's a bit of tension in the air. Makes for a more unpleasant airport experience, but it also tends to make people more aware of their surroundings.
I've never flown in not-orange ever since they came up with the system. I'm not some business traveler, but I fly between three and six times a year round-trip to various places around the country, and I always hear the same recording of some guy saying "The current threat level is orange". And I don't think anyone has so much as batted an eye. From San Francisco to Denver to freaking JFK Intl., I've never seen people act more alert and suspicious after that announcement.
Like this B.S. threat level is so well correlated with actual terrorist plotting that, if you're worried about terrorists, it's safe to lower your guard during a "yellow" threat level. Please! People are going to react the same way to "suspicious" things they see in an airport, and they're going to pay just as much attention either way. Nobody cares about the threat level, for one because it never changes, for two because it doesn't make any sense to do anything different -- if you're paranoid about terrorists and care to be alert on the 1-in-a-billion chance you personally spot terrorist activity, you will be just as much so during "yellow" as "orange". And if you're like me, and not worried much at all about terrorists, you're going to keep a vague eye out but you're still not going to give a shit how scared TSA says you should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like an interesting place. :)
Recently, we saw a white coyote the size of a fawn just walking down the street in broad daylight. They are supposed to be nocturnal and afraid of people.
Nothing abnormal about that; I see that pretty commonly in coyote territory. Coyotes aren't actually nocturnal, and while they tend to avoid contact with humans, they are pretty well adapted to living near them. Those lone coyotes you see on the side of the road are probably scouts for the rest of the pack who are a safe distance away.
I'm not sure what this "balance" thing is that people keep on talking about. It's as if they believe that ecosystems without humans are in some kind of stable equilibrium, which is bizarre and counter-factual. Not only do new species show up now and then without human intervention, environmental conditions change, and species-interactions occur, that prevent anything remotely resembling stability beyond the very basic level required for the moderately long-term persistance of life.
And it seems that you believe that because absolute statism is impossible, all changes are equal.
No there's no such thing as "balance" as some kind of permanent thing. Yes ecosystems change without human intervention. But when stated as such absolutes, these statements are essentially meaningless. You are quite deliberately not drawing a distinction between the mountains eventually eroding, and them being bulldozed into the ocean in a week.
If you don't take a literal absolutist definition of "balance" as "statism", then it's obvious that there is a balance in our ecosystems. Yes they change, borders between ecosystems move, species adapt, yet these things all happen together, maintaining over time a balance despite change. Because they aren't mutually exclusive opposites in the real world of shades of gray. The whole reason why these introduced plants are a problem is because they didn't evolve here. Thus their impact in this ecosystem clearly differs from that of any organism that did evolve here, or with their impact in the ecosystem they did evolve in.
That is the kind of balance we're talking about. Not an absolutist balance, but the natural kind where species co-evolve. No you can't maintain anything like this over the long term in the face of ice ages and other geologic/climate changes, no you can't prevent any species from ever being introduced to an environment where it did not evolve and has a disruptive effect, but that's fine, nobody is saying we must. But there's a reason the last major extinction event occurred after humans arrived, with millennia of relative stability before even in the face of advancing or retreating glaciers.
So just because change is inevitable, that does not mean we humans should not try, nor be concerned with, avoiding being the instrument of rapid and destructive change. That's a foolish, irresponsible view which is what absolutism always is.
If you value ecosystemic "balance" then you should be rooting for the weed (as it were) because the sooner humans stop interfering with its spread the sooner a new quasi-equilibrium will be established.
Ridiculous, as the shortest path to "quasi-equilibrium" is to return to the one that the introduction of this weed by humans disturbed. Introduce an invasive species, then don't "interfere" with it -- this is exactly the kind of thing this strawman-based absolutist "logic" leads to.
If, on the other hand, you are simply a conservative, and value the world as it is because that is the world you know, you should say so and argue on that basis, and not impute your conservative beliefs to some equilibrium principle that is false to fact.
Oh please. If you can't see any consequences to destroying the ecosystems that evolved on this continent in the blink of an eye beyond economic inconvenience and sentimentality, then you have no business lecturing others as if you understand the issues here.
You are missing the point. It is not about respect for the law, it is about respect for and fear of authority. The law really has very little to do with it.
Fear, sure. Respect, not so much. I guess that's okay from their point of view.
Well if you like style in your fascism -- and your sense of style is synonymous with "blindingly gaudy" -- then you need look no further than our neighbor to the south.
Brown Shirts? Black Shirts? Bah! GOLD Shirts is where it's at!
Mexican Fascism -- because dystopia doesn't have to look dark and depressing.
Wonder how much the treatment will cost? How many kids don't get to eat at school so that someone gets this treatment.
Don't worry, the people who can't afford lunch for their kids will be the same ones who can't afford this treatment. So nothing you would be concerned with.
Space combat with laser weapons in a world of Newtonian mechanics just isn't interesting, because it consists of
Victory is entirely determined by who has the most power behind their shields and lasers. You spend the majority of your time in the early stages of Frontier avoiding combat because you'll be whiffed out of existence like a water balloon hitting the sun. Then when you have enough cash to beef up your ship, you are effectively untouchable.
Short-range particle bolt weapons and etheric rudder may not be realistic, but they are a lot more fun.
Well it's not like lasers and Newtonian physics are a package deal.
Terminus used Newtonian physics and particle bolt weapons (and torpedoes), and it was hella fun, such that I find "etheric rudder" (nice term btw) games to be boring. If I wanted aerodynamic flight, I'd be playing a combat flight sim!
3D circle-strafing (sphere strafing?) ruled. Get 4 or more ships involved in the dogfight and you had some seriously awesome space ballet going on as everyone tried to dodge out of the other's lines of fire. And you really could take the lightest, cheapest fighter and smoke the biggest, heaviest gunship just by being faster -- though in practice that was very risky, since the heaviest gun could blow your ass to pieces in one decent hit and your ship still had momentum.
Terminus had its own set of problems (mainly not being popular enough to have 4+ ship battles be very common) but it showed how fun Newtonian physics could be in a space sim. I'll never play another space sim that doesn't do it.
And hey, at least theoretically you could have lasers and other light-speed weapons... that would just mean combat would take place at distances far enough that you still have a chance to dodge (or rather, move erratically hoping the beam you can't see heading towards you isn't going to hit you). So well out of visual range and with completely automatic aiming, so maybe that wouldn't be as fun.
Perhaps this will teach some people that if you don't want to pay the fines for breaking the law, then don't break the law!
Well it's teaching me that if you break the law, you'll have to pay fines for things you didn't do.
That doesn't really encourage respect for the law, you know.
He didn't create the vulnerabilities, he exploited him. Punish him for the illegal computer trespass, but fix your own damn security holes, because those were your fault.
No, not really.
Neither Brian Eno nor literalism are God. Some people seem to really like them though. :)
Looks like code for "we shot them full of XTC", so I'm sure they felt relaxed and loved despite the broken spine.
Should have shot them up with Adam Ant, but that's just my opinion.
That isn't funny because it propagates the idea that rats and mice like cheese.
No, that's why it's funny.
It worked great for nuclear bomb technology after all!
Hehe. Nice one.
If all they succeed in doing is reducing legitimate commercial trade in such products, they're hurting themselves but at the same time improving the market tremendously for illicit dealers (note this observation applies to drugs as well, hmm).
Yeah, that's why the export restrictions were lifted in the late 90s. Because all it was doing was hurting our domestic encryption companies. Back then, when Mozilla was still Netscape, you had to assert that you were in the U.S. or download a version with weaker encryption. Free software that used strong encryption had to be hosted on sites outside the U.S.
That was over 10 years ago. Now we still have restrictions about exporting to certain not-our-friend countries, but ultimately that's because (despite more cynical interpretations) we know that they can get this technology without our assistance, but that doesn't mean we're going to hand it to them.
But while that makes sense for some technologies, it doesn't make much sense for a free software browser implementing SSL because for one there are plenty of other SSL implementations out there and for two us not handing it to them only leaves, oh, about a billion others more than happy to allow downloads from Iran.
So look at that -- perhaps technically against the rules, but practically meaningless, and in the spirit of the law they decided there was no problem. Someone in the Commerce Department was wearing their thinking cap! Good for them, and good for Mozilla.
Ex post facto is about changing the legality of actions taken in the past, relative to their legality when the action was taken.
At the time the actions in question were taken, they were illegal. After this bill is passed, they will be equally illegal. That there was some interim period in which that legality was changed due to an actual ex post facto law does not affect the constitutionality of this law. Nullifying an ex post facto law isn't itself ex post facto.
To use a Van Damme analogy, Time Cop isn't breaking his own rules against changing the timeline when he restores the time line after someone screws with it.
I'm quite capable of figuring out when to wank on my own ("all the time", roughly)
Well, then when they announce it's time you can just say "Way ahead of you, DHS!" as you sit in the airport bathroom stall.
Oh but you probably shouldn't be doing it roughly, at least not all the time, or you can get callouses and reduced sensitivity. Just fyi.
They'd be complaining that women masturbate too, so using a word like "wank" is sexist.
I've heard "wank" used as a term for female masturbation as well. But that's fine, we could just say "wank or -" and add in an appropriate term. I like "pet the bunny".
I suspect a few more atoms were used for the lasers that generate the optical containment and the device that applies the magnetic field and whatever was used to cool those two atoms to near zero Kelvins.
Well okay, but on the other hand a 4 cylinder engine involves more parts than just those 4 cylinders -- some of those parts even being of a cylindrical nature! "4-cylinder" engine has more than 4 cylinders, wtf?! And while for a liquid-cooled engine the radiator is an essential component, you don't normally include it when talking about 'the engine'.
So sure from one point of view "two atoms" is poppycock. From another viewpoint you can say that much like the pistons in an ICE, its these two atoms what convert some other source of energy into motive force, thus "two atom motor". I think it's rather obvious which view they were speaking from -- the one that is correct. :P
That, and something about eggs and baskets.
Yeah I'd say more that, at least as far as protecting yourself from embezzlement goes. If your money isn't just frozen by the government, but gone, you're going to be one little guy in a long line of folks trying to get it back. There might not be any left by the time you get to the front of the line and the government is under no obligation to care. I had a friend who was in this situation... it suuuucks.
Multiple bank accounts ftw!
Journalism profs should save that article for class discussion.
Yeah and they'll point at this article and say "See this? This is how you do it. Remember that your target audience has no idea what these egg-heads are saying, so it helps if you don't either. You can't spell 'dumbed down' without 'dumb'!"
Beyond that, when you're talking about bank failure (instead of fraud or stupidity), you've got the FDIC.
True, but a lot of people don't realize that FDIC only covers them in the case of bank failure -- even if the fraud comes from within the bank (embezzlement) and will probably eventually lead to the bank's failure. Just because the law allegedly protects you in case of fraud, that protection works at the speed of justice. If your account is one that the fraud affected, it could be frozen for years while the case is under way.
I was alarmed when I was searching for a new bank that the major banks do not offer authenticators or usb dongles to use for online banking for normal consumers. Why can I protect my WoW account better than my bank account?
The solution seems obvious... convert all your cash to WoW gold to keep it safe.
On an unrelated subject, I have the best exchange rates between dollars and gold, and the speediest delivery! Money mailed to you within the hour!
So, on a public spectrum, I agree with the change that the public only need to know our code awareness level from "Guarded" on up.
Actually RTFAing, I see the proposed levels and while still almost certainly useless bullshit, they seem less like useless bullshit than the current system. They aren't just scrapping the lowest two levels, they're changing their meaning.
# Yellow = Guarded - "A constant state of vigilance to protect against a terrorist attack."
# Orange = Elevated - "Increased protective measures based on specific threat information regarding a known or suspected terrorist plot."
# Red = High Alert - "Maximum protective measures to protect against an imminent or ongoing terrorist attack."
Okay, that makes a little sense. Yellow would be the default state and it'd basically never change. Then, rather than scaling it based on vague "high risk" criterion, they only elevate it when they (claim to but hey) have specific knowledge of a potential attack. And it only hits red when the shit has basically hit the fan.
Still not sure what the average citizen would do with a Yellow alert vs Orange -- I assume law enforcement has specific procedures/behaviors they are trained for when their own personal 'threat level' goes up, but nothing other than "be more alert, frightened, and obedient" gets taught to us civies. :P
It's not useless. It's simply a symbol of control, and a way to keep people cowed.
Yeah, I meant useless from our point of view (which the OP seemed to suggest wasn't the case), not useless from its creator's point of view. I think we all know the use of the Be Scared Alert for them, long before Tom Ridge spilled the beans.
"So we urge all citizens to continue leading normal lives, while remaining in a state of stark, butt-puckering terror."
Hehe. I love Dave Barry.
Government WANK alert system. Whereby the wankiness of a government
Lame. This should have been about the government warning us of an imminent need to wank.
See, the problem with the current Terror Alert is that there is basically nothing you or I can or should do differently in response to its changing level. So what good does it do other than make us nervous and stressed? But that's no good, stress is bad and leads to people making stupid mistakes that could let a terrorist attack in. So the warning should basically be "DHS has set the current Wank Level to Orange, meaning you're probably tense and stressed and should probably go have a nice wank to let some steam off." Now that would be useful. Though on the other hand, it already gets crowded enough in airport bathrooms; can you imagine the line to the men's room after the TSA announcement?
Okay, so here's a better idea: Just like today, the TSA guy recording is played over the intercom "The DHS Terror Threat Level is orange!" but he says it in a reeeally sarcastic voice. That's the signal that everyone in the airport should stand up and make exaggerated wanking motions with their hands, optionally while sticking their tongue out to the side or making monkey noises.
That'll show the terrorists what we think of them!
If it's orange (I've flown once during orange) then there's a bit of tension in the air. Makes for a more unpleasant airport experience, but it also tends to make people more aware of their surroundings.
I've never flown in not-orange ever since they came up with the system. I'm not some business traveler, but I fly between three and six times a year round-trip to various places around the country, and I always hear the same recording of some guy saying "The current threat level is orange". And I don't think anyone has so much as batted an eye. From San Francisco to Denver to freaking JFK Intl., I've never seen people act more alert and suspicious after that announcement.
Like this B.S. threat level is so well correlated with actual terrorist plotting that, if you're worried about terrorists, it's safe to lower your guard during a "yellow" threat level. Please! People are going to react the same way to "suspicious" things they see in an airport, and they're going to pay just as much attention either way. Nobody cares about the threat level, for one because it never changes, for two because it doesn't make any sense to do anything different -- if you're paranoid about terrorists and care to be alert on the 1-in-a-billion chance you personally spot terrorist activity, you will be just as much so during "yellow" as "orange". And if you're like me, and not worried much at all about terrorists, you're going to keep a vague eye out but you're still not going to give a shit how scared TSA says you should be.
The Terror Alert is useless bullshit.
Brock: Magenta? Your battle mode is magenta?
The Monarch: Eat a dick.