Does ANYONE Have the Right to Marry?

Unless you’ve been living under a Pet Rock, you already know that last week U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker declared that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. In striking down Proposition 8, Judge Walker ruled that the voter-passed, Mormon-approved (and financed) ban violates the federal guarantees of equal protection and due process. Didn’t I read something, somewhere about it being “self-evident that all men [sic] are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights?” Maybe I was just having a really good dream.

Catholic leaders rushed to the microphones and airwaves, declaring that Judge Vaughn’s ruling was ‘both legally and morally’ wrong because his ruling short-circuits the votes of over 7 million Californians. One indignant woman insisted that gays and lesbians have no right to marry because “you can’t find it in the Constitution.” “You know why you can’t find it?” she hissed. “Because it’s not there.” Well, I got news for you, honey, there’s nothing in the Constitution that gives you the right to marry, either.

The nub of the problem is that reading the Constitution is essentially an exercise in interpretation. It’s like reading The Bible: you can’t take it literally … unless you’re a religious “fundamentalist” (which is basically code for narrow-minded bigot). In the world of constitutional law, we call these people “strict constructionists,” and they’re usually jingoistic Republicans with a low tolerance for individual rights. As far as people in both camps are concerned, if it’s not written down, it’s not there, and that’s the End of the Conversation.

Now, interpreting the Constitution isn’t exactly the legal equivalent of Rorschach’s ink-blot test, but it does involve trying to figure out the ‘intent’ of the Framers – which means there’s some guess work and mind-reading because there wasn’t a single framer; instead, there was a bunch of squabbling, often crabby, highly opinionated guys in wainscots and wigs with different levels of paranoia about government. When you consider that Aaron Burr (the sitting Vice-President) killed Alexander Hamilton (former Secretary of the Treasury) in a duel, you get a pretty good idea just how defensive and testy the Founding Fathers were about their personal and political differences. So, you can’t always find the ‘intent’ of the Framers because there isn’t just “one”, but you can identify the ideals they tried to protect.

Hop into the Constitutional ‘time capsule,’ and take a ride with me to the case of Marbury v. Madison decided in 1803. The Supreme Court, under the choreography of Chief Justice John Marshall, rendered a unanimous decision establishing that the Constitution is “fundamental law,” which cannot be submitted to a vote or the whim of Congress. In other words, there can’t be a law that trumps the Constitution … otherwise, “there would be no point in having a written Constitution.” Today, we call this the Rule of Law, as opposed to the Rule of King George III or former President Richard M. Nixon, who declared in a prime time television interview with David Frost that, as President, he was above the law. Feeling peevish, Nixon resigned rather than risk losing his pension.

So, where do we get the idea that marriage is a constitutionally protected right? We get it from the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. The Constitution is utterly silent on the subject of marriage, but Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut, found funky “penumbras [fringe areas] formed by emanations from specific guarantees [of privacy]”. In other words, there’s a right to privacy in the Constitution if you stretch it like an elastic band … and from that we conclude that there exists a fundamental right to marry.

Whether or not the Framers intended that outcome, we’ll never know. We do know, however, that to ‘read’ the Constitution, you have to read into it. The Founding Fathers wanted it that way.

Striving to Finish Fourth

Yesterday at the X-Games in San Francisco, Shaun White (a/k/a “The Animal” and a/k/a “Flying Tomato”) - and 2010 Olympic gold medalist in the snowboard halfpipe - busted out his insane new trick: the fakie frontside 540. Don’t ask me what it means; I have no idea … but it looks wayh-kewl! In the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, Shaun (who rides regular stance, twelve and negative three degrees on his board … just in case you need to know), had already won a gold medal when – just for the hell of it – he did a second run, and ended it with a Double McTwist 1260. Try that first thing in the morning when all you want is coffee! My knees ache just thinking about it.

Athletes like Shaun White, Lindsey Vonn (American World Cup alpine skier), Apolo Ohno (short-track speed skater), or the Williams sisters, blow me away with their passion and commitment. They’re perfectionists - the rock stars of sport. For finishing first, they’re rewarded with gold medals, lucrative sponsorships, interviews on ESPN, and paid endorsements for Fiber One cereal (the breakfast flake equivalent of Metamucil) and Tag Heuer watches, just like Tiger Woods used to get.

But perfectionism is a 2-edged sword. It can provide the motivation and energy that pushes a composer to keep working until the music emerges in just the right way; and it can be a cruel – even damaging - taskmaster. My friend Kamron, for example, is obsessed with being perfect to the point of paralysis. He only wears clothes that are a ‘perfect’ fit, and he’s hell-bent on sculpting the ‘perfect’ body … both of which, I suppose, are designed to insure that everyone in the entire world ‘loves’ him. There’s no room for slips-ups or ‘clumsy’ or a simple ‘oops’ in Kamron’s life; it’s either letter-perfect or not-at-all. It’s not just about looking-good; his whole life is like a jig-saw puzzle where all the wooden pieces – his dust-free apartment, his boyfriend, his car, his job, and his coffee table books - fit together perfectly. In his world, if he’s not perfect he’s a loser. He’s also a lot of work!

Now, welcome to my world where losing is an every day event. I live on a diet of humble pie and crow. I regularly fall on my sword. The difference between me and Kamron - besides the fact that my name is real - is that I’m only looking for a 4^th place finish. If, as Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up,” then just crossing the finish line (preferably near the front of the pack!) is ‘perfect enough’ for me. But don’t get me wrong; falling out of bed in the morning isn’t the same as ‘showing up.’

I know it’s heretical in our greed-is-good, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest world, but I strive to come in 4^th. Fourth-place finishers never have to worry about losing their fragile place in the record books. Shoot for 4^th place, and you’ll always be a ‘player’ and always be considered a serious ‘contender’ without all the Kamron-y stress of having to out-perform everyone else. Think about it this way: if you took 4^th place in the Boston Marathon, you’d have almost the same bragging rights as the winner (and maybe more, if your friends expected less!). Ain’t nothing shabby about a 4^th place finish. When I become Minister of Culture (in the next Obama administration), there will be a trophy for finishing 4^th. Win. Place. Show. Fourth. They’re all winners.

Sen. Ted Kennedy liked to wag his finger at his Senate colleagues and remind them that “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” It’s okay to want to be the star-pupil, class valedictorian, world record holder, or Oscar winner. But sometimes ‘good’ – even though it’s less than perfect - is also good enough.

Baggage

My roommate for 4 years in college was a trust-fund boi named Colby. His father, also named Colby, had invented the entire Universe … or maybe it was just the solar system. Whatever it was, it was Big, and we had “chairs” and a science building named after him. Like all good preppies, Colby, Jr. parted his hair down the middle and tucked the blonde ends behind his ears. He had a lacrosse stick and a tennis racquet mounted, like trophies, on the wall over his bed, but he never used them. Most of Colby’s college years were spent chain smoking Tareyton cigarettes and drinking amber glasses of single malt scotch. In his spare time, he was a History major. Fueled with two-toke Cambodian weed, Colby argued passionately that if you don’t study history and learn its lessons, you’re doomed (pretend you hear kettledrums) – as an individual and a society – to repeat them.

I’ve always believed just the opposite … which explains (in part) why after graduating I never talked to Colby again (although I have voyeuristically Googled his name and tried – without success - to find his Facebook page). It’s always seemed to me that if you treat any individual, relationship, or historical event as if it’s merely a repeat episode of something or someone else, you’ll never discover the uniqueness of anything! But, what do I know … ?[1]

All of this becomes relevant because I met Tyler a few days ago at a local club where guys-in-suits, flight attendants, and retail “sales associates” drink chardonnay or frozen strawberry margaritas after work. Tyler described his job and his ‘career’ as a former circuit-party-boy, who finally made it into a “program” and no longer spends entire weeks in an ecstasy-and-alcohol induced miasma. Tyler was attractive and sociable, but clearly his tires have lost some of their tread. Suddenly, as if waking up from a nap of self-absorption, Tyler asked about me. ‘So, what do you do, Steve?” He added quickly - as if his question was filled with hidden meaning - “For a living, I mean.”

After reminding him that my name is Scott, I told him the truth. I still get defensive about it. I expect a spate of lawyer-jokes, which for some reason people think are funny. Tyler’s reaction was swift: “Omigod,” he exclaimed. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you; my last boyfriend was a lawyer, and he was a total asshole. Lawyers are real jerks.” Tyler, please don’t punish me for a crime I didn’t commit.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum … That’s Latin for “That’s what I’m talking about.” Of course, we all have baggage … left over feelings that can sabotage relationships. “Assumptions,” my friend Patrick says, “are the termites of relationships.” I like to think that when I meet someone new, I give him a 100% clean scorecard. Eventually, I deduct a few points but only when I discover that he’s basically a sociopath or he doesn’t put the toilet seat down or he inserts a new roll of toilet paper so it unwinds from the bottom. Or maybe he wears a polo shirt with the collar flipped up. These are all crimes against nature.

So, Colby and Tyler, perhaps the only lesson we have to learn from history is that there really are no lessons to learn from history.

Baggage, after all, is “anything of more bulk than value.” I love that definition!

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[1] In his first edition of a dictionary published in 1596, Samuel Johnson defined luggage (baggage’s close cousin) as “lug (v.) … to drag … anything of more bulk than value.”

Crossing the Street

I just came back from a trip to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Whenever I leave my Comfort Zone, I always fly economy class so I never expect much. Maybe a thin foil bag of Planter’s peanuts and a plastic cup (half full) of warm diet coke. So I buy a turkey sandwich at Au Bon Pain and a bottle of water. Once TSA gets a whiff of my sneakers, they wave me through immediately. Getting to Asia I flew Cathay Pacific. Coming back I flew American Airlines. Do you know the difference between night and day? Is America a third-world country?

The seats on Cathay Pacific are wide and luxurious with huge armrests. They recline almost into a bed. The meals are served with complimentary wine or cocktails, and even the hoi polloi in steerage get cotton placemats and shiny cutlery. The flight attendants are well lip-glossed, shiny – like newly minted coins - and they never stopped smiling. If a wing fell off at 40,000 feet, I’m sure they’d smile sweetly and offer everyone another cocktail in 4 languages.

American Airlines reminded me of what it must feel like to be cattle going to slaughter. You’re held in a detention center euphemistically called the “gate” boarding area. The seats are plastic with no padding. The public address system sounds like a screechy dial-up Internet connection. It’s worse when you finally get strapped into the equivalent of the Electric Chair. Now I know how Julius and Ethel Rosenberg must have felt. The seats are narrow and uncomfortable, the video presentation before takeoff is garbled and incoherent (is my life vest under my seat? or is it located in the back of the seat in front of me? or is it located in a top-secret pocket in my armrest?). There’s no legroom, the overhead bins are small, and a “meal” consists of a greasy blueberry muffin with tiny containers of something called “jam” and something else labeled “butter.” I don’t believe a word of it.

I don’t want to write a travelogue; I couldn’t possibly compress a 2-week trip to Asia – with all of its exotic temples, pagodas, food smells, incense, gas fumes, knockoff designer jeans and eyeglass frames, spiky hair, motor scooters, missing teeth, shopping malls, unspoiled beaches, communism, and rampant capitalism into a few captivating paragraphs. So, go. See it for yourself. Eat street food (except for fish, it’s perfectly safe). Take a death-defying ride on a tuk-tuk (essentially a motor scooter with make-shift seats). Drink coconut water. Just don’t buy anything; it’s all made in China!

I’d been back for 2 days when my friend Cody called; he wanted to ‘hear all about it.’ So, we met for gin and tonics at a local ‘club’ (which isn’t really a club at all but likes to think it is). I’d been thinking how to answer his question. I didn’t want to give him a colorless litany of events. There had to be some theme or event that I could use to give the trip a meaningful narrative or exemplify the difference between life in the East and the West. I read over my meager notes; then read them again, and again. I scratched my head. Then, bingo, I had it. It’s the experience of crossing the street in Saigon (now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, but still widely referred to as Saigon).

Crossing a street in Saigon is like entering a twilight zone; there’s an unreal feeling that you’re suddenly stuck at the intersection of walk-and-don’t-walk. There’s everywhere to go, and no way to get there because you can’t cross the street without upping your life insurance. In Saigon, traffic signals and signs are mere suggestions; everyone ignores them. It’s not uncommon for a frustrated cab driver to drive on the sidewalk.

Crossing the street in Saigon is like scampering across the track at a Formula One NASCAR event. It’s almost impossible. There are literally hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of motorcycles, scooters, pedicabs, motorbike cowboys, taxicabs, and cars engaged in their own horn-tooting, non-stop road race. Traffic never stops; drivers never look. Teenage boys and girls are too busy checking each other out over the handlebars.

At home, I wait obediently for the light to turn green and the little pedestrian icon to turn from red to white. Some intersections in Boston even have counters that tweet, like chirping parakeets, every second until the light changes. When the light does change, mirabile dictu, traffic stops.

Not so in Saigon. Here, fasten your seatbelt, so to speak. Past the pagodas and temples, past the teeming markets and ramshackle wooden shops selling silk, spices, baskets, and knock-off Rolex watches, this city is a dizzying, high-octane, chaotic free-for-all of commerce and limitless energy. The onslaught of traffic is so dense there’s actually no let-up, ever. Think of a tsunami of cars and cycles aimed directly at you. Add to that clouds of exhaust smoke, road dust, and the high-pitched whine of kamikaze pilots’ engines revved to the max.

Saigon is Vietnam’s commercial heart, a riverside metropolis of old and new with world-class restaurants and bars and a buzzing, seductive energy. If you want to cross the street in Saigon without ending up like a bug on a windshield, do not … repeat, do not … make the mistake of running quickly across it. Resist that temptation because you’ll die. Instead, cross the street slowly – very slowly – so that the kids on motorbikes can quickly calculate how to narrowly miss you. The traffic doesn’t stop for pedestrians or even slow down. Just don’t panic, don’t for gods sake stop, avoid any sudden moves, maintain eye contact, and - if you’re lucky - you’ll make it across the street.

Pat yourself on the back. You made it. It’s amazing in this motorized hornet’s nest that no one ever seems to get hurt.

A trip to Vietnam teaches an inexorable, albeit predictable lesson: we, who live in the West, enjoy a higher standard of living. Our cars stop at red lights, and pedestrians cross the street safely. But don’t confuse a higher standard of living with a better quality of life. Crossing the street in Saigon may be raw and dangerous, but it’s packed with adventure and challenge.

Who Pays?

The question of who picks up the check after a drinks-and-dinner-date is a complicated inquiry, vastly more nuanced and psychologically muscular than simply slapping down the plastic. The decision to pay for dinner is really a negotiation that starts long before you pick up a fork or order fois gras for a first course. Essentially, of course, it’s about power, which is itself about sex. So, I guess that when you boil-it-down it’s really about sex. But I guess you could say everything is about sex. Suffice it to say, we all anguish (at least a bit) about how to handle this delicate negotiation involving cocktails, crab cakes, flirtation, eye-gazing, insecurity, self-esteem, boundaries … and those often subtle, but intense, signals we give each other about wanting to feel wanted but not for sale.

So, let’s say you’re having dinner with Terry, as I was last week. We’d met at a bar. After locking eyes, I offered to buy him a drink. Then, after the obligatory small talk about gyms, personal training, and total irrelevance of Apple’s new iPad, he offered to buy the next round. So far, so good. Somehow - god only knows how - we managed to avoid any discussion of Avatar (a somewhat gimmicky 3-D movie which doesn’t, in my opinion, merit more than an modest Honorable Mention in any category). After a couple of ‘cosmos,’ we both agreed it would be great to ‘continue things’ over dinner.

After the usual scripted patter (Are you having a first course? Would you prefer a red or a white? Shall we order by the glass or get a bottle?), we trudged through dinner, essentially revising the same conversation we’d had at the bar. We pretended to look at the dessert menu (a motley collection of sorbet, flan, and assorted cookies), then told the waiter we were ‘all set’ and ready for the check. The waiter diplomatically put the leatherette folder with the check on the edge of the table at a point that essentially marked our 50-yard line, our line of scrimmage. We both squirmed slightly and ignored the check, each waiting for the other to make the first move.

I don’t know the etiquette for picking up the check when it’s a boy-girl date. My guess is that the boy picks up the check in order to prove that, if he were a caveman, he could drag home a giant mastodon and carve it up for dinner. It’s a “me-tarzan-you-jane” kind of moment when the boy proves he can ‘provide.’ Alternatively, you can think of it as a kind of foreplay where the boy buys the girl dinner, and the girl gives the boy sex afterwards. Sort of like an economy where two people barter for what they need or want, especially if one of them is short of cash.

With a boy-boy date it’s much more complicated. Money is not just money; it’s a way of establishing certainly dynamics in the relationship, such as who’s going to play the dominant role and who’s going to be submissive and courted. Which one is the hawk and which is the prey. These roles need to exist because you can’t have two hawks and two doves; it just won’t work. Each ‘position’ needs the other, although I don’t think anyone will ever really figure out whether these roles are learned as we grow up or whether we’re ‘hard wired’ for them because it’s in our chromosomes.

Picking up the check can mean you’re desperately alone, and you need someone to think he-owes-you-one. It can also mean you’re too wimpy to deal with the issue head-on by simply dividing it. But this gets gnarly. I mean, Terry had only one glass of wine, while I had two. He, however, had an appetizer … but I ate part of it. His entrée was a cheap chicken breast with a pallid sauce, while I had the 2-inch thick filet mignon (which was, in fairness to me, on special). We’re not old ladies with blue hair at Friendly’s who split their checks and actually calculate each person’s share of the tax! But if I suggest we split the check, I make out big-time; if he offers to split the check, he’s subsidizing my extravagence. Plus, there’s nothing romantic about going ‘Dutch’; that involves too much calculation - too much mathematics - at time when the flirtation should be seamless, unbroken, and rising.

At times like this, I’m reminded of my mother’s wise advice: Never stand when you can sit, never walk when you can ride, and never reach for the check when someone else offers.

If only it were that easy.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

So, maybe I’ve been living in a cave (albeit one that has a microwave oven, washer/dryer, an automatic icemaker, and granite countertops).  Idiot that I am, I’ve been thinking that health care reform, the war in Afghanistan, global warming, cap-and-trade, home foreclosures, the rate of unemployment, and steadying the financial markets are today’s most pressing issues.  Apparently, I’m wrong.

According to my friend Luke, who – like me – gets most of his news from Good Morning America while he’s on a treadmill, the tsarina of the President’s Council on Something Important announced recently that Public Enemy Number One is Spanking.  Yep, spanking.  She actually said – I saw it, too - with a completely straight-face:  “it’s time to enact federal no-spanking legislation.” She stopped just short of suggesting a constitutional amendment to the Bill of Rights.  She was talking about a recent study by University of New Hampshire “Professor” Murray Straus which concluded that children who are spanked have an IQ that is, on average, a whopping 2.8 points lower than kids who aren’t spanked! 

Forget for a minute that the standard error of measurement rules out any statistical significance for this so-called ‘study.’  Forget for a minute that my IQ can vary from day to day, based on how I’m feeling when I take the test.  Forget that IQ isn’t a static ‘thing’ and it’s not clear what kind of intelligence IQ tests measure.  Forget J.P. Guilford’s ground-breaking research that identified up to 180 different intellectual abilities.  2.8 points doesn’t mean squat!

This kind of pseudo-scientific blather is, of course, pure junk, but it highlights the important fallacy of confusing correlation with cause-and-effect.    A good example is heart disease:  there are a lot of factors associated with heart problems (age, diet, exercise, smoking, heredity, cholesterol, blood pressure) … but which ones actually cause the disease and which ones are just the result of the causing factor or the result of the disease itself?  Lots of Ph.D.s do shoddy research because they need to ‘get published,’ and they often jump to the wrong conclusion because they have a pet theory.  Like one of those chia pets from Walmart, put enough confusing statistical elements into it and it grows!  Sometimes, these sloppy statistical studies are referred to as the Rooster Syndrome because it gives credit to the rooster’s crowing for the fact that the sun rises!  I think not.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for “after this, therefore that” … a logical fallacy which states that “Since this event followed that one, this event must have been caused by that one.”  Expressed another way:  A happened, then B happened.  Therefore, A caused B to happen.  Many superstitious religious beliefs and magical thinking arise from this fallacy … as well as a lot of doctoral dissertations.

Take, for example, the fact that there’s a correlation between high annual income and body weight.  Can we conclude that high incomes make people eat more?  Or that having a high income makes people fat?  Nope, not a chance, even if you have a fancy-dancy degree in Something-or-Other. 

Let’s say that a sampling of Norwegian men eat elderberries every day for two, maybe 3 months, and their blood pressure is compared with guys who didn’t eat elderberries.  (Believe it or not, some numbskull actually did this ‘study’ and someone else published it!).  Can we conclude, as the study did, that eating elderberries lowers blood pressure?  Icks-nay (that’s pig-Latin for ‘no’).  Perhaps the group with the lowered blood pressure found it relaxing to lie back on a chaise lounge and pop one berry after another into their mouths.  Perhaps the time away from their real jobs had something to do with lowered blood pressure.  Perhaps just thinking about their participation in a scientific-sounding study lowered their blood pressure.  Perhaps they washed down their elderberries with Finnish vodka.  Point is:  you can’t know because there’s no cause-and-effect.

So, this is how I view life.  Things happen.  Sometimes I beat myself up and make myself promise I’ll never do that again.  But, upon reflection, I realize that most of the time I contributed to the outcome, but I didn’t make it happen.  There’s a correlation between my behavior and the crappy things that happen to me.  But crappy things happen anyway, whether I eat elderberries or not, and I’m going to give up the illusion that everything happens because of some particular thing I do … or that there’s a reason for everything.  It’s not all about me. A high correlation can occur by chance alone or because both variables are related to some other variable … and sometimes stuff simply happens.

 

Color-Coded Insecurity

Colors are not only pretty; they can be important symbols.  We all know, for example, that in a hospital “Code Blue” means that a patient has gone into cardiac arrest and is about to give up the ghost.  It’s synonymous with URGENT!

Some of us also know that at a stop light red means stop, green means go, and yellow means put the pedal to the metal and gun it!  But did you also know that orange is the color-coded threat level indicating that there’s a “high risk” of a grave, possibly cataclysmic terrorist attack?  I didn’t either … until this past weekend.

I was at the airport in Minneapolis when suddenly the ‘PA’ system woke up – and, in a  voice that sputtered like someone clearing the mucous in his throat – ominously announced that the TSA ‘under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security’ had declared that the security level was ‘orange.’  Omigod, not orange, please god, any color but orange.

I looked around, not knowing if I’d just been warned that bearded men named Abdullah were carrying dirty bombs in their canvas Banana Republic courier bags or if the world was suddenly now safe for democracy.  Was ‘orange’ the hi-tech version of a 1950’s air-raid siren?  I didn’t see signs to a bomb shelter, so I made a mad dash to Arby’s in case ‘orange’ was a signal that I had only a few seconds to grab my last overcooked roast beef sandwich on a sesame-seeded bun.  I wasn’t going down without a fight … or a last meal of all-American junk food (even if it meant 'going down' with a stringy piece of roast beef stuck in a molar).  

The Homeland Security Advisory System, developed by Tom Ridge – who clearly missed his calling as a rocket scientist - is a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale.  Sometimes it’s called the terror alert level.  I’m sure it was created by the same geniuses who invented the ‘idiot lights’ on my car’s dashboard … you know, those colored icons – like the ‘check engine’ light - that start to glow for no reason at all, except maybe the gas cap is loose.  If we’re going to live in an age of anxiety, we at least need to know how much xanax to take.  Instead, we have a system of color-coded idiot lights that no one knows or understands.  I mean, what are you supposed to do when the TSA – suddenly and without warning - announces that the threat level is ‘yellow!’

I note, by the way, that while Orange means “High” risk of terrorist attack and Yellow means “Elevated” risk, there’s no category or color for “It’s All Good” or “Just Chill.”  Apparently, we’re constantly on the verge of attack.  It’s no wonder my blood pressure is high … or perhaps I should say “elevated” … or perhaps there’s no difference … quien sabe?

I propose a system based on numbers.  It could either be tranquilizer-based, such as warnings ranging from 0.5 milligrams (no real worries) to full-blown 2 milligram risk of attack.  Or, it could a simple numeric system from 1 to 5 – the kind of straight-forward way we rate tropical storms and hurricanes.  This would be an effective warning system because most people can count … even if they have to use their fingers.

Anything would be better than the silly, useless color-coded system conceived in a state of panic.  I’m not suggesting we let down our guard, only that we can’t live in a constant state of orange or false alarms.