In light of the ongoing terror warnings, Jessica and I have decided to cancel our trip to Washington DC later this week. We're really disappointed about it -- especially because I miss my family a lot after having moved to St. Louis -- but it just doesn't seem smart to travel to the capital when the threat level is at Orange.
The chances of anything bad happening to us are probably one in thousands or millions, but despite the fact that air travel is safer than driving, it can be more dangerous at some times than others, and this is one of those times. It was a hard decision, but so it goes. Live to fly another day.
The color-coded terrorism threat level scheme is total nonsense. It assigns arbitrary thresholds of relative safety or relative high risk in a way that's far too simplistic to be accurate or particularly relevant. That's not to say another way of assessing the threat at any given time would necessarily be more accurate, though, because I'm not convinced in the viability of just about everything associated with the DHS.