Blogtrek

Terror Confusion

Once again we are under Orange Alert. It seems that we have picked up some "chatter" indicating a terrorist attack may be immanent. An Orange Condition is High and means that there is a high chance of a terrorist attack (however, "high" is not very well defined). So of course the media is hyping it up for all they can get. In so doing they are really causing some bad confusion. They say that "The national threat level was elevated to the Orange, or High level earlier this week." They mean that it was increased to that level. It is their use of "elevated" that causes the problem. "Elevated" is the next lower state of terror alert, the Yellow level, one below Orange. So the media seem to be saying that the level is both Yellow and Orange and is really causing some confusion. They should avoid using "elevated" to mean raised to a level, because "elevated" is now a specific term meaning a specific level. It's like saying that tomorrow's weather is cool, man, because it is the first day of the year that it has really gotten warm out. If you really like something, you can say it's cool, but not when describing weather. In the same way, you can say that things have been elevated to another level, but not when describing terror conditions.