Re: >^..^< The Bureaucratic Maze

In message <ftu24n$9oo$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Keith F. Lynch 
<kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes
>Marcus L. Rowland <forgottenfutures@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> The correct name for people who don't take fire alarms seriously
>> is "victims."
>
>Sure, and in the old story about the boy who cried wolf, the
>townspeople should have kept believing him when he said there was
>a wolf, even though it had always been a lie.  After all, there
>eventually *was* a real wolf.
>
>But the usually accepted moral of that story is that people shouldn't
>cry "wolf" or shout "fire" when there isn't a wolf or a fire, since
>otherwise they will soon be ignored.
>
>Do you think that if I were to phone some large office building right
>now and claim I had planted a bomb in it, they should evacuate the
>building until it had been thoroughly searched for bombs?  How about
>if I do so once or twice week for years?  Sometimes there really are
>real bombs.

Your original message described the fire alarm going off in a brand new 
building. This does not seem to be quite the same situation as a place 
with hundreds of hoaxes. There is no history of hoaxes there, and 
presumably no reason to assume that the equipment is faulty. And you are 
not there every day, and have no information on how likely a hoax is.

Or am I missing something?
-- 
Marcus L. Rowland             http://www.forgottenfutures.com/
LJ:ffutures     http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/
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