Your Grant in Review: Appealing the review outcome

A recent Notice from the NIH (NOT-OD-11-064) indicates that there is a need to standardize and refine the appeal process.
Here’s what struck me on seeing this Notice pop up: I bet there has been a massive uptick in the rate of appeals since the sunsetting of the A2 and the threats to rigorously weed out thinly concealed revisions as “new” submissions.
One viewpoint on the wisdom of appealing the scoring of your grant proposal that is very common is captured in this comment over at the NIGMS blog:

Based on everything I have read about the appeals process on various Web pages of the NIH and Institute Web sites, it seems like you’d have to be extremely foolish and poorly informed to bother appealing.

NIGMS Director Berg responded:

Academic honorifics outside of the Ivory Tower

A comment over at FSP’s post on honorifics used for male and female acadmics triggers a thought. What is the proper address/honorific at, say, your kid’s school classroom?

FSP had said in the original post that she prefers “Professor” to “Doctor” in the academic milieu.

I think I would prefer “Doctor” to “Professor” in the non-academic setting, myself. It is funny isn’t it? “Professor” just seems like an honorific tied to the coincidence of my current job title whereas for some weird reason, “Doctor” seems to me like a more permanent and lasting attainment. Which, of course, it IS since in our current schemas it is highly unusual for anyone to stop being a “Doctor” through revocation of the degree. Otherwise, it is yours for life, once those five people let you back in the room and say “Congratulations Dr…”.

But why should Dr. seem so much more a permanent part of me that dictates what honorific people should use in normal daily life, in comparison with “Professor”? They are both just academic nonsense so why does it matter which one?