Followup to yesterday’s post: CNN has posted Victims of Terror, a moving collection of photos and brief obituaries of civilians killed in terrorist attacks in Israel this year. One of the things that struck me, besides too many photos of children and the elderly, was the victims’ surprisingly diverse backgrounds. It reminded me of Portraits of Grief, the obituaries of September 11th victims published by the New York Times. Apparently, like America, the face of Israel mirrors the face of the world.

CNN also published a bizarre statistical estimation “based on a per capita comparison” of how many people would have been killed in other countries in comparable attacks. What exactly is the point of this? One is too many. A better thought experiment would be to pick a group four or five tables from a crowded restaurant, and then try to imagine all of those people blown to pieces in the next moment. Think about that every time the waiter asks how you’re doing.

An excellent introductory tutorial on MySQL and PHP. This would have been helpful to me last night…

“CNN is … fair, we’re responsible in our reporting, we try to be as accurate as we possibly can be.” I thought that was the tagline for Fox News?

Disgusting that CNN had to be threatened with losing the Israeli markets to Fox before admitting suicide bombing is absolutely barbaric, inexcusable and threatens all civilization. I wonder if CNN’s Eason Jordan worried for his safety when his bosses sent him to Jerusalem? He should be worried, but that fear shouldn’t be contained to Israel. The World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were suicide bombings, but most Americans still seem to think of September 11th as a moment of weakness and of suicide bombings as a foreign problem that can’t happen here. I wish I were that optimistic.

Why is the telephone touch-tone key pad arranged differently from the calculator key pad? Similar, shorter answer

here.

And now back to wondering about less trivial things…

Over the weekend I got a letter from Cid of CIDtalk. “CID” is not an acronym, it’s a nickname (a unique shortening of Cindy).

CIDtalk linked to Everything on my Desk and All Day Ice Cream (why do so many people think the name is All Day Ice Cream Cone instead of All Day Ice Cream?)

I’ve never visited the site before, but it looks interesting. Also, I think I really like the term “Observational-ist”, and might start using it even though it would probably sound pretentious in non-artsy company. I looked around a bit, but I couldn’t figure out who’s running the site or what “CID” stands for…

Lila and I took a moment to ogle “The World’s Largest Duck Tape Flag” at Union Square this afternoon. Lila was more interested in her fingers.

The flag was created by “Canadian Duct Tape Sculptor” Todd Scott, commisioned to help celebrate 60 years of duct tape.

From the official, city-sanctioned sign:

The World’s Largest Duck Tape U.S. Flag…
Measures 50 feet by 95 feet
Took over 150 hours to create
Equals the size of an NBA Basketball Court
Is over 13 miles of duct tape long
Equals over 1,120 rolls of Duck brand duct tape
Weighs over 500 pounds
Can seal Central Park from end to end five times
Can tape the Empire State Building 23 ¹/₂ times.

The Duck Tape products home page has more information about the duct tape flag and it’s also mentioned briefly in this week’s
Village Voice. Last weekend Mr. Scott appeared on the CBS Saturday Early Show where he was credited as the world’s only “professional duct tape sculptor.”

True to form, duct tape was employed to secure the easels holding up the signs.