Daily Takes

• Ha! Nothing more fun than to be working your butt off (literally!) on the elliptical when the TV shows a terror alert and the thankfully foiled terror plot to kill a few hundred people. Crazier still is why was the first thought that popped into my mind when I saw that all liquids were banned on flights and only baby formula would be allowed - that too after “taste tests”…was an image of a security person tastefully swirling the formula in his mouth and proclaiming, “A fine mushy texture - nice, almost-milky smell and a beautifully lingering medicinal aftertaste” and throwing up?
  
  One more thing - UK has banned all hand luggage on flights and Heathrow travelers were “asked to not fly unless they really needed to”. WTF? Now, I do understand security concerns and all that jazz, but most people do fly because they have to and a lot of those same people also need their hand luggage - to completely ban it does seem like a knee-jerk reaction. Of course, so is the decision to ban soda and hair gel in the US airplanes.


• Fauxtography - there are two explanations as far as I can see of the cluster that is the media from ME right now - 1. Things are really, really bad in Lebanon and in the effort to portray the full image of the terror, people are taking to doctoring photos because they are unable to get the images of the actual death and destruction (the fake but accurate defense) or 2. Things are not quite as bad as they are making them out to be and so images are being made up to exaggerate the situation. Eitherways, the truth is still out there somewhere - the first casualty of this war, so it seems.


• Speaking of pictures, here is a beautiful dissection of the two major photos of the Elian Gonzalez saga via the ever-interesting Dean’s World. I remember being very emotional about this issue and was actively involved in online forums discussing it. I supported Elian’s dad and was hoping the poor child would atleast get to be with his only surviving parent and out of his crazy Miami cousin’s house. I admit I was fairly biased and stuck to the point-of-view all this time. I do feel the same way still, though with not quite as much certainty and as much conviction as I had at the point.
  
  Coming back to the article in question, I think a major point one has to concede is that a photograph is still an opinion piece. As Saletan puts it. it is composed by someone and shows us things from the composer’s perspective. We also usually form our own opinions of issues and tend to fill in details and re-compose the elements of the photos to suit our perspective of the issue.