I see dead people. On the news. And it sucks.

[TsPoet]

Is there a difference between one and many?
Lets see if I can explain what I mean - when I see photos of Holocaust victims, I still have to keep myself from being physically ill and stop myself from crying. When i see Qaddafi - I find that morbidly curious.
Then again, I find Qaddafi morbidly curious even when he was alive. I am not appalled by his dead body (I actually haven't seen it, I've only heard talk in the hall at work about his death).
I think a photo of his body - who care's?
photos of human atrocities on large scales - maybe that's sort of a good thing, to drive it home?
But, I asked a random guy at work, and he said when he sees piles of dead people, they are no longer people to him. whereas Qaddafi is identifiable as an individual, so more upsetting to him.
I know, I just rambled...

[PamNY]

Is there a difference between one and many?

That's a very interesting question.

A second question I would raise is whether there is a difference in still photography and video.

[Pax]

I remember watching CNN very late at night back when it was a relatively new station. I was watching live footage of a hostage situation and they showed the bad guy walking out of the store with a shotgun to the head of the hostage, a moment later you could see the bad guys head explode as he fell to the ground. A police sniper had gotten a clear shot and took it.

I remember feeling stunned, I had just seen another human being die. As a former medic I'd seen many many dead people, but only watched a few die and at those times I was working feverishly to prevent that outcome. It was surreal.

[Vanilla]

It's all very well telling people to turn the tv off if you don't want to see it but I was confronted with the face of Gaddafi yesterday on the BBC homepage when I opened it to check the local news and weather. I was not impressed and did complain to the BBC about it.