THE WAR DEAD AND COLLEGE MATH

In the last forty eight hours, 83 people (that the media are reporting), Iraqi civilians, have died: to put that in some perspective for my university readers, this is

• Thirteen more individuals than the total number of students in my three composition courses.

• You would need three classrooms to contain this amount of people in our building (and not comfortably, I might add).

• To house this number of students in a dorm, it would take twenty-one dorm rooms--essentially an entire floor.

These were people with hopes, dreams and families. And this was a mere 48 hours in Baghdad.

Since August 11th, when I started this blog, 159 U.S. soldiers have died (official count). This is

• Forty-seven more soldiers than I noted in my October 1st entry

• This is an average of three soldiers being killed a day since the beginning of October

• The total number of soldiers killed in this war would not fit into any auditorium we have on campus, except the football stadium.

• The total number of soldiers killed in this war would almost entirely occupy the largest dorm complex we have (a total of eight buildings).

These were soldiers with hopes, dreams and families, and they died in foreign country serving their nation honorably, but to what purpose, no one seems to know.