Concerning the flying of the flag

I've always wondered how it is that people know when to fly the flag at half-staff and for how long it should be flown that way. I was expecting something like you see on the DCSD website for whether school is in session http://www.dcsdk12.org Instead I find that you have to actually pay attention to the proclamations of the President (and governor of your state). http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/proclamations/ is the place to go.

Currently, the flag should be back to full staff, as the period of half-staff for the hurricane victims ended yesterday at sunset. However, I live near a big bunch of car lots, which all compete to have the biggest flag, so I have a patriotic site everytime I'm driving down Broadway...and I don't think everyone has been making note of the proclamations page on the white house site.

In my research I found some interesting things--not only is it against flag etiquette to wear the flag or use napkins with the flag on it...the US flag stamps issued by the post office are actually against flag etiquette http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html

(As an aside...whitehouse.com is no longer a raunchy site.)