MeeMie
No Spam Here
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2005
- Posts
- 7,328
Both the Beck rally and the Stewart/Colbert rally were magnificent.
They both were a large gathering of folks that had something to say about their country's current issues.
Regardless of their differences of opinions, it was a glorious tribute to the very principles that our country was founded on ... the right to gather and voice an opinion openly.
The actual numbers in comparison are unimportant. They BOTH were very highly attended.
I sat back yesterday and watched the circle jerk going on in the other thread. The loonies weren't content to give credit to each rally. NO, they had to insist that "Jon Stewart drew twice as many people as Glen Beck" How ridiculous.
Even allowing for an editorial “take” on an event, doesn’t it seem kind of high-school silly to run a headline like "Rally Attendance OBLITERATES Turnout To Glenn Beck Rally!" ... via the HuffPo talking points.
The Huffington Post conclusion is based on one key comparison:
Interestingly only CBS estimated the crowd at Glenn Beck's rally at the ridiculously low 87,000 estimate. Everyone attending knew that was a biased snow job.
NBC quoted the National Parks service which put it at 300,000.
The Huffington Post was happy to highlight such an estimation for the Sanity rally:
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/stelter.jpg
So if the National Parks Service “unofficial” estimate of over 200,000 for the “Sanity” rally was good enough for The Huffington Post, why wasn’t the National Parks Service “unofficial” estimate of 300,000 for Beck’s “Honor” rally not a fair comparison too?
I’m more amazed at the palpable need by the folks at HuffPo to pull out the “OBLITERATES” line. Seems desperate. Both rallies were large, successful experiments in American democracy. Why not just say that?
HuffPo cites a range of estimations for the “Sanity” rally — from 200,000-250,000. That’s probably about right. But it beggars credulity to pretend that the “Restoring Honor” rally was anything less than that.
So, not to add to their crazy posturing, here's a little factually based analysis to discredit their much touted 87,000 number for Beck's rally (which btw, only a loonie would believe, let alone repeat).
The complete report can be found here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/so-how-much-sanity-was-there-in-d-c-yesterday/?singlepage=true
Charlie Martin writes on science and technology for Pajamas Media
I've edited out the extraneous talk to provide the short basics...
The AP provides us several in a slideshow. Here’s a good one:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/1-overhead-crowd.jpg
Of course, right away we notice something: large parts of the National Mall are blocked off to the crowds. If we’re going to make an estimate, we need to know how much. AP provides us with another shot with a little bit wider angle:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/2-rally-crowd-wide.jpg
…and one more from behind the stage and toward the Washington Monument, so we can see that the crowd really does stop somewhere in the middle of the Mall. In these pictures, north is to the left, so we have the crowd coming a little west of the main entrance to the National Gallery of Art on the north:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/3-end-of-crowd-north.jpg
On the other side of the Mall, the crowd seems to be roughly up to the end of the National Air and Space Museum:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/4-end-of-crowd-south.jpg
… while on the east end, it appears the stage is set up somewhere a little west of 4th St NW.
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/5-washington_monument.jpg
So I constructed a generous rectangle as the perimeter of the crowd that includes a good bit of the buildings on the sides, but then doesn’t attempt to add in the lines of people along the dirt lanes across the Mall.
Here’s the polygon I constructed:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/6-rally-crowd-small.jpg
And once again using this excellent tool, I computed the are of the whole polygon as about 150,000 square meters. Before I screw myself up with unit changes, we’ll convert that and call it 1,620,000 square feet.
Which means we can, at last, estimate the size of the damned crowd. We’ll use exactly the same figures for crowd density we used for the One Nation rally and the Beck “Restore Honor” rally:
http://forum.literotica.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1040473&d=1288700902
Of course, we could have shortened this considerably:
The Beck rally covered about 2.4 million square feet, while the Stewart/Colbert rally only about 1.6 million square feet. In other words, we know from that alone that the Stewart/Colbert rally was about six-tenths as big as the Beck rally.
Update:
Before this went to press, CBS News made their own estimate: 215,000 versus their estimate of 87,000 for the Beck rally.
To which I say “Oh, nonsense.”
AirPhotosLive.com is correct that trying to count oblique photos is unsatisfactory, which is why we don’t.
We use the oblique photos to get geography bounds on the crowd against landmarks, and then make a range of estimates using the Park Service’s own standards for crowd density.
The Beck rally covered roughly 2.4 million square feet and by AirPhotosLive’s own photographs large parts of that area were packed as densely as any overhead picture of Stewart/Colbert.
The Stewart/Colbert rally had, at most, about 6/10th the space — 1.62 million square feet vs. 2.4 million. For it to have had that many people, they would have had to be packed about 6.7 times more densely than the densest parts of the Beck crowd.
Not a chance. Not even if they were packed in olive oil.
They both were a large gathering of folks that had something to say about their country's current issues.
Regardless of their differences of opinions, it was a glorious tribute to the very principles that our country was founded on ... the right to gather and voice an opinion openly.
The actual numbers in comparison are unimportant. They BOTH were very highly attended.
I sat back yesterday and watched the circle jerk going on in the other thread. The loonies weren't content to give credit to each rally. NO, they had to insist that "Jon Stewart drew twice as many people as Glen Beck" How ridiculous.
Even allowing for an editorial “take” on an event, doesn’t it seem kind of high-school silly to run a headline like "Rally Attendance OBLITERATES Turnout To Glenn Beck Rally!" ... via the HuffPo talking points.
The Huffington Post conclusion is based on one key comparison:
"According to CBS News, 215,000 people showed up for the rally on Saturday. By comparison, CBS estimated that 87,000 — just 40% of the Sanity Rally estimation — attended Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in August."
Interestingly only CBS estimated the crowd at Glenn Beck's rally at the ridiculously low 87,000 estimate. Everyone attending knew that was a biased snow job.
NBC quoted the National Parks service which put it at 300,000.
The Huffington Post was happy to highlight such an estimation for the Sanity rally:
http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/stelter.jpg
So if the National Parks Service “unofficial” estimate of over 200,000 for the “Sanity” rally was good enough for The Huffington Post, why wasn’t the National Parks Service “unofficial” estimate of 300,000 for Beck’s “Honor” rally not a fair comparison too?
I’m more amazed at the palpable need by the folks at HuffPo to pull out the “OBLITERATES” line. Seems desperate. Both rallies were large, successful experiments in American democracy. Why not just say that?
HuffPo cites a range of estimations for the “Sanity” rally — from 200,000-250,000. That’s probably about right. But it beggars credulity to pretend that the “Restoring Honor” rally was anything less than that.
So, not to add to their crazy posturing, here's a little factually based analysis to discredit their much touted 87,000 number for Beck's rally (which btw, only a loonie would believe, let alone repeat).
The complete report can be found here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/so-how-much-sanity-was-there-in-d-c-yesterday/?singlepage=true
Charlie Martin writes on science and technology for Pajamas Media
I've edited out the extraneous talk to provide the short basics...
The AP provides us several in a slideshow. Here’s a good one:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/1-overhead-crowd.jpg
Of course, right away we notice something: large parts of the National Mall are blocked off to the crowds. If we’re going to make an estimate, we need to know how much. AP provides us with another shot with a little bit wider angle:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/2-rally-crowd-wide.jpg
…and one more from behind the stage and toward the Washington Monument, so we can see that the crowd really does stop somewhere in the middle of the Mall. In these pictures, north is to the left, so we have the crowd coming a little west of the main entrance to the National Gallery of Art on the north:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/3-end-of-crowd-north.jpg
On the other side of the Mall, the crowd seems to be roughly up to the end of the National Air and Space Museum:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/4-end-of-crowd-south.jpg
… while on the east end, it appears the stage is set up somewhere a little west of 4th St NW.
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/5-washington_monument.jpg
So I constructed a generous rectangle as the perimeter of the crowd that includes a good bit of the buildings on the sides, but then doesn’t attempt to add in the lines of people along the dirt lanes across the Mall.
Here’s the polygon I constructed:
http://pajamasmedia.com/files/2010/10/6-rally-crowd-small.jpg
And once again using this excellent tool, I computed the are of the whole polygon as about 150,000 square meters. Before I screw myself up with unit changes, we’ll convert that and call it 1,620,000 square feet.
Which means we can, at last, estimate the size of the damned crowd. We’ll use exactly the same figures for crowd density we used for the One Nation rally and the Beck “Restore Honor” rally:
http://forum.literotica.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1040473&d=1288700902
Of course, we could have shortened this considerably:
The Beck rally covered about 2.4 million square feet, while the Stewart/Colbert rally only about 1.6 million square feet. In other words, we know from that alone that the Stewart/Colbert rally was about six-tenths as big as the Beck rally.
Update:
Before this went to press, CBS News made their own estimate: 215,000 versus their estimate of 87,000 for the Beck rally.
To which I say “Oh, nonsense.”
AirPhotosLive.com is correct that trying to count oblique photos is unsatisfactory, which is why we don’t.
We use the oblique photos to get geography bounds on the crowd against landmarks, and then make a range of estimates using the Park Service’s own standards for crowd density.
The Beck rally covered roughly 2.4 million square feet and by AirPhotosLive’s own photographs large parts of that area were packed as densely as any overhead picture of Stewart/Colbert.
The Stewart/Colbert rally had, at most, about 6/10th the space — 1.62 million square feet vs. 2.4 million. For it to have had that many people, they would have had to be packed about 6.7 times more densely than the densest parts of the Beck crowd.
Not a chance. Not even if they were packed in olive oil.
