CBS: Glenn Beck "Restoring Honor" Rally Crowd Estimate Explained-Link to Photos Used

[RamboLiberal]

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To calculate attendance at the Beck rally, AirPhotosLive.com used what is called a surveillance aerostat balloon to take pictures from both above the event and closer to the ground. In the video above, which was provided by the company, you can see some of the images used to come up with a figure.

The balloon, Westergard said, gave the company the capacity to move up and down, allowing it to photograph people who were standing beneath trees in addition to taking photos from high above.

"We took a lot of shots under the trees and higher up by just changing the balloon altitude," he said. "So what might have been a negative with an airplane and certainly a negative with a satellite was a very strong position with a balloon."

Though there was restricted airspace on the south side of the reflecting pool, airspace was not restricted where the crowd was gathered, allowing the company to position the balloon in "the very center of the crowd - dead in the middle of it," Westergard said.

The photos were taken at noon, which Beck's representatives suggested would be the peak of the event, which ran from 10 AM to slightly after 1 PM. Taking the pictures then meant counting both those who were late to the event because of subway or traffic delays and those who left early to avoid the crowds afterward.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20015214-503544.html?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel


(Credit: AirPhotosLive.com)

Link to 400 Photos Air Photos Live Took: http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=20e143f6-2e3c-43ce-ad35-7c91a7b25f56&m=false&i=0:0:24&c=-0.0861982:-0.00918372:-0.153656&z=544.14709227836&d=2.83582598776638:-2.37162271181819:-1.58650261419592&p=0:0&t=False

Wow - checking out the photos & being able to zoom they were even more spread out than I thought. No way in hell they had even 100,000 IMHO. Send this out to your Beck family & friends.

I encourage all of you to check out the photo & the zoom, pan, etc. You can see the entire crowd and almost zoom in to see their white faces.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Looks like a thousand or two.

NGU.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

2. Science! Bah!

Who needs science when you have Captain Nutjob Bachman on the job! She's saying 1.6 million people were there now.

[KansDem]

3. AirPhotosLive.com's "87,000" is a helluva difference from Beck's "500,000"

Beck tends to inflate numbers like he does his ego...

[KatyaR]

15. Maybe they were counting brain cells instead of people....

:rofl:

[liberal N proud]

4. If they were counting by how far out the crowd was spread

and not taking into account all the green space between people then the numbers are inflated.

I still wonder if the followers of beck were told to spread out, make themselves comfortable, leave plenty of room between you and your fellow morons.

[doc03]

5. Michele Bachmann said there was a million there!

[Cirque du So-What]

6. Err...try a million-and-a-half!

It's probably being revised upward as we speak - approaching Avogadro's number: 6.0221415 × 10^23. Imagine a mole of teabaggers!

[jberryhill]

10. Since teabaggers are very dense

Then the volume occupied by their equivalent gram atomic weight is relatively small, although the basic teabagger unit tends to exceed 250 pounds.

[Sheepshank]

7. Bachmann also thinks carbon dioxide is good for people

[gratuitous]

8. The rally was called Restoring Honor?

So apparently Beck and his Beckerheads think the United States doesn't have any honor, since it must now be "restored"? Has this locution been sufficiently questioned and explained by the Tea Baggers?

[Winterblues]

9. The Honor to torture people and to search without warrant

You know typical Republican Honor...At least their understanding of the word.

[gratuitous]

11. Considering these nitwits never seem to tire

They're forever rehearsing Rev. Wright's "God damn America" sermon about slavery (God should bless slavery?) or Michelle Obama's statement about being proud to be an American when Barack was elected president (yeah, why would any black person be ashamed of America's treatment of black people?); I figure maybe they should have a few pointed question about why America's honor needs to be restored, when and why it was lost, and did it have anything to do with the Bush administration's monkeying around with habeas corpus, straining to provide legal justification for indefinite incarceration without charge and torture of inmates?

[blitzburgh55]

12. So, using the crowd counting link, we can see that....

American Perspectives blog was using a picture of some other event?? Hannity crowd fabrication Part II?

http://mainfo.blogspot.com/2010/08/great-american-patriots-crowd-photos.html

[kratos12]

14. LOL

F-in liars

[KatyaR]

16. That can't be the same event--

there are tons of signs in that photo, and they weren't allowed at Beckapolooza.

[blitzburgh55]

18. Nope

they're making it look like more were there than there actually was. Pathetic fools.

[UTUSN]

13. I see lots of green space, butHEY!1,bearded White dudes in ballcaps don't like being too close!1 nt

[ovidsen]

17. How pathetic can you get?

I wasn't anywhere near DC last weekend, but over several decades I have attended, a number of gatherings on the Mall, from 4th fireworks shows the the Million Man March to all sorts of other political and non-political rallies. I thought then that this was a pretty slim crowd.

What struck me when I saw the first photos of BeckFest was the space between people, even close to the Lincoln Memorial. I am far from an expert on crowds, but when you gather more than 100,000 people around a stage (any stage), the closer you get, the harder it is to find space between people.

87,000? Sounds about right.

[Glimmer of Hope]

19. Their lawn chairs took up space so they were not packed tight.

Who takes lawn chairs to a rally on the mall?

[Hissyspit]

20. At the Inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which was JUST FOR FUN mind you

not the main event, we were jammed up against each other so hard that I was worried someone would be crushed. There were DEFINITELY much fewer people at the Beck rally.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, what the fuck was it ABOUT? The people who gathered there gathered there for WHAT exactly? I don't think even they knew or would agree on why they were there. (I know why Beck was there.)