A 2nd Look at the "99%" Courtesy of the Daily Northwestern! :P

Headline from The Daily Northwestern of Monday, October 17, 2011: " 'Occupy Chicago' still evolving".

I can see how this might be exciting news from their point of view. At this rate it's doubtless that the Occupy Chicago people will eventually become multicell creatures. ^o^

But perhaps I shouldn't be snarky because on page one of that same paper Katie Glueck, the author of the article, informs us that the organizers of their Grant Park rally say that they drew about 2,000 people. Assuming that any demonstration's organizers can be trusted not to exaggerate the attendance of a demonstration that really is not a bad draw for a weekend. Or rather it wouldn't had this "Occupy" movement not claimed to constitute 99% of the American population. That deserves mockery. A LOT of mockery. Tons and tons of mockery laid on with a trowel. Katie Glueck on the other hand deserves praise. Faithful readers of this blog will know what I mean when I suggest that she has shown greater numeric precision than the crowd estimate of thousands given to us by CNN on a similar occasion. And unlike CNN, Miss Glueck was kind enough to provide the source of just where her estimate had
come from so that we might form our own judgement of both their knowledge and their reliability. This did represent a better work ethic than that shown by the CNN people and we hope that such diligence in research is not a hinderance to Miss Glueck when she graduates and seeks to take her place among her fellow "professionals". ^_^;

But all the same 2000 for a weekend isn't a half-bad draw at all. Were it not that the peeps involved boasted of being 99% of the population it would be worthy of respect rather than of mockery for pretentiousness could we be sure that the figure were accurate. By way of comparison an annual Science-Fiction convention named Windycon gets 1300 to 1500 people in a weekend. I guess that means that Windycon attendees are entitled to call themselves "the almost 75%"? o_O

But let us not forget that 2,000, if accurate, was a respectable figure considering that the "Occupy Chicago Movement" is a lot less important then the things that take place at Windycon and not nearly half as much fun either. As a second comparison let us note that Anime Central's attendence for 2011 was 23,183. If 2,000 people are truly "the 99%" I guess that means that our local ottaku are the 1089% after we take the time to round down? ^_~

Meanwhile, attendance at Gencon is 2011 was 36,733 . Does that mean that gamers outnumber "99%" of Chicago by 18 to 1? @_@

And yet even Gencon's attendance is well and truly dwarfed by that of the San Diego Comic-con which claimed an attendance of 125,000 in 2011. That it would imply that comic book fans outnumber "99" of Chicago by more than 60 to 1. n_n

And please note that I have been very carefully abstaining from mentioning the fact that Windycon, Anime Central and GenCon all charge for attendance while the Occupy Chicago people did not. But then again which sort of event would you rather be at? :P

Mind you, all of this doesn't even bother to mention that the population of Chicago is 2,695,598 so once again it appears as though our "99%" people are once more actaully less than 10% of 1% even on a weekend! >_>

But I'm sure they'll still "the 99%" in their mind! As long as we don't buy into their delusions I guess we shouldn't mind if they go ahead and claim to be the Queen of Sheba as well. ^_~

Mood Music: 'Run That By Me One More Time' as sung by Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner. ^_^

99%, Eh? o_O

Sometimes numerate people can have fun when watching silly leftists in action. As you may already know, a herd of stooges has organized an "Occupy Wall Street" demonstration under the slogan "We Are The 99%". Let's call that datum one. ^_^

Datum two is the fact that on October 5, 2011, CNN breathlessly reports, "Wall Street protests swelled Wednesday to their largest numbers yet, after local unions pledged support to a third week of demonstrations against income inequality, corporate greed, corruption and a list of other social ills.

Thousands meandered from lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park..." (Emphasis mine).

Ooooo, Thousands! Now that could be any number between 1,000 and 9,000 or else the CNN peeps would have referred to "tens of thousands", but let's be charitable and assume 9,000 even though I'm more inclined to suspect a number a bit less than that (Peeps who organize demonstrations tend to count each finger, toe and tooth of a protester as an individual demonatrator in making their estimates of turnout and the press seems to tend towards dividing only by 10! ^_^;). Making that assumption then allows us to go to the next datum...

The currently estimated population of New York is more than 19 million. ^.^

And this is where the fun of being numerate comes in. n_n

In order to achieve 10% Of New York's population the protesters would have to have 1.9 million people in their ranks. In order to get 1% they'd have to be able to 190,000 people in their ranks. In order to get .1% they'd have to get 19,000.

So, even if we are being charitable and assuming that they got as many as 9,000 they still have failed to get even half of .1%. >_>

Which means that they are quite incorrect when they claim to be "the 99%".

After all, half of .1% is just a little bit less than 99%, wouldn't you say? ^^

Kind of shows what their word is worth when they claim to be the "99%", doesn't it? ^_~