Artikelverzeichnis Stars und Sternchen…

I believe that doing this is becoming increasingly important in the blogging world in comparison with traditional media. This is because sources are even more diversified and the threshold to communicate is lower. We are thus less likely to know the trustworthiness of the sources that we are using.

It should not surprise us then that companies like Datops have even developed software especially for that purpose (tracing the original source of information).

Sounds sensible.

Another problem with counting attendance at a rally or demonstration, especially one held in a public place, is determining how many of the people on the scene acutally are participating, and how many of them just happened to be in the area and merely have come over to see what all the fuss is about.

Regarding rally size, I always like the Malatesta estimator. Total the estimates, then take the mean, then subtract 30 per cent; this gives a value of 29,761, but I suspect it’s skewed by the bullshit 100,000 claim.

Undoubtedly.

Trains, unlike aircraft, generally aren’t affected by adverse weather, so there aren’t all that many reasons why trains would be cancelled outright (as opposed to merely delayed). It therefore is not at all surprising that 60% of outright cancellations result from labor actions. I am presuming that scheduled cancellations, for example those caused by weekend trackwork, are not being counted.

As for the size of Herold’s rallies, let me point out that it is very difficult to determine the attendance of a non-ticketed rally or demonstration with any degree of accuracy. Crowds tend to be fluid, making a physical count nearly impossible in most circumstances, and in any event many people have an incentive to overestimate or underestimate the size of a particular rally.

As an amusing illustration, I read not long ago that if all the people who supposedly watched the Tournament of Roses Parade (held in Pasadena, California each New Year’s Day) in person actually lined the parade route, given the length of the route and the depth of the sidewalks, there would be tens of thousands of deaths from suffocation and trampling.

And how many cancellations? I hope for SNCF’s sake that only a small fraction of delays are cancellations.