🚀 go-pugleaf

I have no personal feeling for the crowd size, larger or smaller;
however, I would certainly like to see "official" estimates from some
organization with considerable less self-interest than NOW. 

I think the best - maybe the only - way of counting heads is to grid out
some photographs and count sample sizes the way you count yeast
populations under a microscope. (1) People are notoriously bad-guessers
of crowd sizes. Film directors frequently position 8 or 10 people around
a scene and create the illusion there's a huge crowd standing around.
(2) Psychologically, it's impossible to be part of a genuinely large
crowd and not feel overwhelmed by the experience, leading to gross
over-estimations. (3) In general, people don't have the kinds of life-
experiences that give them practice at accurately estimating huge
crowds; even police officers with official duties at such events may
only experience two or three such events in their lifetime, and EVEN
then can usually only measure in comparative terms ("bigger, smaller,
about the same..."). The only common experience like that is going to
football or baseball games, but even then the attendee has the advantage
of guessing the attendance against a "known" number of seats in a
confined area.

In general, though, I admit the numbers - whatever the final count -
were impressive. I don't recall seeing anything like that since the
Nuremberg rallies back in the 30's.

- Gary Hypes -