REX84 (was Re: re VLVL Pynchon's eye for detail)

[Mark Wright AIA]

Howdy

Ever read "Stand on Zanzibar"? 

Doubtless the Chinese have prison camps, but a lot more than 4.7 square
feet will be devoted to each inmate.

http://www.sinohotelguide.com/aboutbeijing/tiananmen/overview.html
"n 1949, the year  the People's Republic of China was founded, major
renovation work began at Tian'anmen  Square. Three subsequent
renovation projects in 1958, 1976 and 1981 have transformed the  square
into the major landmark it is today. Tian'anmen Square now stretches
880 meters  from north to south and 500 meters from east to west,
making for a total area of 440,000  square meters. That's about the
size of 60 soccer fields, spacious enough for half a  million people to
all stand on the square at one time."

One square meter equals 10.76 square feet. 440,000sm = 4,734,400sf

The square is about 4,730,000 square feet, or about 2'x2' for each of
the million people you've been told can occupy the square. Doing Tai
Chi? Sitting cross legged? 

Just imagine the Porta-potty situation!

Mark

--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've been to Tienanmen Square in Beijing many times,
> it's built to hold a million people.  It's pretty
> big-- I expect the dimensions are available somewhere
> online-- and on a monumental scale, but it fits nicely
> in the center of a big city. You can walk from one end
> of it to another in a few minutes.
> 
> --- Mark Wright AIA <mwaia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > a facility in
> > Fairbanks that is meant to hold 2 million prisoners.
> > That is a whole
> > lot of human beings. It's tough to visualize how big
> > big numbers really
> > are. There aren't as many as a million people in all
> > of Alaska.
> 
> 
> =====
> http://pynchonoid.org
> "everything connects"
> 
> 
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