32 Replies to “Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors”

  1. Damn….Detroit is HUGE! Who’d a thunk it?
    Square root of 139,000 sq. miles is 372.82 miles X 372.82 miles! That’s a @#$% load of run down shacks!
    Thankfully engineering school was full before the writer had to settle for journalism school!

  2. Zeroes mean nothing, so adding an extra three to the real number doesn’t change anything does it? It’s new math…

  3. Michigan has a problem as it’s only 96,716 square miles in area. That means that Detroit has expanded into Wisconson, Ohio and Indiana with the water border preventing Detroit’s expansion into Illinois. This expansion must have happened stealthily or news of the massive growth of Detroit was suppressed by the MSM.
    Then again, the explanation may be far simpler like the reporter writing the article being an affirmative action hire so the newspaper could meet their quota of incompetent minorities. Or it could be that the reporter could be a product of the new and very expensive educational system. A couple of days ago was performing a mini mental status exam on an 80 year old mildly demented patient and he effortlessly performed serial subtraction of 7 from 100. A very young appearing nurse who was standing beside me seemed very awed and I asked her to perform the same trivial mental arithmetic and she refused to try unless she had a calculator. This widespread innumeracy is, IMO, how one gets trillion dollar deficits as the majority of the people coming out of the educational system today have no visceral understanding of numeric magnitude. The minority of people who work with numbers all of the time (and I do so by choice) are not in a position to influence the innumerate political class. The single test which should be administered to any potential voter is asking them to perform mental arithmetic – if they fail, they don’t vote.

  4. Perhaps the city of Detroit has expanded into Canada, and hopes to soak Ottawa as well as Washington?

  6. hahaha, after Kate’s leadin, I still missed 139K/sq/mi, and I used to win math competitions:-))))
    got to go have a coffee!!!!

  7. Well, it just seems/feels like 139,000 sq. miles, and that’s good enough for the creative narrative being sold as news/fact.
    AS for Detroit going broke – isn’t crime a lucrative industry?

  8. 139,000 square miles! Off the top of my that would be 500miles long and 278miles wide. Obviously the reporter is counting other dimensions; hell has seven levels so Detroit probably has more.
    It is obvious they don’t teach math in journalism schools, or grammar, spelling, geography, history, logical thinking, basic science etc. It begs the question, what do they teach in J-school?

  9. 139,000 square miles is smaller than Montana, but bigger than New Mexico. I’d give a comparison with Canadian geography, but there’s nothing close in size that I can find.

  10. If Michigan is planning on returning Detroit to farm land, this is one big influx of cash they can expect, maybe even pay back taxpayers for the auto industry loans.

  11. “Perhaps the city of Detroit has expanded into Canada…” The figurative interpretation of that statement is certainly something that has me worried: Ontario, as you know, has been pretty economically integrated with Detroit for the last 100 or more years.
    @Loki: “The single test which should be administered to any potential voter is asking them to perform mental arithmetic – if they fail, they don’t vote.” Which statement really underscores the magnitude of the problem: why, heck, members of the “political class” in this country can out and out lose an election by getting, you know, a lower numbers of votes than the winners and still think they have a right not only to vote, but to run the place (into the ground, like Detroit)!

  13. Are you saying that Detroit isn’t 139,000 sq. miles? That’s like saying the Tuskagee Airmen didn’t win WWII. Racist!

  14. Okay, okay. So it’s only 139 sq miles (360 sq km). It’s still huge. And the article is MOSTLY on target though it doesn’t emphasize the sheer INCOMPETENCE and RACISM of those in power. And when I say racism, I of course mean black racism. Beginning with Coleman A. Young, the primary qualification for government jobs and politicians was “are you a black person”. This resulted in an incredibly INCOMPETENT (what’s a few zeros matter to the incompetent?) and corrupt government. All the rest of the decline followed. Robert Mugabe is the African equivalent……. with similar results.
    Oh, and by the way, I agree with Loki 100.005%. (+ or – 6%)

  15. Math is hard don’t cha know??
    Journo’s the barbies of the intellectual class and you wonder how they allow the spewing of Climate change to take hold in the MSM.

  16. Loki — As someone who is not particularly skilled at doing mental calculations, I think your dismissal of those lacking numerical facility is excessive. I am acutely aware that this is a brain development/training thing that many capable people lack. It is not that they are incapable of working with numbers per se, but doing so without the aid of a calculator just does not come easily to some people. I know people who are not skilled with numbers, but quite brilliant at abstract, conceptual thinking, dealing with concepts, high-level use of language and deductive reasoning — and I think they should be allowed to vote. Why exactly did you ask the nurse to perform the mental arithmetic? You may be good at calculations, but attempting to score points on people who are not is petty and unwarranted.

  17. David in Michigan — good observations. Unfortunately, the egregious error in the square miles figure got this discussion side-tracked onto the issue of math skills, rather than the core issue of the intractable problems in Detroit. I am currently reading Charlie Leduff’s book on Detroit and it is very informative with respect to how deep seated the problems are. I was glad to have the link the the article which gives good background for anyone paying attention to more than just the editorial glitch. Among other things, it corrected a (deliberate?) error in the Ottawa Citizen which suggested that the riots related to blacks moving into white neighborhoods. The problems in Detroit are entrenched at this point and I don’t know how anyone will solve them. A few other US cities may not be far behind.

  18. LindaL, if people can’t do extremely simple math in their heads then how is it possible to be “brilliant” at abstract, conceptual thinking? Math is ALL abstract, conceptual thinking, layers and layers of abstraction.
    If someone can’t do single-digit subtraction then do they have any hope of understanding the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion? That’s how you end up with bankrupt nations.

  19. You can’t measure Detroit in square miles. It can only be measured buy the bucket, shit bucket that is!

  21. Ed Minchau — there are different types of abstract thinking visual/spatial is one which does not particularly lend itself to calculations. Eidetic memory and being able to picture objects in three dimensions is abstract — but not numerical. I am not defending people not being able to do mental calculations — just pointing out that there are many different mechanisms through which our brains function and that many people who are not strong in doing calculations can be very able in other ares of thinking. (And I think they should be allowed to vote.) It is speculated that one reason some people get tripped up on math has to do with the early emphasis on memorization and calculations — rather than abstract mathematical concepts.

  22. That’s amazing! Detroit is almost as big as the state of Montana, and it’s over four-and-a-half times the size of Scotland, including all the islands.
    What’s even more amazing is that the city of Detroit covers an area 2.4 times bigger than the total land area of it’s home state!
    If it weren’t for journalists I’d never know these amazing facts — certainly no one else seems to be reporting them.

  23. Jim, Baffin Island is about 195,000 square miles, just 56,000 square miles bigger than Detroit,but we don’t have much problem up there with race riots.
    But if you wanna see pristine beaches….
    I’m one of those people everyone hates because I can do simple arithmetic in my head faster than a young store clerk with a calculator. So when I make a purchase of $150 plus 12% HST,and her till shows I owe $235, I tend to debate the sum. They’re usually amazed when they finally figure it out,”how did you KNOW”?!

  24. The journo probably intended a conversion to square kilometers 😉
    But seriously, Detroit went down because the only measurement important to the ruling class became, over time, a. )graft collected, and b.) power acquired ( for examples, see Kwame Kilpatrick for a., Coleman Young for b. )

  25. 139,000 square miles is the size of the tax base needed to sustain your average large progressive city. Just ask anyone living in Ontario…

  26. LindaL, when it comes to mathematics I agree with Robert Heinlein:
    “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
    Every aspect of human life requires one to make quantitative decisions. In order to determine whether a particular proposal dealing with economic matters is reasonable, one has to be capable of independently working out the math to verify it for oneself as politicians, by definition, lie.
    The 139,000 square miles as the area of Detroit is a mistake so egregious that it calls into question anything else this reporter has written. It’s of the order of saying that a mouse and an elephant have the save volume.
    Anyone who can spell should be able to do mathematics. Spelling requires an immensely greater amount of memorization than arithmetic. As part of the mini mental status test one now has the option of spelling “WORLD” backwards instead of performing serial 7’s. This requires one to be able to visualize the word with the proper sequence of letters and then repeat the letters backwards instead of forwards. Many women decline to do the serial 7’s part of the test but are able to spell “WORLD” backwards.
    Given the severe social effects of widespread innumeracy, I consider that demonstrating a minimal level of mathematical ability should be required before people are allowed to vote.

  27. Speaking of decimals and zeros, Quebec comes to mind. There but for the grace of the ROC goes Detroit north! How many mayors so far this year in Montreal? How many charges so far against various administrators/administations for various criminal acts that have been perpretrated against Canadians outside of that province? Detroit just ran out of ‘other peoples money’ before Quebec did. But Quebec is well on the way, and, with the blessing of the ROC – You and Me!

  28. Did you count the floors.
    The area of a city theoretically goes up depending on how many buildings with how many floors.
    Just say’n

  29. Sure, Detroit is now 139,000 square miles in size.
    First it started contracting, and then it fell into a black hole and then blew up again in a big bang.

  31. “The area of a city theoretically goes up depending on how many buildings with how many floors.”
    Brilliant, Why we never noticed that Detroit consisted of 1,000 story buildings!
    Thank you for making Loki’s point for him.

  32. What’s 3 zeros between friends? Detroit, by rioting in 1967, and murdering 1,000 burgers a year convinced anyone with a paycheque to bail out. It’s interesting that the black citizens that rioted had a 3 % unemployment rate and were the best paid black community in the world. Boy did they frig it up but good. At least they have their principles – and nothing more. I guess they found out that Whitie really isn’t the cause of all their problems. When Whitie pulled out things went to hell fast.

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