I can’t get over how often things I read on the internet are wrong. I have learned my lesson the hard way. I check everything out now because it happens so often. Even if I want it to be true, I check it out. Unless, of course, it is funny and then I pass on without further clarification.

So yesterday I read the following post in Instapundit, a conservative/libertarian site, with a bit of skepticism:

How could 1 million people march in London? That’s 10 percent of the population of central London. The number looked suspicious to me. So I checked new sources who give a significantly lower number of between 110,000 and 150,000 people. This is still a pretty large number of people but off by 850,000. I was going to write about this but decided it could wait until tomorrow.

To my surprise, today Instapundit is reporting 3,000,000 marchers:

So I checked newspapers and the Independent is still using the 110,000 to 150,000 number. Which sounds about right. Think about 3,000,000 people in the streets around Whitehall. It was difficult enough to get 150,000 in there much less 3,000,000.

What bothers me is that the actual number, which is quite impressive, isn’t good enough. Why lie about it? And why lie with such a patently unbelievable numbers. And if you will lie about this, what else will you lie about? It undermines anything you have to say to me because if you lie to me once I can guarantee I will be checking you out every single time you try to use numbers to convince me.