Mysterious stone circles of the Middle East

If you build it meow will come…

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Having used both, I believe water levels are enormitously better than laser levels in most outdoor construction efforts. And water levels have probably been around for thousands of years (admittedly they got way better as soon as glass was invented).

I’m not meaning to disagree with anything you were saying, just pointing out that laser levels don’t add much to construction capability… although they do add a certain convenience and tidiness for indoor and nighttime jobs.

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LHC was dismantled immediatly after closer inspection.

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May not be talking about the same thing.

I’m disappointed that the music (apart from ambient music) cuts out a few minutes in – otherwise a masterpiece in agricultura grader-pr0n.

Definitely not… thanks for the education, I’ve never even heard of a laser-guided box scraper before. My late Uncle Irving would have loved that thing.

The video doesn’t show it doing a better job than a mob of guys with shovels and a string level, but the difference in the amount of time and energy spent is phenomenal!

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It’s the Middle East, therefore I call terist.

They’re very impressive, especially the serious units used here, giving you centimeter gradients over thousands of acres, and giving you the strange wavy contours of the modern US rice paddy.

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Landing pads for flying saucers. Obviously.

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They say they were not difficult to build stating the barrier isn’t thick or tall, but how about surveying a circle that large? Square walls are pretty easy to survey, try round ones.

Though a ‘fuck’ might be more effective.

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Sports field.

Please forgive me. I am an English professor. I don’t do this often. But we need “enormity” for its original meaning, which is something like “An extremely wrong thing.” Language is a living being, and it evolves. But in this case, I want to smack it on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. Because we really need the word enormity for, well, all those enormities out there. Not for enormous things that have hugeness or enormousness.

Based on a thorough study of the literature, I feel confident in declaring that these are djiin enclosures.

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I’m not an English professor, but I do like to read very old texts. I’m pretty sure that you’re entirely wrong on at least two scores.

1 - the original usage and meaning of enormity is descriptive of a state of enormousness - an enormity is an enormous thing, just as an immensity is an immense thing.

2 - we have plenty of well-known and useful words meaning an extremely wrong thing, so we don’t need to screw up the regularity of English syntax gratuitously - to do so would be an abomination, brutal savagery, an egregious cruelty, an outrageous monstrosity, a near epitomic iniquity, profound baseness, a horrible obscenity, a violation of common decency, nay, a desperate crime, an immoral and hideous abuse, a barbarity, inhuman wickedness, a monstrous evil - in short, an atrocity.

Making language less discoverable and regular is a horrible elitist thing up with which we should not put.

But for a less confrontational response, that steers a thoughtful middle between the extremes you and I have espoused, see here.

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I’m sorry*, but you are clearly enormous.

 

######’*’ I am so not sorry.

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That’s why I hang out with giants. It makes me feel petite. They call me ‘The Midget’ down here. I love it. It’s bliss.

This is what I guessed, which is also what they say in the article:

However, building the circles in a precise shape would have taken some planning. “In the case of those circles that [are] near-precise circles, it would have required at least one person as ‘architect,’” Kennedy said, adding that this architect could simply have tied a long rope to a post and walked in a circle, marking the ground as he or she moved around. “That would also explain the glitches [in the circles] where the land was uneven,” as the architect wouldn’t have been able to keep walking in a perfect circle at those spots.

I’m not really sure what would make this so difficult, although admittedly I’ve never actually tried anything on this scale.

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Well, you have no doubt seen the OED definition. If you prefer the Merriam Webster approach, that literally defines “literally” as “figuratively,” knock yourself out. I can certainly tell you like your Roget.

I’m still annoyed that “awful” got redefined. It really garbles historic literature. “His Serene and Aweful Majesty” (a real title of English kings) has a ring to it. And look at Dryden’s Virgil:

“O King of Gods and Men! whose awful hand
Disperses thunder on the seas and land,
Disposing all with absolute command;
How could my pious son thy pow’r incense?
Or what, alas! is vanish’d Troy’s offense?”

I’ve actually never owned a thesaurus, although the Internet makes a fine proxy.

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It seemed too big to use a rope for true.