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Building A Modern Stonehenge In New Zealand
Flexagon writes "Wired News is reporting that a group of astronomy enthusiasts in New Zealand is building its own version of Stonehenge in a little more than a year. Why? "We came up with the idea of Stonehenge because it doesn't matter who you are -- everyone looks at the Pyramids and Stonehenge and structures like that (and asks) who built them, why did they build them?" says Richard Hall, president of the Phoenix Astronomical Society. Yet another reason to book a ticket!"
Before building it, remember that ' is feet and " is inches.
It has been determined recently that Stonehenge was a giant vagina.
Discover our erected rocks!
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
I'm not very much into 'scientific' promotion that aim to interest people in the past. Let's talk about how we can change things, make things better. Let's talk about the science in invention and innovation! Let's work on tchnologies that make the future better!
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As I understand TFA, this is an attempt to build a working astronomical calendar and explain people what was it used for (I'm shure many believe it was an alien airport, or whatever), and not to build just another Eiffel tower/Keops pyramid/Liberty statue clone.
"The whole idea of the henge is that people can come out here and learn real basic astronomy, the real foundations of what astronomy is all about," says Richard Hall, the infectiously enthusiastic and indefatigable project manager and president of the Phoenix Astronomical Society, which is building the Kiwi henge.
Who's country precisely did you mean? I am not really sure that the modern Britism Isles can claim stonehenge as their 'heritage' when it was built thousands of years ago by a very different people, who were later nearly erradicated by the Romans.
The next thing you know they will be stealing your Arthurian mythology.
At least your still have your cuisine...
Months ago, there was talk of burrowing a road underneath Stonehenge at great cost and it raised great concern amongst many.
How about this time they put the road in, and *then* place the stones?
However many hundreds of years on, surely we've learnt something about planning!
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
Yet another reason to book a ticket!
Husband: I know we've been flying for 13 hours to get here but let's go right to see Stonehenge Aotearoa.
[later]
Wife: This is it? It's a bunch of rocks!
Husband: No, no, you don't understand. This is astronomically significant!
Wife: [reading plaque] "Time to harvest the kumara" What's a kumara?
Husband: It's a sweet potato.
I imagine at this point the wife will sacrifice the husband on the pagan altar, or whatever they install at this thing.
It annoys me that some are insisting that the (future) EU constitution must stress Europe's Christian roots.
;)
As sites like Stonehenge show, Europe doesn't have Christian roots. It's roots are pagan. Christianity is a foreign religion for Europe. I think we should insist on the constitution stressing Europe's pagan roots. Now that would be cool!
Every thing is foreign at some point - even the pagan cults surrounding Stonehedge probably draw from older pagan cults who appeared and developed outside of Europe
Concerning the Constitution, I think Christianity should be mentioned since its role in Europe's history was indeed crucial. However, other religions who played a big role, including paganism (both Greek/Roman and Celtic), Judaism and Islam. Anyway, it's just a historical mention with no legal strength, and thus its effect is just symbolic.
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Sam hill already built a Stonehenge replica near Goldendale, WA USA. It's near the Mary Hill museum of Art, noted for it's collection of relics from the last czars of Russia... some of the few that didn't burn when the revolution came.
I believe it was built as a 1st World War memorial rather then to study astrometry.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Who's country precisely did you mean? I am not really sure that the modern Britism Isles can claim stonehenge as their 'heritage' when it was built thousands of years ago by a very different people
But it is my heritage. The day that you can take away my memories of visiting the place on summer solstice, just sitting in a nearby layby each month and staring for hours, the stories my older relatives told me - is the day you can say bullshit like that again. I don't remember claiming to be a direct descendant of druids/astrologers/whoever (I'm not prepared to make any claims as to who originally built the place when it's shrouded in such ambiguity).
My real point is that New Zealand really does itself a dis-service by practically ignoring its own virtues. It's a great place.
The next thing you know they will be stealing your Arthurian mythology.
Are you suggesting that I'm not a knight of the round table?
At least your still have your cuisine...
At least you still have your wildly outdated xenophobic, ill-informed views that we all eat boiled pig anus at each and every meal.
Come on! A stone circle built in NZ isn't going to work properly. Stonehenge on its own is just a pile of rocks. You need a properly aligned networks of temples and natural features to generate the correct psychic energy flows.
It should also be noted that north of the Stonehenge memorial in the town of Goldendale, WA, USA is the Goldendale Observatory Interpretive Center. It has a publicly accessable 24.5 inch telescope which according to the Tri-cityherald is America's largest publicly accessable telescope, assuming the WA state parks department didn't close it down due to budget cuts.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Advancement and discoveries in science are happening all the time but as amazing and awesome as they are, the fact stands that what may be interesting to some people, is trivial to others.
Once again, no reason to renew my subscription to the pulp version of wired when I can get it free online, just a few weeks later...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
At least you still have your wildly outdated xenophobic, ill-informed views that we all eat boiled pig anus at each and every meal.
Well I didn't before, but I might now; however I was referring to stereotype of bland British food rather than the...colorful...'traditional' meals of the Isles.
Regardless, it is good that you have many fond memories of Stonehenge, and likely other ancient structures and formations, but I do not see a cause to claim that this project is unfarily feeding on the fame of the original structures.
The scientist is not saying "look, we had druids here too, come to New Zealand instead of England if your want to see Stonehend; ours is better, nyaa!"; such a claim would be pure nonsense.
Rather, he is striving to spread knowledge and understanding, a noble goal under any circumstances.
Whilst most assume that Stonehenge was used to establish the position of the stars, there is another explanation.
The stars may have been used to accurately establish the orientation of Stonehenge.
In otherwords, the builders cared not one whit where the stars were, but they cared greatly as to the position and alignment of stonehenge.
They knew that astronomical observation and unique annual events could achieve this objective.
So the real question is "Why would it be important to precisely position and orient Stonehenge?"
It would be important if there was more than one Earth, e.g. in a parallel universe.
How else could builders on both planets construct something in precisely the same place and orientation?
What would be the benefit to having two Stonehenges in identical positions and alignments?
A gate. Morphic resonance. Weave your way through one henge and pop out at the other.
Dangerous stuff.
And if you decide you don't like the gate, or the folk who come through it? Knock it down until it stops working.
Well, there was Tolkein's history of NZ, recently made into a trilogy of films...
Seriously, however, yes, NZ has heritage of its own: there are Pas (Maori forts), early colonial Pakeha buildings, etc. And given the historic links between Pakeha (European) New Zealand and Britain, I'm surprised you'd feel that NZ was disrespecting Britain.
This is where the serious fun begins.
As a New Zealander, all I can say is WTF? I'll stick to my Maori/PI/Asian/Antipodean/etc culture thanks (yeh I'm white but screw it, I'm not European, I'm a New Zealander). I don't really get the need to build a "me too" monument to astronomy, but hey, if it floats his boat let him build it.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
We have wonderful ingredients and some great recipes - if you look into historic foods theres lots of flavourings added. You could say things started to go downhill after Raleigh brought back the potato, but I woudln't agree.
The national dish these days seems to be curry anyway, it may not be historical (more than a hundred years anyway) but it isn't bland :-)
It's about as true as the stereotype of American Cuisine - that there isn't one! the US has lots of regional cuisines AIUI, but I'm mostly familiar with Cajun and Tex-Mex. But I do know that there's more. The US did give the world the burger chain though, so there's some excuse for believing that Americans are more concerned with quantity than quality. I'm sure it's not true for all though :-)
You do know that you are seriously going to confuse the aliens when you put stonehenge in the southern hemisphere.
Philip
Signatures are broken
So is it your opinion then that white, British descended, Kiwis have the history of the Maori as their heritage?
Since there are a few surviving Maori left there might be some discussion on the matter, and perhaps some hard feelings over it too.
I really don't see the modern, white Kiwis gathering in the town square for a massive fucking for fertility session (a practice that, personally, I think makes a lot more sense than killing someone for fertility) as part of his "heritage." If the Maori tried it today I rather suspect their heritage would see them all in jail. There's a conflict of heritage here.
As a white, British descended North American I can understand that if I started claiming heritage rights to a Mohawk burial ground/sacred site some modern Mohawk might well think I was rather out of line, seeing as not a single one of my antecedents had anything to do with it.
On the other hand, I rather doubt that any of the Native Americans would particularly object to my building a Stonehenge (although I'm more inclined to a Nerfhenge myself) replica here because they would perceive it as part of my British heritage. If you objected you'd be being an asshole, because my ancestors lay there under the stars and listened to tales of the elders and have at least as much claim to it as yours.
Whereas if I wanted to celebrate the life and traditions of my North American ancestors I could, well, move into a tenement building in Harlem and then go to a moving picture. I think I'll pass. It lacks something as an ancestral ritual.
For the majority of New Zealanders Stonehenge is their heritage and their purely New Zealand heritage goes back no farther than the mid 1800s.
What would you have them do, kill a native, build a clerk's office and a railroad to celebrate their heritage?
Should the Maori celebrate the Crusade of Richard I as part of their heritage, or The Tower? That would seem to be exactly the sort of thing you're objecting to. The road goes both ways.
Yes, New Zealand is an awesome place. Yes, it has a rich cultural heritage, but that cultural heritage is not shared by its populace until completely modern times.
KFG
Given that claims have been made in recent years that stonehenge itself was almost completely rebuilt in the 20th century (based on evidence like constables paintings and contemporary photos), I don't understand why anyone would get their backup about a reproduction being made. (Granted there were many counter claims) [Personally I'd be interested in seeing even the techniques used even in 1902 reemployed in NZ]
Nebraskans already built a replica of Stonehenge
SCO claimed ownership of the Stonehenge design and announced a lawsuit aganst the Phoenix Astronomical Society for copyright infringement. "Stonehenge was clearly an early computer, and as such, it might be used to run an early version of Unix. Which we own."
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Of course, 4000 years ago a bunch of scientists were probably sitting around, staring at a decaying set of rocks 8000 years old, called someotherhenge. They were asking themselves who built them and why, which is when they decided to replicate someotherhenge and build what we now know as stonehenge, in england.
... will you be hated by anthropologists and archeologists. Think about it - after any writing is worn away, someone will dig it up and compare it to the original (which is a National Treasure of Some Sort (TM), so it'll be safe).
At that point, they'll wonder if we're still pagans, or if pagans survived and migrated, or what... After all, they'll be able to date this one to 2005 AD, and the other one is thousands of years old.
Maybe it's because there people, like many other primitive cultures, used to think daft things like you have to sacrifice people and animals to make the sun come up again at certain times of year etc?
There's no evidence whatsoever of sacrifice taking place at Stonehenge. These monuments were all about taking control and ownership of the landscape at about the same time as society was transforming from a mobile hunter-gatherer one to a sedentary farming based one. It was about establishing control of the land.--
This sig is inoffensive.
Thanks.
Stick Men
Richard Hall, president of the Firefox Astronomical Society?
There is a replica of Stonehenge and also two large Easter Island statues near Kerrville Texas, here is a web page: http://www.texastwisted.com/attr/stonehenge2/ Marc
Actually they are scheming to reconfigure the Earth's axis of rotation for arcane purposes. Why else build it more or less exactly opposite England?
:-) for the humor-impaired.
The two circles are ectoplasmic bearings. When Stonehenge B is up and running, all of the ley lines will snap together through the line between them, the planet will be wrenched into a new and more mystical rotational mode, and astronomers will rule the world! (Hey, it's easier than building a dimensional redistributor -- the tubes are so hard to come by.)
UMR did this many moons ago.
Sig? What sig? Do I have to have a sig!?!?
You obviously don't know shit. As a European, having been in NZ for one month straight dramtically changes your view on the way current EU life is so full of stress that it barely is able to breath naturally.
NZ is quite frankly the most perfect spot on earth I have ever seen / been to.
Big thanks for a wonderfull vacation to the allways helpfull and sympathetic NewZeelanders and maori folks!!
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Take a look at them. They are janky POS's. Its built from freaken wood. The wonderment we get from the originals is not really the shape or the function of it, but rather the fact that it was built from huge blocks of impossible to move rocks. Its the fact that the blocks are so wildly huge that we can only guess how they were able to build something to such a high degree of precision, while we who are so advanced would struggle to reproduce it.
So Im sorry, but some bone heads making a fake stone henge out of wood which wont last 10 years let alone 10,000 is just LAME!
PS: English Heritage are blasphemeous bastards as punters are supposed to go along the walkway (which is close as you can get to the stones these days) anticlockwise round Stonehenge
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"laicity" is the separation of goverment from church.
It is one of the pilar of modern French state: governement, schools are all 'religion-free', religious activities are considered are purely private issue.
It is very strange for French people to see the US president using the bible during his nomination, or witness swearing on the bible during a trial..
andr0meda, shut the hell up. Pay no attention to him. NZ is a vast toxic wasteland. Pretty much unlivable. Never go there.
:-)
At least that's what I told people when I came back from spending 3 months bike touring there. Hate to have it inundated with the unwashed
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