Ben Crain wrote: “Thus the verb should be singular: “…there is a strangely large number of sites…”.”

Since we are all going over the waterfall together, and since I just had the most wonderful curry (in Dallas!), we might as well talk about grammar instead of Last Meals.

Your suggested rewrite is logical, but unsatisfying. Either in the original or in the rewrite, the brain still stumbles over whether a “large number of sites” is truly singular or plural. The easiest sentence flow comes instead from changing “number” to “numbers”. As in, ‘there are strangely large numbers of sites …’.

Hey, we are just wasting time until the economy goes over the falls and we can officially start the necktie parties for politicians & bureaucrats. Should we include lawyers too?