Barn: the foundation wall is poured!

Barn: the foundation wall is poured!  After all these weeks of waiting, now the barn construction seems to be proceeding at a breakneck pace.  I went out to run a few errands, and when I got home the last concrete truck had just pulled out, and the concrete crew was making the final tweaks (see photos below).  Tomorrow they'll be back to pull the forms off, and then we're just waiting for a few days for the concrete to cure...

Just before the pour...

Tweaking the forms...

Adding connectors...

The most trusted name in news...

The most trusted name in news...  This is, I'm told, an actual screen capture of a CNN broadcast.

One hardly knows what to say...

Barn: the foundation wall is underway!

Barn: the foundation wall is underway!  In the photos below you can see the outer side of the form being constructed, and the rebar reinforcement rods being wired in place.  Once that's all done, the inner form side will go up, the form as a whole will be lined up, and then the concrete trucks (about a dozen of them) will start arriving.  By early this afternoon, the entire foundation wall should be poured.  It will sit undisturbed for a week or so to cure, then work will pick up again...

Comet 67P close-up...

Comet 67P close-up...  Rosetta has returned a couple of high-resolution images of comet 67P – the best images ever obtained of any comet.  The image at right shows a “village of boulders,” each roughly the size of a house – and at the moment nobody has any idea what they're made of, or how they came to be.

But this is merely the beginning!  Rosetta is currently orbiting 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) from 67P, but will be spiraling in to just 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) as the mission progresses.  That will increase areal resolution by a factor of 100 on the images obtained.  Even more important (if less attractive to the public): the science instruments are going to work very soon...

“But under the guise of enabling innovation, the agency is making an already complex regulatory climate even harder to navigate.”

“But under the guise of enabling innovation, the agency is making an already complex regulatory climate even harder to navigate.”  The story is about FDA regulation of software, but that statement could be applied equally to almost any regulatory agency...