Barn: we has walls!

Barn: we has walls!  Well, one wall, anyway :)

The builder started framing last night, bolting the bottom plates (the pieces of wood running horizontally on top of the foundations) in place.  The bottom plates are pressure-treated (copper oxide) 2x6s.  Under them, visible in several of the photos, is a layer of blue closed-cell foam.  This acts as a waterproof seal between the bottom plate and the concrete.  I've seen this done with rubbery caulking before, but never with the foam.  The foam is much easier, and I'll bet it's more reliable, too.

The general approach to framing this building is different than I've seen before.  I'm used to seeing a wall's frame built entirely on the floor, then tilted up into place.  These walls are being built in place, nailing the studs to the bottom plate and then the top plate to the studs.  With the right gear (scaffold, ladders, nail guns) this doesn't seem to be particularly difficult to do. 

Bottom plate, north side

One of the hold-down bolts

A gorgeous morning...

See the foam?

Men at work

Making a window frame

Putting up a top plate

The west wall is almost done

Crisp and clear

Bird's nest...

Bird's nest...  Yesterday evening I found this nest sitting on the lawn underneath one of our pine trees in the front yard. It's a beautiful example of mud-and-grass construction, with a shell that's quite thin, yet strong.  The grass provides tensile strength, the hardened mud compressive strength – the same principle as rebar in concrete.  There are two “holes” in the bottom of the nest that are where it sat on branches, incorporating them into its structure.  Completely absent are any materials to make the inside softer, as one would usually find.  I see no signs that this beautifully made nest was actually ever used.  It likely represents a male's failed attempt to woo a female...

The Middle East is a most complicated muddle...

The Middle East is a most complicated muddle...  Which countries get along well with which others?  Which countries are enemies of each other?  Which ones have fraught relationships?

This stuff is all very hard to sort out and keep straight, even for someone immersed in the history and politics of the area.  This interactive chart does the best job I've ever seen of distilling this information down to a digestible size.  It's worth spending some time studying.  In the screenshot below, I've hovered over Iran; it's significant relationships are highlighted...

Look at what happens...

Look at what happens ... when a top-down bureaucracy controls medicine.  It was completely predictable, and was predicted by a large number of people, including me.

This is what always happens when government bureaucracy replaces free markets.  It's so obvious and so predictable that you have to wonder how on earth the Progressives can deny it.  And yet they do, even when it slaps them personally upside the head...

Twenty four year old woman has no cerebellum...

Twenty four year old woman has no cerebellum...  And yet she functions within the bounds of “normal”.  The adaptability of the human body is endlessly amazing...

“We are screwed.”

“We are screwed.”  So says Neo-Neocon, upon reading a poll of likely voters and discovering that less than two thirds of them knew which political party controlled the House or the Senate.

I'm afraid it's even worse than she thinks.  On House control, for example, the breakdown was 63% correctly said that Republicans were in control, 20% incorrectly said that Democrats were in control, and 17% admitted not knowing.  The group answering “Democrat” most likely simply guessed wrong.  There are only two answers, so one would expect that half of those who guessed would guess wrong – and half would have guessed right.  That means that probably only 43% actually knew that Republicans control the House – the rest of the “Republican” answers were those who simply guessed correctly.

This brings to mind another poll, taken around the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.  I can't locate it now, but I remember the gist of the result.  The poll had a single question for likely voters: list the names of the two major U.S. political parties.  Only 33% – exactly one third – of respondents correctly listed “Republicans” or “Democrats”.  I remember looking into the poll's details, and they seemed to do it well – they accepted all plausible variations for either party, including things like “GOP”.  Even with that degree of leniency, still only a third of likely voters knew the names.  Ugh...

Optical Rube Goldberg machine...

Optical Rube Goldberg machine...  Awesome!

“We just try.”

“We just try.”  The sad story of a mom who lets her six year old play outside – and has a “concerned” neighbor call the police and Child Protective Services.  There's nothing she can do about it.

It's not at all like that here in Paradise, Utah.  Kids are still “free range” around here.  My neighbor's kids romp in “the forest” (an acre of pines) on our property.  Most young boys own guns (and use them), and not just .22s.  All through the valley, the attitude of parents is much like it was where and when I grew up.  Kids can play outside, they wander far from home sometimes, and nobody calls either the police or Child Protective Services.  We frequently see kids riding bicycles without helmets, and kids riding in the backs of pickups.

But where I recently moved from (the San Diego area), this wasn't true at all.  I can't even imagine the response to some kids riding in the back of a pickup – it would surely be on the news, and those kids would almost certainly be taken away from their parents and put into the foster system.  The parents would be in jail.

Is America better off for this kind of extreme protectionism?  Are the kids better off for it?  I think not, on both counts.  Not that my opinion counts for very much.  But at least I'm living in a place now where most people seem to agree with me on this sort of issue.  I hope that lasts as long as I do...

Creatures of the night...

Creatures of the night...  That's a serval (or cervil) at right.  More here.  The book of photos is available here...