Clayton Cramer's Blog

Roll Your Own (Rings, That Is)

2013-05-17T11:05:00.004-06:00

The quick but inflexible solution for attaching a telescope to the dovetail plate is to drill holes in the tube and turn bolts through the tube into the threaded holes on the dovetail plate. The more elegant solution (because it lets you rotate the tube into more useful viewing positions, with a little bit of effort) is to use rings like these. I have bought Ken Dauzat's rings before for another telescope, and I was very pleased with them. I have asked for a quote for the monster tube, and I am shuddering a little at the likely price.

But I saw this device for rolling your own rings from either tubing or flat. It's $169, but that doesn't seem like a particularly high price if it comes out the same price as buying one pair of rings. Does anyone have experience using such a tool?

New PJMedia Article

2013-05-17T08:25:00.001-06:00

At The Brink: Dr. John Lott Defines America’s Calamity

To Parody The Dojo Owner in Napoleon Dynamite

2013-05-16T22:12:00.000-06:00

"I developed this while spending two hours in the hexagon!"

It actually came out rather well. I started with the 20.125" diameter aluminum ring, used a protractor to measure 60^o angles, drew lines, then cut them using both the table saw and the bandsaw. The first try with the bandsaw was disappointing -- it produced a very ragged edge, until the blade broke. Then I switched to the table saw, which produced a straighter but very rough edge -- and then I went back to the bandsaw, using a wider blade, which produced a much straighter line. Then I used the belt sander to even out the roughness and get straighter edges. The points were still out at the old diameter, but I trimmed those to the right diameter with the bandsaw and sanded them smooth and straight.

The holes where the brackets attached were in the wrong place, so I just moved the brackets from positions 1, 3, and 5 to 2, 4, 6 (for those who immediately see benzene molecules when you see a hexagon). I also used my stamping dies to mark 1 on the corresponding bracket and hexagon locations.

I rolled the interior with flat black paint Wednesday night, and the exterior with the first coat of white gloss paint this evening.

It doesn't look good yet. After it dries tomorrow, I will sand it with some 400# paper, and apply a second coat. Depending on how it comes out, I may sand again and apply a third coat, but at that point, if it isn't beautiful, it doesn't matter. It will be dark most of the time.

All the holes (except for mounting) are drilled; once the final coat dries, it is ready for assembly. Once assembled, I will determine the balance point, drill four holes for attaching it to the dovetail plate, epoxy in place two pieces of steel rod to prevent rocking on the saddle, and be ready to put it on the mount.

I may even be able to reuse the black flocked material from the existing upper cage for this. I have gone out of my way to buy as many black oxide bolts and screws where something will be exposed on the inside of the tube. Even then, I flat black them; the black oxide just means that if paint does scrape off, it is still pretty much black.

Terrorism Charges Filed in Boise

2013-05-16T17:36:00.001-06:00

From May 16, 2013 Boise channel 6:

Fazliddin Kurbanov, 30, was arrested Thursday morning in Boise after a federal terrorism investigation.

Charges were filed Thursday afternoon in Boise and Salt Lake City against Kurbanov who was a United States citizen living in Boise currently.

The charges filed came after a federal grand jury in Boise returned a three-count indictment charging Kurbanov with one count of conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. In addition, one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and one count of possessing a destructive device.

And in case you notice the byline on the report--yup, that's my son.

There Are Descriptions For Which No Comment Is Printable

2013-05-16T16:28:00.000-06:00

I know not to trust everything that appears in Wikipedia, but a reader brought this to my attention, and it is rather like a contest to identify the number of despicable, wrong, horrible, evil things that can be done to a person, describing Brenda Spencer, who was one of the first mass murderers at a school in the modern era:

Spencer excelled in photography, winning first prize in a Humane Society competition.^[6] After her parents had separated, she lived with her father in virtual poverty; they slept on a single mattress on the living room floor. Police later found half empty alcohol bottles throughout the house. In 2001 she accused her father, Wallace Spencer, of having drunkenly subjected her to beatings and sexual abuse.^[7] He said the allegations were not true.^[8] Spencer is said to have self-identified herself as "having been gay from birth."^[9]

In early 1978, staff at a facility for problem pupils which Spencer had been referred to due to truancy, informed her parents that she was suicidal. In the summer Spencer was arrested for shooting out the windows of the Cleveland Elementary with a BB gun, and burglary. In December a psychiatric evaluation arranged by her probation officer recommended Spencer be admitted to a mental hospital due to her depressed state, but her father refused to give permission. For Christmas 1978 he gave her a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight and 500 rounds of ammunition.^[8]^[10] Spencer later said: "I asked for a radio and he bought me a gun." To the question as to why he might have done that, she answered: "I felt like he wanted me to kill myself."

Not All Cultures Are Equal

2013-05-16T13:08:00.002-06:00

Someone mailed me a gruesome picture purportedly of a Syrian pilot's head being grilled by one of the resistance fighters. Fake atrocities are a fundamental part of warfare, but I see this May 14, 2013 Telegraph article refers to a variety of acts of cannibalism by the Syrian resistance, and the leaders of that resistance defending such acts:

A Syrian rebel militia leader filmed cutting the heart and organs out of a regime soldier's corpse and putting it in his mouth has defended his actions as legitimate vengeance.

The actions of Khaled al-Hamad, known by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, handed an instant propaganda victory to the Syrian govenrment, which accused the West of ignoring rebel atrocities.

The video purported to show the leader of a breakaway rebel faction cutting the lungs out of a soldier’s corpse before apparently eating a small piece of the organ...

In Damascus, Ali Haider, the minister for reconciliation, said this was only one of many atrocities carried out by the regime’s enemies. “If the international media has just discovered this now, then they are coming to it very late. These type of atrocities have been happening in Syria since the beginning of the crisis,” he said. “The international community just didn’t want to admit it.”

Mr Haider added: “We have documented hundreds of acts that are equally as horrific as the one documented in this video. We have seen one of our pilot’s heads cut off and cooked on a grill. We have seen rebels toasting their success by drinking the blood of their victims.”

As much as I find the Assad government worthy of destruction, I am reminded that in much of the Middle East, this is not a conflict between barbarism and civilization, and between different branches of barbarism. As much as it hurts to see innocent bystanders suffer from such wars, it is rather like what happened when Iraq and Iran went to war against each other in the early 1980s: both were enemies of not only the U.S., but of all civilized notions of proper behavior. You do not want to applaud, but it is hard to justify spilling even one ounce of American blood or spending one penny of tax dollars to "help" either side. The more time that various forms of barbarism kill each other, the less time they have to hurt us.

Just More Islamophobia, I'm Sure

2013-05-15T21:27:00.002-06:00

From May 14, 2013 CBS Boston:

BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

The Quabbin, in Belchertown, is one of the country’s largest man-made public water supplies. Boston’s drinking water comes from the Quabbin and the Wachusett Reservoirs.

Note the time: "shortly after midnight." Isn't that when college students usually make unauthorized visits to public water supplies?

So Busy Being Sick...

2013-05-15T16:06:00.000-06:00

I didn't notice this new PJMedia article by me:

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): Credentialed, Not Educated

Robert Sherrill's Saturday Night Special

2013-05-15T09:52:00.001-06:00

My friend Nicholas Johnson writes about a book that is now largely forgotten: Robert Sherill's Saturday Night Special (1973);

I just dusted off an entertaining screed from 1973 written by former Washington Post reporter Robert Sherrill. Although you can gather it from his credential as a Posty, the prodigious title of the book better signals his views on the “so-called” right to keep and bear arms. To wit: The Saturday Night Special: And Other Guns With Which Americans Won The West, Protected Bootleg Franchises, Slew Wildlife, Robbed Countless Banks, Shot Husbands Purposely And By Mistake And Killed Presidents – Together With The Debate Over Continuing Same. Absent from Sherrill’s list is any suggestion of the utility of firearms for legitimate self-defense.

The book is a vivid reflection of the times, urging confidently the states’ rights view of the Second Amendment that today not a single member of the United States Supreme Court attempts to prop up. But enough nostalgia.

I agree with Professor Johnson's take on Sherrill's book: it is profoundly hostile to gun ownership and gun culture, but honest enough to recognize that gun control is fundamentally impossible in a free society. Sherrill is also honest enough to admit that the Gun Control Act of 1968 wasn't passed to disarm criminals, but to disarm poor black people -- and as a result, managed to accomplish neither.

Concentrated Misery

2013-05-15T09:48:00.002-06:00

As bad as Monday night was, at least all the vomiting was concentrated in a very short period of time: from about 8:00 PM to about 5:30 AM Tuesday morning. I have vomited that much before, but over a period of several days. Now I am just sore, partly from strain on muscles causing by the vomiting, and partly because I am still fighting a slight fever. I am not going to work until I am pretty confident that I am not contagious. I wouldn't even meet with President Obama, this stuff is so bad.

Hexagon Time

2013-05-13T19:03:00.001-06:00

The machine shop that said that they could turn it down to 19.875" diameter? I showed up, they looked at it, and said, "We can't turn something that big." And then, "We have a five week backlog." Wow. I could have been trimming this down to a hexagon over the weekend instead of waiting for them.

More Weight Reduction

2013-05-12T08:08:00.000-06:00

It turns out that I have a total of six bolts holding the bottom plate of the mirror cell to the attachment brackets -- and the bolt, lock washer, and nut combo weighs 0.4 ounces. Strictly speaking, six bolts are not required. Each one has the tensile strength to easily hold this, and I am not worried about any of them working loose. In addition, I can also remove the extra material on the attachment bracket where the second hole was located, perhaps saving two ounces total.

UPDATE: When I was looking for an alternative to turning down the bottom plate of the mirror cell, I did a little thinking about alternative strategies. One is to cut the circle to a hexagon, which can be done by drawing a circle of the required diameter, measuring 60 degree angles, then drawing lines connecting the points, and running these through a bandsaw. In addition, the area of a hexagon that fills radius r is 3r², instead of pi * r², so slightly less weight. A triangle is another possible strategy, where the area of radius r is 2r², so even more weight reduction.

Those Tiffen Camera Filters That I Bought...

2013-05-11T20:32:00.005-06:00

Last month I bought some Tiffen UV filters to protect the lens on my Pentax K10D; I was pleased to see when I opened the package: "Made in USA." It is possible to make stuff, good stuff, in the U.S.

Why That Vertical Mill Is Troublesome?

2013-05-11T20:31:00.001-06:00

I noticed at one point a screw fell into the working area; I found where it had fallen out -- and I don't believe that this is the first time that this has happened. It is a 10-32 x 3/8" Allen head screw that is one of two screws that holds the motor and bracket to the assembly that carries the spindle. It really does not lock down tightly, no matter how hard I try, although it works fine if the bracket that it holds in place is not there. It is the same length as the other screw which does lock down adequately -- but that other screw is in a very slightly narrow part of the bracket. I am beginning to suspect that a 1/2" long screw (perhaps with a washer, if needed) would provide a more rigid connection. Perhaps the reason that milling operations have been problematic is that the increased vibration causes more motion on this bracket. This might also explain why it often starts to slow down -- perhaps because the belt is moving back and forth.

Embarrassing

2013-05-11T17:23:00.000-06:00

It turns out that I did not measure the diameter of the base of the mirror cell quite carefully enough. It is actually 20.25"; the inner diameter of the Sonotube is just barely under 20" (probably because of the resin). This is a bit big for me turn myself, so I have to find a machine shop Monday that can turn this down without charging a ridiculous amount of money. It doesn't need to be terribly precise: 19.875" += .05" sufficient.

I did take some more weight off the finderscope base; it is now down from its original 5.2 ozs. to 1.2 ozs. I don't know why milling produces such bad results; oil helps, but not enough. The flycutter does a nice job, but an end mill just makes it catch and stop pretty often. I sometimes wonder if this vertical mill, which I bought used, has some problem.

UPDATE: Good news: a machine shop in Eagle quoted me $20 to turn it down to size. That's a bargain.

More "What Was I Thinking?" Discoveries

2013-05-11T12:01:00.005-06:00

Very typically, telescope mirror cells have little clips on the side that hold the mirror in place. (Yes, there's some felt between the clip and the surface of the mirror.) Here's a fairly gross example:

In my case, I discovered that the clips extended far below the plate on which the mirror sits, and actually were scratching the flat black paint on the first plate. This had several bad effects:

1. Damaging the flat black paint, increasing ambient light (very slightly).

2. Adding unneeded weight to the cell.

3. Increasing the actual distance from the front surface of the mirror to the back of the cell (which is an issue, as I previously have mentioned).

4. Reduced the amount of adjustment that I can actually make to the mirror. This has not been a problem, and in practice, the length of the springs between the two plates is considerably more adjustment room than I should need, unless I put the mirror cell into the tube in a way that wasn't square.

So I took the clips off, trimmed off the excess length with the bandsaw, then milled them precisely to length (even though they don't need to be) on the vertical mill, and repainted them flat black. I doubt that I even saved an ounce, but every reduction in weight is a win, especially at the mirror end of the tube, where any extra weight means more bending of the tube, and the mirror end is where most of the component weight is located.

There are a lot of places where I could probably reduce weight a bit more; the only question is whether it makes sense to do so. When I went to Home Depot earlier to buy 5/16"-18 bolts, nuts, and washers, I looked for aluminum versions -- which they did not have. If I could find them in stock somewhere (especially black), it would make sense. It probably doesn't make sense to pay $20 shipping to have a mail order operation do so, since this can't even a fraction of an ounce that I would save.

Next Step on the Telescope

2013-05-10T18:05:00.002-06:00

I assume that some of you are interested in this project. At least I'm interested in telling you about it. Not to worry, I'll get it done and start being a grumpy political curmudgeon again.

There were a couple of air bubbles that left serious depressions at the lower part of the Sonotube where I did the fiberglass cloth, and since I want this reasonably pretty -- and extra stiffness especially matters in this area where the mirror cell will be mounted -- I dripped some more resin in these holes, which are fortunately all within about 15 degrees of each other -- and left it to dry in the sunlight.

The next step is to reverse the mounting assemblies on the mirror cell so that I can insert the bolts that hold the cell in the tube from the rear of the mirror, not the front. While disassembling these from the big plate that holds the springs and screws for the smaller plate that holds the mirror, I had one of those, "I did this?" moments. I don't think I had the vertical mill yet, which explains why these parts are so crudely made. But I must have obtained my first complete set of taps, because I clearly overapplied the, "I can put threads anywhere I want!" idea.

Threads are good in a deep object where it is impractical to run a through hole (one that bolt just slides through) all the through the object. But threads in a thin plate, with a nut holding the bolt on the other side of that threaded thin plate, not so good, especially if you did not have a way to make absolutely perpendicular threads. Then you just have bolts fighting threads in the object when they hit the threads in the nut on the far side. So I turned all the threads in the mounting hardware into through holes. Much better.

The other mildly surprising moment was that I remembered having bought aluminum 1/4"-20 screws for some project, long ago, but I could not remember for what I used them. Then I discovered them. This mirror cell is almost entirely aluminum, including the screws and nuts that hold the attachment hardware to the big bottom plate. Why? Because I was trying to make this really light. Brilliant. The downside is that aluminum isn't anywhere near as tough as steel, and the threading orgy above meant that some of these screws and nuts were slightly damaged; one had to be Vise-Gripped out of the aluminum to which it was holding on for dear life, and the head of this screw is behind redemption. However, I was able to tap and die four of the six sets by turning a steel bolt through the nuts, and a steel wingnut on the bolts. There are two steel 1/4"-20 hex head screws now part of the process, but I don't expect the weight difference to be serious!

I am painting all these fasteners black (again). I really wish that I had a Boise source for black anodized bolts and screws, but I don't touch these very often, so I don't see it as a big problem to use flat black paint instead. I am considering buying some of this black flocking material for the upper part of the tube interior, in the area near the eyepiece and diagonal. (And read here to see why you don't really need to do the interior tube.)

UPDATE: As I do the arithmetic on placement of various parts, I am discovering that there really isn't room to put the mounting brackets for the mirror cell behind the main plate. When I did this original design, I did not waste a single inch of length. So how to solve this problem? This has been a long gripe of mine about mirror cells -- many of them assume that you will find exactly the right spot on the outside of the tube to drill the hole for a bolt that screws into a blind hole on the mirror cell base. This is not easy to do.

But I have a clever solution. What I am going to do is take the L-brackets that hold the mirror cell in the tube, tap the holes that I just made through holes into 5/16"-18 threads so that the bolts sticking down from these brackets will be captive (actually locked in place once screwed in). Then I will install the L-brackets in the tube and they will be permanently located there; to remove the mirror cell for cleaning is just a matter of unscrewing the nuts and lock washers that will hold the base plate of the mirror cell to the bottom of the L-brackets. That also means very deftly enlarging the holes in the base plate (since it is a big hassle to remove the mirror from the cell) to 5/16" size from their current 1/4"-20 thread.

Is The Amazon Search Widget Appearing on the Right Side Of My Blog?

2013-05-10T10:23:00.001-06:00

I can't see it at the moment, but I am behind a fairly secure firewall.

UPDATE: Most people can see it, but the ones that can't are curious. I think it is firewall related, because I can certainly see it from home.

Fiberglassing Sonotube

2013-05-09T20:06:00.001-06:00

Everything is adequately sanded for the next step -- and my, am I hot and sweaty from doing this, even using a sander. But now I need to do some drawing and some math, and math is a civilized, not sweaty activity.

UPDATE: Weight is 28 lbs., 2 ozs. (Maybe a bit less -- it is hard to keep this tube on the scale without touching it.)

That CNN Story About HP Hiring The Modern Dancers To Inspire Their Engineers?

2013-05-09T14:29:00.000-06:00

According to this article in the May 8, 2013 Boise Weekly, it wasn't just misleading:

In a story published April 23 by CNNMoney--the online business site by the self-proclaimed "most trusted name in news"--more than a few folks were startled to read, "Why Hewlett-Packard is Hiring Dancers." In the piece, reporter Cheryl Strauss Einhorn described how HP paid the Trey McIntyre Project "around $20,000 for half-day presentations" to dance among HP's cube dwellers.

The story wasn't true.

And while CNN has since apologized and dramatically rewritten the story, the network never disclosed that the reporter's family has direct ties to the Boise-based dance troupe--her mother-in-law, Nancy Einhorn, sits on TMP's board of directors.

That's what I get for trusting professional journalists.

Fiberglassing Sonotube, Continued

2013-05-08T11:57:00.001-06:00

I noticed that the resin was really not setting terribly quickly, even with heaters running under the tube. I am beginning to think that the problem was that I didn't add enough hardener to the polyester resin. Also, this discussion of use of polyester resin for fiberglass makes the point that these resins often include some wax which rises to the surface, cutting off exposure to the air, and thus accelerating the curing process. That's one of the reasons why sanding and painting help the process.

I added a drop of hardener to some of the patches that were staying sticky, and within a couple of hours, they were pretty much hard (although a little more plastic than I would like). Also, because I had not put enough resin on top of the portion of the tube where I put in fiberglass cloth, I applied a second coat of resin, using more hardener this time. This morning, it was much closer to being done than the previous coat had been, and in addition, provides a barrier to the air for the first coat. My hope is that by this evening everything will have hardened enough for me to start sanding.

The inner part of the tube remains a little more sticky than I would like, but this may be an advantage, actually, because it will make it easier to get flat black paint to stick to it. There really isn't a pressing need to sand the inner part of the tube; a rough surface reflects less light than a smooth one, and on the inside of the telescope tube, anything that isn't reflecting is good.

UPDATE: My wife moved it into the sunshine about noon, because it was still not completely dry, and in an hour -- rock solid.

It weighs just over 28 pounds -- so I added a bit less than three pounds of resin. I sanded it down to 320 grit this evening, which probably took it down below 28 pounds again. There were a couple of air bubbles where the fiberglass cloth had been, and a few spots were a little sticky under the top layer; in general, the surface isn't quite as even as I would like, but that's why you sand and add another layer, to smooth these discrepancies out. It does not need to be commercial fiberglass quality, but I would like it relatively pretty before I drill the holes and paint it. So I added one more layer of resin this evening, and I will put it out in the sunlight in the morning to harden up good.

Taxing Online Sales

2013-05-08T11:49:00.003-06:00

The Senate has passed a measure that tells states that they can tax online sales, even if the seller is out of state and has no storefront in that state. There are a lot of reflexive, "no new taxes" voices on this, but I really don't have a big problem with this, for several reasons.

The most important is equal protection of the law. Target.com (as well as a lot of single store operations) have to pay sales tax on sales to Idaho residents because they have brick-and-mortar stores here. Why should Amazon be exempt from charging sales tax that most of their competitors have to charge? If sales tax seems pretty minor -- our sales tax in Idaho is 6%. For many businesses, that is more than their profit margin on sales. That's a huge advantage, and not a fair one. (Of course, you as a customer are supposed to pay that sales tax for out of state purchases already; in practice, most states will only catch you on this if you buy a car out of state and then register it.)

Another criticism of the proposed law is that a lot of small online retailers are going to have to keep track of sales taxes for all 50 states (and in some cases, for individual counties and cities). Yes, that's going to be something of an issue. But the law exempts small sellers:

(c) Small Seller Exception- A State is authorized to require a remote seller to collect sales and use taxes under this Act only if the remote seller has gross annual receipts in total remote sales in the United States in the preceding calendar year exceeding $1,000,000.

If you are making a million a year in sales, you can afford whatever software revisions are required to your invoicing software to calculate sales tax based on zipcode. That's a one time investment.

UPDATE: My, what a lot of comments, and many of them quite thoughtful. (I mean, none of them start out, "Clayton, you ignorant fool.")

There are some good points, especially about the complexity of sales tax forms from state to state. I should point out that unless you are making pretty big sales, there is a good chance that nearly all your sales tax returns are going to be from about five to ten states. The bulk of ScopeRoller's sales in almost any year are California, Texas, Florida, Ohio. I know that I have never made a sale in Alaska, Hawaii, Wyoming, Vermont, and at least a dozen other states.

I agree that there is an apparent problem of taxation without representation -- an interesting problem.

One commenter suggested that a million dollars in sales might be $25,000 a year in profit, and complying with the requirements for software updates and filing of returns might well wipe out that profit. I suspect that any online business that is making that little profit is pretty unusual. I would wonder why someone is working that hard for that little profit.

Another commenter suggested that brick-and-mortar stores should pay sales taxes because they are relying on local governmental services, while Amazon relies on USPS and UPS. But the trucks from both are definitely not hovercraft; they use local roads, and if there are thefts or robberies of merchandise from UPS or other private delivery firms in the delivery state, that becomes a matter for local police. There might be a case for a for more service approach to governmental services, but within the current model, it is not clear that Amazon is completely unreliant on distant state governmental services.

The suggestion of taxing goods at point of sales is interesting, and would certainly be simpler. I rather like the idea.

I suspect that many medium sized businesses already use payment processing capabilities (like PayPal) that will handle this quite automatically.

New PJMedia Article

2013-05-06T15:42:00.002-06:00

"The Dynamic Nature of Economic Decisions"

The Benghazi Story Just Gets More Ugly

2013-05-06T13:57:00.003-06:00

And this report is from CNN, May 6, 2013:

In an interview with congressional investigators, the former top diplomat in Libya expressed concern that more could have been done by the military on the night of September 11, 2012 and morning of September 12, 2012, to protect those being attacked at the U.S. compound and annex in Benghazi, Libya. Specifically, he wondered why the military did not send a plane as a show of force into Libyan airspace, and why four U.S. Special Operations soldiers were not permitted to travel to Benghazi on a Libyan plane the morning of September 12....

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear from Hicks and others in a Wednesday hearing on the Benghazi tragedy, which ended in the deaths of four Americans – US Ambassador Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the committee, tells CNN that “military personnel were ready, willing, and able, and within proximity, but the Pentagon told them they had no authority and to stand down.”

And CBS, May 6, 2013, is reporting the same:

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

You might almost get the impression that winning re-election was more important than protecting U.S. diplomats.

Timelapse Borders of Europe

2013-05-05T22:11:00.002-06:00

This is more in the cool category than something that really meaningfully contributes to understanding history, but it is still pretty neat: