KKK

It's a safe bet that you've all heard of the KKK, or the Ku Klux Klan. The name conjures up images of intolerant men in white sheets, and pointed hoods lighting crosses on fire.

But there are strange and curious facts hidden in the Klan's history, and today we're going to peek under the sheet at some of them.

The Klan was originally founded just before the end of the American Civil War, but it almost died out after just a few years. It then popped back up in 1915 with the film The Birth of a Nation, when it had between two and six million members. And it wasn't just black people they hated. They also tried to get rid of Jews, Catholics and alcohol for some reason.

By the 1930's membership had again petered out into almost nothing until the civil rights movement started.

Today it's difficult to estimate how many Klansmen there are, since it's not one organization, but rather a loose coalition of Klans spread across America. In 2012 it was estimated that they were between 5000 and 8000 members strong. Membership is risky though since they are officially a hate group, and as such are under permanent FBI scrutiny.

In 1958, the Klan started a campaign of terror in Robeson County, North Carolina.

The reason? Well it's the home of the Native American tribe of Lumbee. And one of them dared to date a white woman. Another family had moved into a white neighborhood. So the Klan rolled in and did the whole burning cross thing. Then, later the same month they held a rally with about a hundred dedicated Klansmen.

The problem? A large crowd of angry Lumbee men that outnumbered them considerably. After a short and rather brutal fight, Grand Dragon James “Catfish” Cole fled in terror, taking his his “brave white knights” with him. I guess the Catfish didn't want to become a Custer...

Since that January day in 1958, the Klan has been suspiciously absent from Robeson County.

In 1965, the Klan suffered an intense (and hilarious) humiliation, due to the Grand Wizard of New York, Dan Burros.

Mr. Burros was thrown out from the Army in 1955 after three suicide attempts, one of which was accompanied by a suicide note praising Hitler. After his discharge he joined the American Nazi Party (bet you didn't know they had one of those), and later the Klan. However, in 1965, John McCandlish Philips Jr, a journalist for the New York Times, proved that Dan Burros was in fact Jewish. Ouch. He was tossed out right quickly.

During the 1980's the Klan had a very dangerous member, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. Glenn had two decades worth of military experience, out of which 13 was as a Green Beret. He organized and planned assassinations (which were never carried out), but in 1987 he was arrested in the back seat of his car with a male black prostitute in drag. Yeah, so much for idealism.

In 1994, the Klan wanted to adopt a stretch of highway in Missouri. In case you're not familiar with the concept, it means the adopting group is responsible for maintaining the stretch in question, and in return they get some publicity.

Anyway, the state officials told the Klan to get lost, and they in turn went to court over the matter. A District Judge decided that the Klan had a constitutional right to adopt said piece of highway, and the Klan celebrated. Until the state officials named the road The Rosa Parks Highway, that is.

The Klan never picked up a single piece of litter, and later claimed they didn't have to, since the guy who signed the official document was no longer a member.

Finally I had a good laugh when I read that the KKK has officially condemned the Westboro Baptist Church for being a hate group. Yeah, if the most go-to example of a hate group in the Western Hemisphere thinks you are being too hateful, maybe you ought to rethink your agenda a little bit.

Hope you have a great week, and I'll see you next Monday!

Now that's huge

Hello and welcome to a somewhat molten edition of Eccentric Spheres.
The temperature in Helsinki insists on sticking around 30C, and the nights aren't much better. I sleep badly, and certain places at my job are intolerably hot.

So this week I'm simply presenting you with a fascinating documentary series called Nazi Megastructures. It deals with the most ambitious builds the Nazis took on. From the Atlantic Wall to their Super Tanks to Fortress Berlin, this show gives you an interesting look into these incredible projects.

So if you're too warm to do anything useful, sit back and learn some history!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcmMPu7MX_I

Hope you have a great continuation of your summer! 

Promises promises

A couple if days ago I grabbed the opportunity to watch Eastern Promises. I became aware of this film mainly due to it's infamous naked sauna knife fight. Maybe you've seen it on Youtube, maybe not. Anyway, another reason why I wanted to watch it was that I haven't seen Viggo Mortensen (male lead) since his awesome portrayal of Aragorn son of Arathorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This prompted me to watch this film.

I knew fairly early on that I wanted to review it here, but I really can't. You see, apart from the knife fight, it's not a very violent movie, it's much more of a drama with a midwife and the Russian Mafia in London. But I can't really tell you what it's about without explaining a couple of things, which would in turn spoil the whole shebang.

But it is a good movie. It really is. Not great, but definitely watchable. Naomi Watts does a good job as the female lead, and Viggo is awesome as the cool-as-a-cucumber Russian gangster. I certainly recommend it.

Of course I can't leave you with merely an anti-review, you deserve more. So, I'm delighted to be able to tell you all that one of my favorite British TV series has gotten a second season: Utopia! I reviewed it very early on here on Eccentric Spheres. The first season was brilliant and it seems the second is a prequel. I don't know yet if it's any good, since I'm re-watching the first season to remind me of all the goings on. I'll give you my opinion as soon as I can.

Our third installment for today is a Youtube series with the apt name HotPepper Gaming. It's mainly video game reviews but the reviewers eat hot peppers before they begin. Not only is it hilarious to watch them desperately try to remain focused while their mouths (and ears) are on fire, but I think it makes the reviews more honest. Sure they're working from notes, but you can't be manipulative and gimmicky when you're crying and doing your damnedest not to scream in pain. Some fail...

That's it my friends, cya next week.

Interesting travel locations

As I'm sure all of you know that space is really big. Apart from the fact that we and other complex life forms exist, our little corner of it all, is pretty unremarkable.

In fact, there are planets out there that almost defy imagination. Today we're going to take a look at a couple of these weird places. I'll stick to planets we know about, and not speculative planets, like carbon planets, that we only theorize about. Not that carbon planets wouldn't be cool. Imagine a world with seas made from crude oil and tar. A planet where it rains gasoline. And instead of boring old dirt, you have coal and diamonds. But we have no solid evidence of them. Yet.

So. first up on our cavalcade is Bellerophon.

He was the guy in Greek mythology who nabbed himself the Pegasus BTW. Anyway, Bellerophon the planet, is a gas giant about 150 times more massive than the Earth, but that's not the cool part. There are after all lots of big planets in space. No, the cool part, is that it's close proximity to it's sun means that it's average temperature is 1000 C (1800 F) and it's massive winds rage at 1000 kph. Keep in mind that a human body is cremated at about 700 C, and the fastest Earth wind on record is 407 kph. Maybe Bellerophon isn't so cool after all. Makes a great incinerator though.

From Bellerophon we travel to COROT-exo-3b.

This lovely little tourist attraction is the same size as Jupiter, but unlike the gas giant, COROT is solid, which makes it 20 times as massive as Jupiter. Before you say “that's nothing” it means that we would way 50 times what we weigh on Earth. I weigh roughly 72 kg, which would mean my COROT weight is 3600 kg. If I were to set foot on this planet, my skeleton would be crushed instantly. I think I'll stay home.

Third and last of our friendly interstellar neighborhoods is WASP-12b.

If Bellerophon is to chilly for you, go to WASP-12b. It's the planet closest to its sun anywhere, at least as far as we know. Where as we are 149,600,000 km from our sun, WASP is only 3.4 million kilometer from its star. This means that the surface temperature is a scorching 2200 C (4000 F). More than twice that of Bellerophon. To put that into perspective, aluminum melts at 660 C, steel melts at about 1500 C, and platinum at 1770 C. The surface is twice as hot as lava, and to really make you dizzy, WASP-12b orbits its sun once every 24 Earth hours.

That's all for this week, so go out and enjoy ol' mother Earth. I think she deserves it. See you next week.

Funny Facts

Today we'll be looking at some interesting and perhaps surprising facts. As far as I know, these are all true, but I can't be bothered to link the sources. You'll have to trust me and the internet or just do your own research. Enjoy!

• The loudest animal on earth is also the largest. The blue whale has been recorded at 188 decibels.
• Dracula author Bram Stoker was a conspiracy theorist. He believed that Queen Elizabeth had died suddenly and to keep Henry VIII from knowing she was replaced by the only person they could find - a boy.
• The worlds longest accurate shot on record – 230 yards – was made by an armless man.
• The oldest concept of a zombie apocalypse is from Mesopotamia. The Epic of Gilgamesh, in fact. It's about 4000 years old.
• When Lord Byron went to college, he was ordered to get rid of his dog since they were against college rules. However there was no rule against pet bears, so he got one.
• The Catholic Church views superstition as a sin...
• The Fi in WiFi doesn't really mean anything. The creator just liked that it rhymed with HiFi.
• Mark Twain not only invented the self adhesive scrapbook, he also invented the bra strap.
• Etorphine is a drug similar to heroin and morphine, except it's so strong 1/100^th of a gram can knock out a grown elephant. This is in fact the only use for it, since it's impossible for humans to use without overdosing yourself.
• The (most likely) fastest man made object was a 2 ton manhole cover that was sent flying during an underground nuclear detonation test. It traveled in to the sky at 41miles per second. That's 237539 kilometers per hour! It was never recovered.

That's all for this time. I hope you have an interesting week!

The End of the summer (sale)

The end of my summer vacation coincides almost perfectly with the end of the Steam Summer Sale. These incidents coupled with the rather lousy weather we've had today has me in an almost autumnal mood.

I figure the best cure is a pizza followed by some sweet gaming. After all I had a fairly successful sale this year. The final haul looks like this; Banished, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy, Hitman: Absolution (with Hitman: Sniper Challenge included), Starpoint Gemini 2, Stronghold HD and Tomb Raider (2013).

So six games total. Not that much I know. A friend confessed to buying about 30 games this sale, and I have to wonder how he found so many to buy. In past sales I've bought more, but that's due to my library being smaller. It's only natural that as my collection grows, there will be fewer games I want to buy. Even if money wasn't an issue, I'd be hard pressed to find 30 games I'd want. Oh well, at least I got a couple I've really wanted for a while, and a couple I've been considering a bit.

In an effort to not buy what I don't play, I decided to go back to Dishonored (I also bought the final DLC my library was lacking) and finished the whole thing, including both story based DLCs The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. I can honestly say I'm blown away. This is sucha good game, and both the story and the world are absolutely wonderful. If you like stealth games or steampunk get this game. It's well worth it. Particularly since you get different endings depending on whether you play with High Chaos (kill everything) which is easier or Low Chaos (kill as little as possible) which is harder but almost more satisfying. I look forward to ghosting as many levels as possible.

That's it for me. I'm pretty exhausted from being back to work so I'm going to assassinate my pizza. Cya next week!

Summer Sale 2014

Another week is upon us, and the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing.

Apart from the obvious pleasure of getting games I've had my eye on for some time really cheaply, the whole event is pretty interesting.

Take the voting system as an example. Every eight hours new Flash Sales pop up. That's four games with a discount of about -75%, and at the same time, you get to choose between two set of games that will be on sale next. The set with the most votes goes on sale.

Now, I'm a very selective gamer. There are several categories that do not interest me at all, like sport and racing games.

Even within categories that I do like such as shooters, strategy and RPG's I'm very choosy. In part due to financial reasons but also because of time restraints. So what to do when neither set of games is of any personal interest?

Well, I could simply not vote, but that seems petty to me. Rather I either look for the biggest price reductions or games that I've played and know are good. Simple guidelines, but sometimes I really have to sit and think.

There are a couple of new features this year though. The most obvious is the Summer Adventure. When you get your first virtual collectible sale card, you're randomly added to one of five teams; Red, Green, Pink, Blue and Purple. Much like Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs, I was dismayed to become Pink. But that's not important. Ostensibly, the teams earn points every day based on some stuff I'm not entirely clear on. I think it's a combination of sales and badges.

Anyway, having observed the process for four days now, I'm pretty sure it's a sham.

You see every day, 30 of the winning teams members get three games from their wish-list for free. And so far each day, one team has been in the lead with a huge difference. All the other teams are clumped together in a pretty similar mass.

If this event was in fact totally up to the customers, it couldn't possibly look like it does. I of course have no evidence, and if I did I wouldn't care, since some people get free games. It's all good, if pretty weird.

What's not so good, is that I can't get any more cards from voting until my Steam Account gets to level 8! You can use the cards to craft a badge that will give you some small in-game cosmetic changes in a couple of games I don't even play.

So it's not like I really care, it's just pretty rude to have this system of card rewards for votes and then say “If you want more cards, you have to spend A LOT more money”. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Over all though, I'm pretty happy with my Thus-far-haul. My major score was getting Banished, but I've also picked up Hitman: Absolution, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (for 98 cents), Stronghold HD and Assassin's Creed III.

I'm still hoping to pick up Thief, Starpoint Gemini 2 and Murdered before the sale is over.

Well that's it today. Have a great week!