Filmfest: Klan Revenge

Brotherhood of Death (1976)



Three black special forces soldiers (including return from Vietnam to their small Alabaman town, where the klan rapes one friend and kills another. They respond with Interestingly, the white sheriff is above board, but the deputies are the klansmen. Ends with a shot of a pro-klan billboard.

The Black Klansman (1966)



After the klan burns his daughter to death in a church burning, a light-skinned black man buys a wig, joins the klan under the guise of wanting to form a chapter in Los Angeles, dates the grand wizard’s daughter, and then kills him. Bonus points for miscegenation. This one ends with a JFK quote about racial equality.

The “Cannon” of American Politics

I loaded up my Netflix queue with a bunch of 80s movies that I either watched, or remember only as VHS boxes at the Village Market’s video rental section. Many of them are B-grade. Cannon shows up a lot. While watching Death Wish IV, and the original Death Wish, I realized that this was basically the fear / hope of the person that feels he must carry a concealed semi-automatic gun wherever he goes. Roving street gangs can occur at anytime! So when that thug demands your wallet, you put a bullet between his eyes!

Delta Force is an equally stupid film, even if it is a thinly veiled retelling of TWA Flight 847, but with guns instead of prisoner releases saving the hostages. It’s full of islamophobia and christian-zionism. Every muslim in the film is duplicitous, and every other scene is one where the special relationship with Israel is lauded. The catholic priest declares himself a jew because he’s a christian. A greek orthodox priest is a mossad spy. When the Good Guys™ torture enhance interrogate it works. When the Bad Guys™ torture, it doesn’t. And of course there’s the expressed threat of sleeper terrorists in America right now waiting to truck bomb the White House.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole film is when one of the terrorists tells the hostages about how his little girl was killed when “the Americans bombed Beirut”. George Kennedy (playing the aforementioned catholic priest) repeatedly says “You’re mistaken. Americans never bombed Beirut,” while the terrorist raises his voice says something about “the New Jersey.” The scene plays as terrorist-crazed-with-nonsensical-hatred, but the US did bomb Beirut. Reagan ordered the USS New Jersey to shell Beirut after the Marine barracks bombing, and then again three months later. So in reality the scene is more about how uniformed and opinionated Americans can be.

I guess this kind of makes sense given the Reagan cult of personality, and that Chuck Norris is considered a political columnist.

As Quoted in the New York Times

Tech Giants Settle Antitrust Hiring Suit:

On Hacker News, the grumbling about the settlement was immediate. “I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case,” one poster wrote. But some saw another side: “What did the engineers risk with this lawsuit? Nothing. What did the law firm risk? Getting paid peanuts for hundreds of hours they spend on the case if they lose.”

The Only Gun The NRA Doesn’t Like

Meet the Armatix iP1. 22 LR calibre semiautomatic with a 10 round magazine. What’s not to like? How about the the RFID wristwatch that only allows the wearer to fire the gun?

Back in 2002, New Jersey passed a law mandating that all guns sold in the state had to have lockout technology built in, three years after such a gun went on sale somewhere in the United States. The gun has gone on sale &emdash; albeit very briefly &emdash; twice, once in Los Angeles, and then again in Rockville, Maryland (a place that it is strongly advised that one to not return to). Both stores stopped selling the guns after receiving death threats. Not only that, but the Republican Attorney General of New Jersey is refusing the certify that the gun was sold, and active the law.

Instead of “promoting freedom” to own the gun one chooses, the NRA is actively campaigning against the sell of a particular firearm, because the RFID locks would increase manufacturing costs. Why do they care about this? Because the NRA gets significant amounts of funding from gun manufacturers.

1919 Mechanical Play-by-Play Scoreboard

1919 mechanical play -by-play scoreboard

Back in 1978, a box of newsreels were found in the Yukon. Only recently though, was a newsreel of the infamous Black Sox 1919 World Series discovered in the collection.

It’s a great find, and as Deadspin points out, it shows the infamous 5 run inning that made it obvious everyone that the White Sox were throwing the game. However that’s not what caught my eye. What I was astonished by was the mechanical scoreboard that allowed people in Cincinnati to watch the game in near-real-time. The board doesn’t just feature moving base runners, but also features a ball that moves around as the play progresses. I had never seen anything like this before. Even the Flash players that MLB.com puts out, don’t feature a moving ball.

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