Archive for April, 2008

Sunday Bloody Sunday

My Dearest Friends and Fans, It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we’ve created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they’d find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren’t aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer… NiggyTardust! love, Saul

Watch the Boondocks Banned Episode!

So here’s the story from the horse’s mouth. I might as well just skip my usual supercilious comments.

a€oeThe Boondocksa€A creator Aaron McGruder informedviewers of his edgy, irreverent Adult Swim series that Cartoon Network has unexpectedly shortened the 2nd season from a planned 15-episode run to 13.

Fifteen episodes were in fact produced but two, titled a€oeThe Huey Freeman Hunger Strikea€A and a€oeThe Ruckus Reality Showa€A arena€™t currently scheduled to air, allegedly due to controversial material targeting Black Entertainment Television executives including Debra Lee and Reginald Hudlin.

On his Myspace page, McGruder has posted the following message to fans: a€oeOkay, so a€¦ maybe ita€™s a 13-episode season." BRiSON has posted clips of the banned episodes.

[LINK]

*Note*
We apologize for our sincere lack of ninjerity in having not already posted these. But we just wanted to let you hipsters know that we BEEN had this ish.

BTW, the other episode is out now, too.

Manu Chau - Clandestino y Desaparecido

I feel like I posted this before… but I couldn’t find it in the archives so here it goes. This is my response to the music site‘s pronounced lack of Manu - overdriven like a mofo.

Check it out and complain your heart out. It’s just not okay.

What is the IPKF?

Real Onionz: Tomato Picking Slavery

Spend It Like Beckham?

Soccer superstar David Beckham has earned yet another distinction that sets him apart from mere mortalsa€"but this time not in a good way. It turns out Beckham has the worlda€™s largest carbon footprint and, for that matter, the largest in human history, according to Carbon Trust, a green group based in the UK.

Naturally, environmentalists and green politicians are calling on Beckham to reduce his carbon footprint by making lifestyle and travel choices that lead to fewer emissions, and to help raise awareness about the dangers of global warming. [environment.about]

The New Math

For a man whose flagship hedge fund is running on fumes, Marek Fludzinski couldna€™t be calmer. The founder and CEO of New Yorka€"based Thales Fund Management has watched his firma€™s assets plummet by more than $1 billion during the past year, as Thales, like most quantitative managers, has suffered as a result of the global credit crisis that began last summer. But Fludzinski, who has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton University and was one of the first two dozen employees at famed quant shop D.E. Shaw Group, is on a mission that means far more to him than profit and loss. He believes science is the key to unlocking the inner workings of the markets, and he intends to devote significant resources to prove it.

a€oeI think there is a law tying everything together,a€A says Fludzinski, 52.

Science, however, didna€™t much help Fludzinski last summer, when the onset of the credit crunch shook Thales and other quantitative hedge funds. Many of these firms specialize in a computer-powered strategy called statistical arbitrage, which uses mathematical models to profit from tiny mispricings of stocks and other assets. But in early August their models faltered after a large manager decided to liquidate its equity portfolio, most likely to meet margin calls on its credit positions. Partly because their strategies are based on many of the same academic theories, quant firms like AQR Capital Management, Renaissance Technologies Corp., D.E. Shaw and Thales held some of the same positions and began racking up huge losses. Sucker punched by the market, the quants didna€™t know whether to cash out or stay in. Fludzinski and his peers came off like a bunch of propeller heads who had naively tried to bend reality to their models. [alphamagazine]

Ninja Reviews and More!

Hello reader! We usually don’t just straight up address you guys like this, but there comes a time when every site has to tell you what the deal is and let you know what’s going on behind the scenes.

I figured it would be prim and proper (quiet down) to introduce you to our new ninja rating system. Many of our sites in the MNP network do reviews of books, movies, albums, and what have you, including this site right hurr. We’ve now instituted a new network wide rating system. So if you see these on any of the sites, you heard it here first.

On second thought, this all seems a bit self-explanatory. Thanks to Menace for the designs.

As far as ninja news goes- you may have noticed that our site has been running about as fast as a horse-drawn steamship. Do not despair, my ninjas! We have a major hosting switch coming down the pipe, as well as several new sites launching soon. In fact you might have even noticed links to sites to come. Just because the content slows down for a quick second here on the main site doesn’t mean we’re not on our grizzly (read: grind, for non ninjas). Expect things to be running full speed, bigger, better and background blacker before you know it.

Our parent company is also doing big things over at mnpg.net. You might wanna check it if you have a sec.

Oh and, when you’re looking for stuff to read and you’re not getting your fix, well why don’t you take a gander up yonder to the top right hand corner of our page and click on one of the super amazing spinoff microsites we have. Just a thought (like gnarls, Read: Cee-Lo, for non-hipsters).

Keynote Speakers : Tim Robbins

A renowned actor, director and writer, Robbins used his keynote address at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on April 14 to speak out about the "dangerous lack of diversity of opinion" that characterizes the state of broadcasting today.

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