random stuff

I'll be updating some links with respect to Carl Malamud's talk last week... Carl has mixed in audio from the 31 videos he showed during the talk so that you can at least experience higher-fidelity audio associated with the presentation. A video of his slides with the audio will be available soon as well.

Prodigy (formerly of Mobb Deep) is going up for 3 1/2 years on a weapons charge after making an illegal u-turn in manhattan. Sigh... his last album was really good.

Saw two movies recently Bling and The Darjeeling Limited. Bling was a documentary where Raekwon, Paul Wall and Tego Calderon went to Sierra Leone with Ismael Beah to see how the diamond trade affects Sierra Leonians. In the end, Bling was more about the state of poverty that Sierra Leonians live in, and only 60-75% about the unique issues influenced by diamond mining. Interesting nonetheless... especially one part where they struggle to get Raekwon off the bus when they go visit an school for war-wounded and amputees.

The Darjeeling Limited is another gorgeous Wes Anderson movie. (I really like Wes Anderson; in my opinion, The Life Aquatic has to be, hands-down, one of the funnest and most rich visual experiences I've ever seen.) It was somewhat more reserved compared with Life Aquatic and the Royal Tennenbaums; it seemed as if they were trying for a less-indulgent and more poignant movie. Indeed, I'd probably need to see it a couple more times to truly appreciate the depth of the movie. In the end, Darjeeling is a lot of fun and Amara Karan's debut was refreshing and pretty cute.