lundi 21 décembre 2009

L'artiste xxx et le commentaire de son célèbre frère

le dernier raekwon est excellent

un vieux wu-tang clan qui peut encore sortir un album avec plus que deux bonnes pièces? c'est possible! "ob4cl2" est tout bon, avec très peu de filling. j dilla, rza et le docteur dre ont fait une très bonne job et ghostface est amplement au rendez-vous!





mardi 15 décembre 2009

le vrai esprit des fêtes



(via boner party, mon tumblr préféré!)

UPDATE: ah, ben! elles sont populaires, il y a un article du nytimes sur leur drink le plus hip: le mcnuggetini!



(via jezebel)

mercredi 9 décembre 2009

lundi 19 octobre 2009

splash!

"A female motorist is facing court action for deliberately driving through a puddle and splashing a group of school children." (sky news)

jeudi 10 septembre 2009

lundi 7 septembre 2009

de la gestion des urinoirs



si vous êtes un homme (donc que vous utilisez à l'occasion un urinoir), alors vous vous demanderez comment vous faisiez pour vivre avant cette explication scientifique du «protocole international de choix d'urinoir». gracieuseté de xkcd.

mercredi 5 août 2009

samedi 18 juillet 2009

auto de police

dans son sens le plus littéral! ;)



cette auto de police est probablement conduite par le sérif! (ouch!)

lundi 1 juin 2009

au moins un débat enfin terminé!

dans le ny times d'aujourd'hui, la nouvelle qu'un grand débat du XXe siècle est finalement terminé (la nouvelle au complet est hilarante!):

The Lord Justice Hath Ruled: Pringles Are Potato Chips

Britain’s Supreme Court of Judicature has answered a question that has long puzzled late-night dorm-room snackers: What, exactly, is a Pringle? With citations ranging from Baroness Hale of Richmond to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lord Justice Robin Jacob concluded that, legally, it is a potato chip.

The decision is bad news for Procter & Gamble U.K., which now owes $160 million in taxes. It is good news for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs — and for fans of no-nonsense legal opinions. It is also a reminder, as conservatives begin attacking Judge Sonia Sotomayor for not being a “strict constructionist,” of the pointlessness of labels like that.

In Britain, most foods are exempt from the value-added tax, but potato chips — known as crisps — and “similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour,” are taxable. Procter & Gamble, in what could be considered a plea for strict construction, argued that Pringles — which are about 40 percent potato flour, but also contain corn, rice and wheat — should not be considered potato chips or “similar products.” Rather, they are “savory snacks.”

The VAT and Duties Tribunal disagreed, ruling that Pringles — which have been marketed in the United States as “potato chips” — are taxable. “There are other ingredients,” the tribunal said, but a Pringle is “made from potato flour in the sense that one cannot say that it is not made from potato flour, and the proportion of potato flour is significant being over 40 percent.”

An appeals court reversed, in a convoluted opinion that considered four interpretations of the law before ultimately rejecting three of them. In the end, it decided that Pringles are exempt from the tax, mainly because they have less potato content than a potato chip.

The Supreme Court of Judicature reversed again, in an eloquent decision. Lord Justice Jacob, in an apparent swipe at the midlevel court, insisted the question was “not one calling for or justifying overelaborate, almost mind-numbing legal analysis.”

The VAT and Duties Tribunal took an eminently practical approach, he said. It considered Pringles’ appearance, taste, ingredients, process of manufacture, marketing and packaging, and concluded that “while in many respects” they “are different from potato crisps and so they are near the borderline, they are sufficiently similar to satisfy that test.”

The tribunal was not obliged, he said, “to go on and spell out item by item how each was weighed as if it were using a real scientist’s balance.” It came down to “a matter of overall impression.”

The Supreme Court of Judicature had little patience with Procter & Gamble’s lawyerly attempts to break out of the potato chip category. The company argued that to be “made of potato” Pringles would have to be all potato, or nearly so. If so, Lord Justice Jacob noted, “a marmalade made using both oranges and grapefruit would be made of neither — a nonsense conclusion.”

He was even more dismissive of Procter & Gamble’s argument that to be taxable a product must contain enough potato to have the quality of “potatoness.” This “Aristotelian question” of whether a product has the “essence of potato,” he insisted, simply cannot be answered.

In the Pringles litigation, three levels of British courts engaged in a classic debate over line-drawing, a staple of first-year law school classes. At some point, a potato-chip-like item is so different from a potato chip that it can no longer be called one — but when? Lord Justice Jacob invoked the wisdom of Justice Holmes: “A tyro thinks to puzzle you by asking you where you are going to draw the line and an advocate of more experience will show the arbitrariness of the line proposed by putting cases very near it on one side or the other.”

In other words, sometimes you just have to call them as you see them.

Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more, while judges like Ms. Sotomayor are activists. But there is no magic right way to interpret terms like “free speech” or “due process” — or potato chip. Nor is either ideological camp wholly strict or wholly activist. Liberal judges tend to be expansive about things like equal protection, while conservatives read more into ones like “the right to bear arms.”

In the end, as Lord Justice Jacob noted, a judge can only look at the relevant factors and draw an overall impression. His common-sense approach was a rebuke not only to Procter & Gamble, but to everyone out there who insists that the only way to read laws correctly is to read them strictly.

mardi 5 mai 2009

une souris sadique et un chat pathétique

non, ce ne sont pas ceux auxquels vous pensez...



... mais plutôt une très belle animation crées à partir de l'excellente bande dessinée de chris ware. (et ça vaut la peine de le regarder en HD sur la page vimeo prévue à cet effet.)

lundi 4 mai 2009

wu tang via blue note



la nouvelle meme «design»: refaire des couvertures de livres ou de disques dans un style donné. ici c'est nul autre que le wu tang clan, fort ingénieusement refait «à la blue note». dans flickr. via.

dimanche 12 avril 2009

vive les tweenbots!

oeuvre de kacie kinzer, les tweenbots sont des robots très rudimentaires qui nécessitent l'intervention des quidams pour survivre et traverser la jungle new-yorkaise!

mardi 24 février 2009

99 problems?

allez visiter le florilège de greg rutter, list of the 99 things you should have already experienced on the internet unless you're a loser or old or something. plusieurs sont des classiques inévitables des dernières années youtube (pas encore chocolate rain ou le dramatic chipmunk! boring!) mais il y en a quelques uns qui vous ont probablement échappés alors (parfois avec raison) et qui valent encore leurs 30 secondes d'hilarité.



lundi 23 février 2009

samedi 21 février 2009

le pousseur de carrés

un concert de squarepusher trouvé sur vimeo. il y a pas grand chose à voir (un drum, une basse, un laptop!), mais c'est un bon set!



samedi 24 janvier 2009

petit mash-up du samedi

vous souvenez-vous de musti?



maintenant, écoutez simultanément cette pièce de pole et l'épisode suivant (la voix de la narratrice originale est dangereusement apaisante!)



fold-ins

le new york times offre un petit florilège des classiques fold-ins, des images à double-sens dessinées par al jafee et qui sont depuis près de 40 ans en troisième de couverture du magazine MAD.

vendredi 9 janvier 2009

le rap du futur!

un exemple de la nouvelle musique commerciale:

c'est officiel: hulk hogan a toujours été un mauvais lutteur

le congrès américain se penche sur l'utilisation des stéroïdes dans la lutte professionnelle! (mais pourquoi!?!?)

devant le comité, la vice-présidente de la wwe, stephanie mcmahon, a affirmé en toute candeur:

[...] if you walk out and you make the people notice you, you can be a main-event guy. You really don't even have to be a good wrestler. hulk hogan was a terrible wrestler, and he still is.

Q: For the record, I am sure he would disagree with that.

A: I am sure he would disagree with that. I forget this is all public. But, you know, he was. He was a terrible wrestler.


[via gawker]

mardi 6 janvier 2009

ce qu'il faut aux enfants...

les japonais ont compris il y a 40 ans ce qu'il faut aux enfants comme émission de télévision: kure kure takora!





[via buzzfeed]

erratum pour 2008

le toujours génial richard thompson fait amende honorable pour quelques articles de 2008 où il manquait quelques informations, hum, cruciales:



source