En compétition parmi 7 autres titres, Esthétique et filatures, le one shot de Tanxxx et Lisa Mandel paru chez KSTR vient de remporter le prix Artémisia 2009, qui récompense une Å“uvre BD réalisée par une femme. Les auteures remportent une dotation de 3000 euros et succèdent à Johanna et ses Âmes sauvages.

Burger King recently introduced a Facebook app called Whopper Sacrifice that allows users to delete ten of their friends in exchange for a Whopper sandwich. Watch the app in action.

What BK has unwittingly done here is provide a way to determine the valuation of Facebook. Let's assume that the majority of Facebook's value comes from the connections between their users. From Facebook's statistics page, we learn that the site has 150 million users and the average user has 100 friends. The price of a Whopper is approximately $2.40. That means that each user's friendships is worth around 10 Whoppers, or $240. Do the math and:

$240/user X 150M users = $36 billion valuation for Facebook

That's considerably more than the $15 billion valuation assigned to Facebook when Microsoft invested in the company in October 2007 or the lower valuations being tossed about in recent months. Is Facebook undervalued or is BK giving up too much sandwich for too few friends?

P.S. Other assumptions for the sake of arugment: every user is eligible for the Whopper promotion (it's actually only valid in the US), you can sell all of your friends for multiple burgers (actually limit one per customer), and the "average user has 100 friends" means that Facebook users average 100 friends apiece (no idea what the reality is...if they're using the median instead of the mean then that number could be higher or lower). Oh, and it's also assumed that no one should take this too seriously.

Rachel L. Swarns / The Caucus:
Obama's Mother-in-Law to Move Into the White House  —  (Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press)  —  It's official: Marian Robinson, the 71-year-old mother-in-law of President-elect Barack Obama, will be moving into the White House, transition officials said on Friday.

If you’ve been working for the weekend, well you are in luck because it’s just about that time. That’s right, it’s Friday and it’s time to kick back hit the shuffle button and let the music take us where it will. Today we’re firing up the iPod to battle the post-lunch dip!

For those who have not joined in the Friday Five here is all you need to know; each Friday I hit the shuffle button on my iTunes and share my five and drop a little knowledge and insight for each track. Sometimes there is a playlist involved, sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes we have guest, but most of the time it’s just me.

The rest is up to you, our friends and readers! Fire up your media player of choice and share the first five random track of your shuffle in the comments. The more the merrier!

The Five:

“Sister Christian” - Night Ranger (from Midnight Madness)

Yeah! Now this… this is the way to kick off a shuffle. In the world of truly kick-ass power ballads this definitely is ‘all-time’ material. Who would ever think that a tune written by a big brother watching his little sister grow up would cement’s the bands place in history.

“Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad” - Prince (from Prince)

Here’s the thing, Purple Rain is classic, Parade is sublime and there are few that would argue that Sign “☮” the Times is anything but a masterpiece. But for me Prince’s 1979 self-titled album is the record that I turn to time and again for my purple fix. From “I Wanna be Your Lover” to “Bambi” this is, for me, the best quick fix.

“Your Boyfriend Sucks” (mp3) - The Ataris (from Blue Skies, Broken Hearts… Next 12 Miles)

This power pop gem pulls absolutely no punches. Hell, the first line about sums it up… “You’re better off without him, don’t call him… He’s breaking your heart.”  From the band’s 1999 release, this tune along with “I Won’t Spend Another Night Alone” won me over as a fan back then and I still look forward to hearing their brand of pop-punk brashness.

[See post to listen to audio]

“Crush” - Dave Matthews Band (from Before These Crowded Streets)

Writing the perfect love song is a task where many a man falls short; Dave Matthews is not one of them.

“The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove” (mp3) - Dead Can Dance (from Into the Labyrinth)

In the early 90’s my desire for new and ‘different’ music was insatiable and one of my favorite ‘finds’ was the dark baroque (and often Celtic) music of Dead Can Dance. Recorded at Quivvy Church (in County Cavan, Ireland) Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry blend world and ethereal music to a profound effect. This track features Perry’s deep baritone singing of, as Perry put it, “the abstract relationship of myself and woman “.

[See post to listen to audio]

Okay, I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours!

Either Raja Sen and I watched two different movies or one of us is dumb. Obviously, that can’t be us.

There is a thin line which divided ”realistic cinema” from exploitative cinema. Admittedly, that line is at times blurred and given to individual sensibilities. Nevertheless, in our magnificent opinion, Slumdog millionaire, despite the visual brilliance and zany camerawork, is a simplistic formulas-tic cinema which uses poverty as a prop to tell an age-old tale.

Now I have nothing personal against escapist cinema–Bollywood routinely makes movies in which everyone hops around in helicopters while living in Scottish castles in Mumbai and where crisis never extends beyond confusion in deciding the color of the silk Saree to the wear to the breakfast table. (On that note, we like Marathi Sarees. We demand all heroines henceforth wear cleavage-popping Marathi sarrees. Thank you.)

Slumdog is nothing beyond that–just uses a different story telling device. Therefore, as long as it is understood as another manifestation of routine Bollywood stuff–admittedly, technically more proficient–all is fine and dandy. But when it claims to be realistic,  it falls flat face on the face.

Now, I must confess my problem with the film also stems from its over-the-top tone. Class is a reality in India–as in rest of world–and I welcome the movie’s attempts tackle this rather difficult theme. But its failure to grow beyond a sneering host on the television show who repeatedly insults his own contestant–who the hell has seen that even in the dumb world of Indian television–then it merely insults the intelligence of the audience–at least the part of which knows better.

Come to think of it, this Ram Chandra Guha in reverse. Just like Guha’s so-called magnum-opus was nothing more a very superficial study of modern Indian history meant only for the audiences who might just have learned the difference between Mumbai and Pune, Slumdog offers a slice of India for people who either don’t know better or are too dumb or ignorant to want to know better.

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