All about independents

- 1 hours and 23 minutes ago

pThe only thing a href="http://www.lilyallenmusic.com/" target="_blank"strongLily Allen/strong/a has to fear isn't "The Fear", judging by the video for this song from forthcoming LP a href="/article/news/146946-lily-allen-announces-new-album" target="_blank"strongemIt's Not Me, It's You/em/strong/a; it's MOR. Apparently it really emwas/em us, not her, all along: If detractors of Allen's debut LP a href="/article/record_review/37420-lily-allen-alright-still"emstrongAlright, Still/strong/em/a were supposedly put off by the colloquial wisdom of a shit-talking independent woman, there's a bit less of that here ("fucking fantastic" aside), and a lot more soothing Dido-ish hooks ready for your next Bed, Bath, and Beyond shopping experience. "I am a weapon of massive consumption," Allen quips, her talent for wordplay intact if a bit behind. Nor does the video spare any expense, showing Allen in a Veruca Salt-like (the Roald Dahl character, sadly, not the band) wonderland of butlers, balloons, and presents. Daddy Warbucks had Annie, and we've got Lily. Too bad we're broke. (via a href="http://www.thecultureofme.com/" target="_blank"strongthe Culture of Me/strong/a)/p p object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="480" height="295" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" / param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" / param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/q-wGMlSuX_camp;hl=enamp;fs=1" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="295" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/q-wGMlSuX_camp;hl=enamp;fs=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p p[from emIt's Not Me, It's You/em; due 02/09/09 in the UK and 02/10/09 in the U.S. on stronga href="http://www.regal.co.uk/" target="_blank"Regal Recordings/a/strong]/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/EYtq6djU9F8sCW_K47_etRejZEM/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/EYtq6djU9F8sCW_K47_etRejZEM/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/FQlJqa-OMO8" height="1" width="1"/

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J-boogie - inferno

Independent: New journalism postgrad course at City University

Pinnacle Collapse A 'Nightmare' For Indies

Chelsea: Vagner Love en approche ?

Chelsea: Wagner Love en approche ?

Don't let it eat after midnight - AMC Gremlin reimagined

Autoblog

- 4 hours and 3 minutes ago

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/timewarp/" rel="tag"Time Warp/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hatchbacks/" rel="tag"Hatchbacks/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/rendered-speculation/" rel="tag"Rendered Speculation/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/photos/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201580/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/45_amcgremlinremake_opt.jpg" alt="" //abr / div align="center"emstrongsmallClick above for high-res image gallery of Jeff Teague's AMC Gremlin/small/strong/embr //div br /Jeff Teague is the son of former AMC design chief Dick Teague, and his father's work at the scrappy independent automaker created some of the most memorable designs ever. Jeff Teague is a designer himself, and not too long ago his a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/13/rendered-speculation-the-return-of-the-amx/"reimagining of the AMX/a musclecar caught our eye. That exercise left Teague so inspired that he fleshed out what a modern-day Gremlin might look like. Being fond of the original helps us like this new take on the car, even if it's pretty far removed looks-wise. We like that it's not blatantly retro; the only real concession to the past is the C-Pillar shape, and hey, the Infiniti FX already swiped that. The proportions and overall look bring to mind several current vehicles from other manufacturers, making us think that the Gremlin was about 35 years ahead of its time. br /br /div class="postgallery"pstrongGallery: a href="%GalleryURL%"AMC Gremlin by Jeff Teague/a/strong/pa href="/gallery/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201580/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/44_amcgremlinremake_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/gallery/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201581/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/45_amcgremlinremake_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/gallery/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201585/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/46_amcgremlinremake_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/gallery/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201582/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/47_amcgremlinremake_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //aa href="/gallery/amc-gremlin-by-jeff-teague/1201579/"img src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/48_amcgremlinremake_thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" //a/divbr /[Source: a href="http://www.socalamc.com/forum/index.php?topic=343.0"socalamc.com/a via a href="http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2008/12/03/teague-designs-gremlin-but-not-that-teague-and-not-that-gremlin/"Hemmings/a]p style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/dont-let-it-eat-after-midnight-amc-gremlin-reimagined/"Don't let it eat after midnight - AMC Gremlin reimagined/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:30:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2008/12/03/teague-designs-gremlin-but-not-that-teague-and-not-that-gremlin/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/dont-let-it-eat-after-midnight-amc-gremlin-reimagined/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1390757/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/dont-let-it-eat-after-midnight-amc-gremlin-reimagined/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/QjgZNOA4mXyIRVIrP_PRolXqQCI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/QjgZNOA4mXyIRVIrP_PRolXqQCI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=47a2aGgP"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=47a2aGgP" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=nhlAOKth"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=nhlAOKth" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/2ekA3mAL1CI" height="1" width="1"/

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Tories sack 10% of party HQ staff as credit crunch bites

Guardian Unlimited

- 4 hours and 31 minutes ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/40522?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Tories+sack+10%25+of+party+HQ+staff+as+credit+crunch+bitesch=Politicsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Conservatives%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CPolitics%2CUK+newsc5=Credit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=David+Henckec7=2008_12_04c8=1128982c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Conservativesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FConservatives" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Conservative party is making more than 10% of its staff at party headquarters redundant as a direct result of the economic downturn, guardian.co.uk can reveal./ppThe casualties include members of the party's policy section, which provides research and ideas for the next general election manifesto./ppThe decision follows a slackening off in donations as the global financial crisis bites. Some 24 staff at the party's Millbank headquarters were told on Monday that they could be made redundant. /ppIn a separate move the party is also closing the arm's-length Constituency Campaigning Services â€“ based in Coleshill Manor, in the West Midlands â€“ which provides campaigning material and acts as a call centre for constituency parties. Some 40 people there have been declared redundant./ppThe two divisions bearing the brunt of the redundancies in London are the party's external affairs and policy units, which are in effect being run down. A third division, the party's business relations department, was also facing closure, but sources say the department has been saved by a big Tory donor, Alan Lewis, chair of the Hartley Investment Trust and a former treasurer of the party, who agreed to bankroll all the staff. /ppThis department has links with two key Tory organisations, Conservative City Circle and Conservative City Future, and has strong links with the City of London. /ppIt is chaired by the MP Richard Spring, the vice chair of the party with special responsibility for business and entrepreneurship, and advises George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, on small business issues./ppThe decision to slim down the policy section some 17 months before the last date of an election is a surprise. The section writes and researches draft policy for the party â€“ and works closely with Oliver Letwin, the former shadow chancellor appointed by David Cameron to head the party's policy review. /ppThe West Dorset MP is also, alongside Cameron, a former member of the party's policy unit, after working closely with Margaret Thatcher. /ppThe external affairs department is run by George Eustace, David Cameron's former press secretary, and liaised with Christian and Muslim groups and local party associations. Sources said yesterday that Eustace was not one of the people to be sacked./ppMost of the staff facing the sack are footsoldiers, brought in to strengthen the party's work to win the next general election. /ppNone of the highly paid big hitters, including former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, the party's director of communications and planning, and marketing guru Steve Hilton, the director of strategy who is still helping the leader while working from California, are affected. /ppNor is the party's communications directorate or any of the departments bankrolled by Lord Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the party, including the campaigning section./ppThe changes have been initiated by Andrew Feldman, the new chief executive of the Tory party, with the backing of Giles Inglis-Jones, the party's head of human resources. /ppThe closure of CCS, funded by millionaire Tory donors, comes after the political funding watchdog the Electoral Commission cleared the organisation of being controlled by the Conservative party. Registered as a body independent of the Tories, it has received nearly £2m in donations since 2004, mainly from the Midlands Industrial Council, a Tory funding body, whose members include Robert Edmiston, a car importer and property developer. /ppIt had been under investigation for two years by the Electoral Commission after the Labour party complained that it was really part of the Conservative party and was subsidising campaigning in marginal seats by millions of pounds. /ppThe Electoral Commission did a U-turn in the middle of the investigation. Its initial findings, sent to David Wall, chair of both the CCS board and of its main donor, the MIC, said the commission believed the centre was "heavily subsidised"./ppLisa Klein, the director of party and election finance at the Electoral Commission, says in the letter (seen by the Guardian): "There may have been under-reporting of donations and election expenses by candidates, agents and the Conservative party accounting units who have benefited from the subsidised rates. These potential breaches are of concern to the commission, as the rules on donation reporting are fundamental to the transparency of party and election finance in the UK."/ppA Conservative party spokesman said: "The Conservative party was in discussion with the Electoral Commission in early 2008. These were clearly initial views prior to full information being provided and before a full investigation had been completed. The Electoral Commission has since concluded that CCS's charged rates were comparable to commercial rates. On this basis there is no evidence that donations should have been declared by the party and the commission decided to take no further action."/ppHe said: "Ahead of elections next year the Conservative party will be setting up an in-house campaign centre, which will coordinate the party's campaigning work across the West Midlands."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives"Conservatives/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/apyr8aPAaXZmzqIjGuEDCMQfNQo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/apyr8aPAaXZmzqIjGuEDCMQfNQo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

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eBuddy Mobile Messenger Downloaded 10 Million Times in 18 Months

Truth or Dare: Best Short Films # 11

Limits of Linear Rate Coding of Dynamic Stimuli by Electroreceptor Afferents

CiteULike: Borelli's watchlist

- 6 hours and 40 minutes ago

iJ Neurophysiol, Vol. 97, No. 4. (1 April 2007), pp. 2917-2929./ibr /br /We estimated the frequency-intensity (f-I) curves of P-unit electroreceptors using 4-Hz random amplitude modulations (RAMs) and using the covariance method (50-Hz RAMs). Both methods showed that P units are linear encoders of stimulus amplitude with additive noise; the gain of the f-I curve was, on average, 0.32 and 2.38 spikesmiddle dots-1middle dotmicroV-1 for the low- and high-frequency cutoffs, respectively. There were two sources of apparent noise in the encoding process: the first was the variability of baseline P-unit discharge and the second was the variation of receptor discharge due to variability of the stimulus slope independent of its intensity. The covariance method showed that a linear combination of eigenvectors representing the time-weighted stimulus intensity (E1) and its derivative (E2) could account for, on average, 92% of the total response variability; E1 by itself accounted for 76% of the variability. The low gain of the low-frequency f-I curve implies that detection of small (1 microV) signals would require integration over many receptors ([~]1,200) and time (200 ms); even then, signals that elicit behavioral responses could not be detected using rate coding with the estimated gain and noise levels. Weak signals at the limit of behavioral thresholds could be detected if the animal were able to extract E1 from the population of responding P units; we propose a tentative mechanism for this operation although there is no evidence as to whether it is actually implemented in the nervous system of these fish. 10.1152/jn.01243.2006br /iDaniel Gussin, Jan Benda, Leonard Maler/i

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Bertone hires former Pininfarina designer Jason Castriota

Autoblog

- 7 hours and 35 minutes ago

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/conceptcars/" rel="tag"Concept Cars/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hirings-firings/" rel="tag"Hirings/Firings/Layoffs/a/ppa href="http://www.cardesignnews.com/site/designers/whos_where/display/store4/item141896/"img width="210" vspace="4" hspace="4" height="292" border="1" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/jasoncastriota.jpg" alt="" //aIt's no news that business has been tough for Italy's most vaunted design studios and coachbuilders. But that hasn't stopped a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/04/bertone-considers-detroit-office-limited-production-for-bat-11/"Bertone/a from hiring Jason Castriota as its new design director. Castriota has spent the past several years at arch-rival Pininfarina, where he worked on such projects as the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2005/06/28/maserati-birdcage-may-get-green-light/"Maserati Birdcage/a concept and a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/30/in-the-autoblog-garage-2008-maserati-granturismo-w-video/"GranTurismo/a, Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2006/07/19/the-ferrari-p4-5-by-pininfarina-revealed/"custom P4/5/a and the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/08/19/pics-aplenty-pininfarina-rolls-royce-hyperion/"Rolls-Royce Hyperion/a one-off, before leaving with the aim of starting his own studio. But as the Italian-American stylist says himself, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/25/bertone-design-division-goes-independent/"Bertone/a "made me an offer I couldn't refuse"./p pCastriota, 34, will head a young design team at the a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/02/bertone-sold-to-gruppo-prototipo/"resurgent Bertone/a, starting immediately. He'll have his work cut out for him bringing the stoic design house back to its feet following its brush with bankruptcy, and we'll be looking forward to seeing what he has in store for us./p p[Source: a href="http://www.cardesignnews.com/site/designers/whos_where/display/store4/item141896/"CarDesignNews/a]/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/bertone-hires-former-pininfarina-designer-jason-castriota/"Bertone hires former Pininfarina designer Jason Castriota/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:58:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.cardesignnews.com/site/designers/whos_where/display/store4/item141896/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/bertone-hires-former-pininfarina-designer-jason-castriota/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1389221/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/04/bertone-hires-former-pininfarina-designer-jason-castriota/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/u8sLsN0dtNDf5Pdltr6HjkJyH58/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/u8sLsN0dtNDf5Pdltr6HjkJyH58/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=VT0M3jWI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=VT0M3jWI" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=jPVGZD3b"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=jPVGZD3b" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/ZSgR7BI8sbc" height="1" width="1"/

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New NXP Platform Brings Future to Mainstream Flat TVs Now

Film Weekly podcast: Tilda Swinton on being Julia

links for 2008-12-04

Strasheela 0.9.8 (Default branch)

Seeding Tomorrow’s 3D Artists

Japan Cellphone App Gives Fashion Advice Based on Your Face [Japan]

Gizmodo

- 15 hours and 33 minutes ago

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/coordinate-check_marked.jpg" width="494" height="305" / Japan cellphone app maker J-Magic has released a useful update to its celebrity look-a-like app, "Kao Cheki." Called "Shoubu Co-de Cheki," it offers fashion advice based on mobile snapshots of your face. Anyone want to make this for the iPhone?/p p"Shoubu" is a slang term for the type of clothing a woman wears to land a man. "Co-de" is the Japanization of the word coordinate, as in "what skirt would coordinate with what shirt." The mobile program asks girls to send in pictures of their face and uses the same technology that determines their celebrity twins to dress them up./p pNow the independent woman in me kind of gags at the thought of there being specific outfits to "catch" dudes. But the lazy, unfashionable tomboy in me is kind of like "Oh hey, it's like taking the thinking out of dressing up. Awesome." Especially since the app offers options like "sexy cute" or "natural cool." The app is co-developed by Nissen, an online clothing shop. [a href="http://www.cscoutjapan.com/en/index.php/customized-fashion-advice-from-you-mobile-courtesy-of-image-recognition/"Cscout Japan/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b70c5f79a43b81a6bc26130d39718974p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b70c5f79a43b81a6bc26130d39718974p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b70c5f79a43b81a6bc26130d39718974" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=i5U0G6Js"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=JaSBtwua"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=zEnJTm6n"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=zEnJTm6n" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=3h5ZQj2Q"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=3h5ZQj2Q" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/5fBh8tvFXIk" height="1" width="1"/

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Land of Nod

Henry Blodget: Financial-Industry Scapegoat Reinvents Himself as Financial Reporter