Culture Wire

Andrew Doyle: The Aggressive Homosexual Community Fights Back

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 6:00pm

A spokesperson for the aggressive homosexual community summarised the local disappointment: "This isn't the first time that the tories have attacked us like this. We didn't choose to be aggressive homosexuals. We were born that way. When I came out of the womb the first thing I did was wink at the handsome doctor and slap the midwife." Andrew Doyle http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-doyle/

Categories: Culture Wire

Whole neighborhoods razed by Oklahoma tornado that killed 24

Reuters Environment - May 21, 2013 - 5:03pm

MOORE, Oklahoma (Reuters) - Rescuers went building to building in search of victims and thousands of survivors were homeless on Tuesday, a day after a massive tornado tore through a suburb of Oklahoma City, wiping out whole blocks of homes and killing at least 24 people.

Categories: Culture Wire

WATCH: 'Blue's Clues' Actors Share Heartwarming Engagement Story

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 4:37pm

Actors Tom Mizer and Travis McGhie owe their relationship happiness to a big blue dog. Mizer was playing the role of "Steve" in the "Blue's... Erin Migdol http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-migdol/

Categories: Culture Wire

Xbox One Is The First Games Console For People Who Don't Like Games

PopSci - May 21, 2013 - 4:30pm

Microsoft Xbox One

Microsoft

At last: a game console that doesn't require gaming.

"PlayStation" is a literal description of what you do with it: it's a station at which you play. Nintendo has released systems with "game" in the name--Game Boy, GameCube. But Xbox doesn't mean much of anything. Originally it stood for, in charming Microsoft fashion, "DirectX Box," as it used the familiar DirectX graphics technology. Now? It's just a box. Who knows what it does?

And that's fitting, because the Xbox One, newly announced today, is barely a games device.

Of course I'm going to get one. But I would have loved to have seen one game I could get excited about. #XboxReveal

— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) May 21, 2013

Microsoft spent the first half of the Xbox announcement on non-gaming elements of the system. People tuned in, excited to hear about the first new Xbox in eight years, and Microsoft talked about voice control and motion sensing navigation, the addition of live TV, Skype integration, a new guide that lets you search by show/actor/genre, how to connect your cable box to the new Xbox, and a new TV show from Steven Spielberg. After all that, there were some games, but even the games were tempered with non-game parts; the new version of Madden NFL has a fantasy football integration, the new Halo will have a standalone TV show exclusive to the Xbox.

This is all because the Xbox isn't a games console: it's Microsoft's living room device. This generation, there are only two consoles on the market that cater to hardcore gamers (the Xbox and the PS4). Microsoft already has locked down a fair number of exclusive franchises, and isn't trying to reinvent the gaming wheel, which makes the Xbox unlikely to fail. That means this isn't really a battle; Microsoft doesn't have to beat Sony at all. It'll sell plenty of consoles and games by just cruising. The real game is to get non-gamers to buy Xboxes, and the Xbox One is a ridiculously high-level entertainment device.

* * *

Let's say you don't play games at all. Not your thing! But you are an American, and as such you spend hours and hours a day watching TV and movies. And because it is 2013, and the new season of "Arrested Development" is only available on Netflix, you have to have some kind of way to connect your TV to the internet.

Your options: use a "smart TV," which are usually designed in a way that couldn't be less smart, or get a box. Roku and Apple TV are the two most successful; they are very small boxes that cost around $100 and have apps to watch things.

Or: the Xbox One. The Xbox integrates your existing cable box or, presumably, HD antenna, so you don't have to use multiple remotes or switch between inputs. It has a pretty guide for this input. It has a web browser and Skype, which neither Roku nor Apple TV have. It has more apps than the Apple TV (including HBO Go and Amazon), and integrates with your computer, tablet, or smartphone (provided you're using Microsoft products) better than Roku. It has a crazy-futuristic control scheme; you can turn it on by talking to it, you can navigate by waving your arms, you can yell at it and the thing listens and obeys.

And, of course, if you want to play games, it's good at that, too.

It'll be more expensive than $100--we don't know how much yet, but $350 or $400, with the Kinect, wouldn't be surprising--but you get so much more. It makes existing media devices seem like little toys from some decade past. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a well-used Xbox One in a house with no games--it's a tremendously capable and forward-thinking gadget even without that element.

    

Categories: Culture Wire

Sue Kerr: A Tale of Two Birthdays: LGBTQ Violence

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 4:19pm

What will you do to push back? Will you sign a petition about the Boy Scouts or challenging the use of the word "tranny" at 7-Eleven? Will you march? Will you join an email list? Volunteer? Sue Kerr http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-kerr/

Categories: Culture Wire

Peter D. Rosenstein: Rehoboth Beach 2013: A Very Gay-Friendly Summer

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 4:11pm

It is a great, inclusive community and a place where you can feel comfortable walking down the street holding hands with your partner. If you head to the very south end of the mile-long boardwalk, you can spread your towel on Poodle Beach and be surrounded by the gay community. Peter D. Rosenstein http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-d-rosenstein/

Categories: Culture Wire

Stephen R. Haynes: Denying Church Rights To Women And Gays Is Just Like Race-Based Discrimination, Right?

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 4:07pm

Biblical passages to which conservative Christians appeal on these issues can be interpreted differently. But even those convinced that conservatives do not interpret the Bible correctly in these cases must concede that they do so consistently. Stephen R. Haynes http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-r-haynes/

Categories: Culture Wire

IBM's Watson Is Bringing "Cognitive Computing" to Customer Service

PopSci - May 21, 2013 - 3:58pm

It will be powering smartphone apps by the end of the year too.

IBM's Watson computing platform made a name for itself on Jeopardy, but its incremental roll-out into the real world has been no less impressive. It has worked in finance at Citi helping to assess risk and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center sifting through medical cases and data to help oncologists make the right diagnoses. Now the supercomputer is rolling out to the masses as a computerized customer service agent designed specifically to help customers connect with the information they want at a variety of firms in a variety of businesses, including Australian finance house ANZ, at media ratings maker Nielsen, and at Royal Bank of Canada.

This new offering of Watson, known as IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, will give customer service transactions a layer of cognitive computing help, leveraging Watson's unique skills to make those transaction go more smoothly. Those unique skills include Watson's ability to understand context and to learn as it goes, giving it far deeper insight and the ability to return far more meaningful answers than a simple Web search can.

The reason Watson can do this is because it is more or less designed like a human brain. That is, where a Web search is great for finding certain blocks of text out there on the Internet or sifting through structured data sets, Watson works well with unstructured data, or data that hasn't been organized into a database. Web search can find you a snippet of text within a sea of words as directed by the terms of your search. Watson can understand both the nuance of your question and the context of the text surrounding your potential answer, wherever it lives out there on the Web. As such, Watson's answers tend to be more meaningful.

On top of that, Watson can learn as it goes. So imagine Watson working alongside your financial planner. Your planner asks you questions, you answer, Watson remembers your answers. Watson is also sifting through an Internet's worth of financial data as well as your specific financial data, looking at your transactions and the economy in your city and state and the global economy and several anecdotal, unstructured stories and opinion on the municipal bond market, in which you have invested a meaningful portion of your savings. You can ask your advisor a specific question about your portfolio and its prospects for the near term, and he or she might have to get back to you with the answer. Watson can put a good answer in front of the both of you instantly.

And it doesn't stop there. Beyond being a client-relations assistant, IBM is also bringing Watson directly to the masses via an "Ask Watson" feature that offers help to customers via various channels, including email, text, and chat. Considering nearly half of the 270 billion customer-service-related calls go unresolved every year, Watson's cognitive ability could go a long way toward alleviating load stress on call centers and in resolving customer service issues (imagine calling the help desk only to find you can't get a live person on the phone and you still get to walk away satisfied).

IBM Watson Engagement Advisor will roll out with a handful of companies (including those listed above over the next few months, during which it will be evaluated for a variety of tasks (ANZ will use it to evaluate insurance portfolios to help customers determine where they are over-insured and where they are exposed, while Nielsen will roll it into the software tools that help its clients in media planning figure out where to buy their ad space) before being released into the larger ecosystem.

Keep an eye on it, as it will likely grow into something larger, and quickly (IBM says the first Watson-powered consumer apps will emerge later this year). Imagine a voice-activated Watson assistant that understands your linguistic nuance and learns from your past queries what to expect in the future. In other words, imagine a Siri that really works.

[IBM]

    

Categories: Culture Wire

DealBook: Sprint Raises Offer for Clearwire Stake

NY Times Technology - May 21, 2013 - 3:53pm

Sprint Nextel raised its offer on Tuesday for the nearly 50 percent stake in Clearwire that it does not already own, just hours before shareholders were scheduled to vote on its earlier offer.    

Categories: Culture Wire

In Light Of Mark Carson Murder, NYC Schools Will Hold Anti-Hate Crime Event

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 3:37pm

In light of the apparent anti-gay murder that took place last Saturday in Greenwich Village, New York City Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott is requiring all... The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-klein/

Categories: Culture Wire

Xbox One: Here's What We Know About Microsoft's New Console

PopSci - May 21, 2013 - 3:30pm

Xbox One

Microsoft

Today Microsoft unveiled its next-gen console. Some of the rumors turned out to be spot-on. Others, not so much.

Today, Microsoft unveiled its new console, Xbox One, from its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. There's still going to be news coming out between now and another announcement at E3 in June (which we'll be at), but this is what we saw so far.

TV, TV, TV

This is just barely a gaming console. Microsoft is pitching it as something more like a Living Room Entertainment Box. For about half of today's presentation, no games were even mentioned; instead, Microsoft opted to show the ways Xbox One is integrated with TV. It functions sort of like an amped-up Google TV: it's a command center that hooks up to a cable box and allows you to control what's happening on TV through gestures and voice control. You can switch between TV, games, and a web browser--all through a single system. Say "Xbox on" and the console fires up, then "Switch to TV" or "Switch to internet" and it flips over.

ALWAYS ONLINE

One big, controversial rumor was that the Xbox One would require an internet connection to play any games. That's turned out to be both true and false. Your games are downloaded to the console's hard drive, but certain features in certain games may require an internet connection. It's up to the game-makers to decide if they want to use those.

But there are apparently some restrictions on used games. The first time you use a game, it gets tied up to your Xbox account. If you want to move that to other accounts, you'll need to pay a fee.

NEW LOOK

This is actually a pretty major departure from the Xbox 360's design at launch. The controller, as predicted, looks fairly similar, but the sleek black console-box is a far cry from the white-and-green 360 we saw before a black version was adopted. That makes sense: after all, if this is something meant to work as more than just a console, it needs to be able to disappear in the living room.

NEW HARDWARE

The Xbox did get a bump in power (obviously): it'll have 8GB of RAM, USB 3.0, a fancy Blu-ray player, and an HDMI in port, but more interesting is probably the overhaul of Kinect. The Xbox's motion-sensitive camera looks like it'll be better at picking up movement, with a 1080p camera replacing the lower-res VGA sensor of the last generation. Microsoft also announced that the gadget would automatically respond to a specific user's voice and movement patterns. In other words, it knows you, and just you. Apparently that new Kinect is a mandatory feature, too.

GAMES

This is last for a reason. For better or worse, Microsoft seems to be backing off the idea of a console devoted only, or even mostly, to games. Even an announcement seemingly about the popular Halo game series ended up being an announcement about a live-action Halo TV series.

There's a racing game (Forza Motorsport 5) and the new Call of Duty: Ghosts (in a promotional video, they made a big deal out of the game featuring a dog, for some reason). There's also a partnership between Microsoft and EA for a slew of sports games, including the next edition of the popular FIFA series. More original franchises, they say, are on the way. We'll probably see more when Microsoft takes to the more game-centric E3 next month for another announcement.

    

Categories: Culture Wire

Dot Earth Blog: A Survival Plan for America's Tornado Danger Zone

NY Times Environment - May 21, 2013 - 3:28pm

There are affordable ways to live more safely in tornado zones.    

Categories: Culture Wire

WATCH: 'The East' Star Dishes On Same-Sex Smooch

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 3:22pm

Up-and-coming actress Brit Marling came on HuffPost Live to discuss her role in the environmental activism thriller, "The East" opening in theaters May 31. Marling... Ricky Camilleri http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ricky-camilleri/

Categories: Culture Wire

Dot Earth Blog: Kids (and Teachers) in Peril, From Oklahoma to Oregon

NY Times Environment - May 21, 2013 - 3:15pm

Why do communities fail to secure the buildings that house their children against momentous hazards?    

Categories: Culture Wire

Climate Change Will Increase Heat-Related Deaths In NYC, Study Says

PopSci - May 21, 2013 - 3:00pm

New York City Heat

Aurelien Guichard via Wikimedia Commons

Summer in the city could get a whole lot more miserable in the coming decades, according to a new report.

Warming weather could make summer in the city deadly in the next few decades, according to a study published this week in Nature Climate Change. By the 2020s, New York City will see 22 percent more heat-related deaths per year compared with 1980s, the researchers predicted.

Urban centers like New York City are especially sensitive to extreme temperatures because of the heat island effect. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the annual mean temperature of a city with a million or more people can be up to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its more rural surroundings. (NYC currently clocks in with more than 8 million.)

Using 16 computer models of present and future climate change, scientists at Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that while warmer temperatures would reduce the number of deaths due to cold in the winter, the increase in heat-related deaths in summer months would cause a net 6.2 percent spike in weather-related mortality per year in the city by the 2020s.

By the 2080s, there could be as much as a 91 percent increase in heat deaths compared to 1980s levels:

"What our study suggests is that the heat effects of climate change dominate the winter warming benefits that might also come: climate change will cause more deaths through heat than it will prevent during winter," lead author Patrick Kinney, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, told The Guardian.

The study did not take into account potential changes in the use of air conditioning, heat alerts or cooling shelters in the future. Those factors can help mitigate the risk of extreme heat for vulnerable populations like the elderly.

[The Guardian]

    

Categories: Culture Wire

WATCH: 'Jersey Shore' Castmember Weds 'Starter Wives' Star In New Music Video

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 2:34pm

"Jersey Shore" castmember Angelina Pivarnick ties the knot with Cheryl Caruso of TLC's "Starter Wives" in a new music video. The video for "Serendipity," shows... Curtis M. Wong http://www.huffingtonpost.com/curtis-wong/

Categories: Culture Wire

The Hair And Makeup Secrets Behind A Broadway Production

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 2:32pm

What do you get when you put a drag queen, a shoemaker and lots of glitter on stage? A Broadway production of "Kinky Boots," of... The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-persad/

Categories: Culture Wire

U.S. Has Depleted Two Lake Eries' Worth Of Groundwater Since 1900

PopSci - May 21, 2013 - 2:30pm

Aquifers in the Continental US

This map of major aquifers in the U.S. highlights the High Plains Aquifer (green) and the Dakota Aquifer (white, outlined in black).

L.F. Konikow, U.S. Geological Survey

Aquifer water levels are rapidly falling across most of the U.S., according to a new study.

Over the last century, the U.S. has depleted enough of its underground freshwater supply to fill Lake Erie twice, according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. Here's another way to understand how much water we've used. Just between 2000 and 2008, the latest period in the study and the period of fastest depletion, Americans brought enough water aboveground to contribute to 2 percent of worldwide ocean level rise in that time.

"We think it's serious," Leonard Konikow, the U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist who performed the study, tells Popular Science. "It's more serious in certain areas."

Lowering aquifers mean less local water for the communities that depend upon them. They can also suck dry springs, wetlands and other surface water features, Konikow wrote in a report the survey published yesterday. Scientists don't always have a tally for how much water an aquifer holds, however, so it's more difficult to say what percentage of the U.S.' overall groundwater is gone. (In some systems, it's difficult to determine where the bottom of the aquifer is, Konikow explains.)

The problem also varies in severity in different parts of the country. In the most depleted aquifers, including those underneath the southern High Plains and Texas, "more than 50 percent of the thickness of the aquifers has been dried up," Konikow says. In Alabama and Mississippi, rice farmers have taken out large volumes of water, but there also seems to be a lot of water left. Meanwhile, two aquifers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho actually held more water in 2008 than they did in 1900. Those were the only U.S. aquifers to gain water over the study period.

Water collects in underground aquifers in many ways, sometimes over thousands of years. When people pump it to the surface to irrigate their crops, for example, some of it does seep back into the Earth and into the aquifer. Rainfall and rivers all carry water back into the ground and in some areas, the local government even pumps water underground in an effort to maintain their aquifers. Nevertheless, those two Lake Eries' worth of water refers to how much net groundwater the U.S. has lost, as people are taking it out much faster than it's going in.

Konikow's report doesn't say much about what will happen to the people and industries that sit on top of depleting aquifers, but a recent New York Times article offers a glimpse. On Sunday, the paper reported on falling water levels in the High Plains Aquifer, which lies north-south from Wyoming and South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle. In Kansas, the aquifer fell by an average of 4.25 feet in 2011 and 2012. Some wells fell by as much as 30 feet. The changes mean harder times for farmers and a shift away from thirsty crops, such as corn, toward less water-intensive activities, such as growing sorghum or ranching, the Times reported.

    

Categories: Culture Wire

DealBook Column: But Wait. Didn’t Yahoo Try a Deal Like This Before?

NY Times Technology - May 21, 2013 - 2:11pm

Yahoo’s deal for Tumblr raises questions about its ability to make money by selling ads, among other thorny issues.    

Categories: Culture Wire

Louis Virtel: Weeklings!: Judging the American Idol Judges (VIDEO)

Gay Voices - May 21, 2013 - 2:08pm

Now that Season 12 is over, let's judge Idol's judges, Keith Urban, Nicki Minaj, Randy Jackson and Mariah Carey, for all they're worth -- and, hell, Seacrest too. Frankly, they all deserve it. Louis Virtel http://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-virtel/

Categories: Culture Wire