PAUL KRUGMAN: Housing Gets Ugly (The New York Times)
Bubble, bubble, Toll's in trouble. This week, Toll Brothers, the nation's premier builder of McMansions, announced that sales were way off, profits were down, and the company was walking away from already-purchased options on land for future development.
Randy Albelda and Heather Boushey: From Welfare To Poverty (tompaine.com)
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act-commonly known as "welfare reform." The much hailed legislation abolished a cornerstone of the New Deal known as the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program which was criticized for discouraging work. But 10 years later, we know that the program Congress put in its place-Temporary Assistance to Needy Families- encouraged work, but many remain in poverty and struggle to make ends meet.
THE HIGH TIMES GUIDE TO HIGHER EDUCATION
Americas institutions of higher education would soon come to a grinding halt without marijuana smokers including students, professors, deans, administrators, maintenance workers and the coach of the womens field-hockey team yet these same colleges and universities are understandably none too eager to publicize their populations participation in this important (albeit illicit) aspect of academic life.
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Big Brother 7', then a RERUN'Cold Case', followed by a RERUN'Without A Trace'.
NBC fills the night with LIVE'58th Annual Emmy Awards' on the East Coast; tape-delayed & edited for the left coast.
ABC begins the night with the movie 'Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl', followed by a RERUN'Grey's Anatomy'.
The WB offers a RERUN'Just Legal', followed by a RERUN'Charmed', then another RERUN'Charmed'.
Faux fills the night with the movie 'Star Wars: Episode II: Attack Of The Clones'.
UPN upn has an old 'Fear Factor', followed by the movie 'The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly'.
A&E has 'Flip This House', another 'Flip This House', 'The First 48', and a FRESH'Intervention'.
AMC offers the movie 'For A Few Dollars More', followed by the movie 'El Dorado', then the movie 'The Undefeated'.
BBC -
[2:00 pm] Prince William and Harry;
[3:00 pm] William's Women;
[4:00 pm] Royal Jewels;
[4:00 pm] Royal Jewels;
[5:00 pm] The Queen's Sister;
[7:00 pm] The Taming of the Shrew - Taming of the Shrew;
[9:00 pm] Life On Mars - Episode 5;
[10:00 pm] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 4;
[10:30 pm] Mile High - Episode 14;
[11:30 pm] The Taming of the Shrew - Taming of the Shrew;
[1:30 am] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 4;
[2:00 am] Mile High - Episode 14;
[3:00 am] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 12;
[3:30 am] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 3;
[4:00 am] Whose Line Is It Anyway? - Episode 10;
[4:30 am] Creature Comforts - Episode 6;
[5:00 am] Creature Comforts - Episode 7;
[5:30 am] Creature Comforts - Episode 8;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has all 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' all night.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Billy Madison', followed by the movie '10 Things I Hate About You', then 'Mind Of Mencia'.
History has 'Mega Disasters', 'Nature's Fury: New England's Killer Hurricane', and 'The Revolution'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] Suckers;
[07:30 AM] The Daytrippers;
[09:00 AM] The Last Days Of Chez Nous;
[09:45 AM] Bend It Like Beckham;
[12:40 PM] At The IFC Center #16;
[01:05 PM] Greg the Bunny: The Addiction;
[01:15 PM] The Daytrippers;
[02:45 PM] Max;
[04:45 PM] The Last Days Of Chez Nous;
[06:25 PM] The Henry Rollins Show #7;
[07:00 PM] Bend It Like Beckham;
[09:00 PM] Office Space;
[10:45 PM] Greg the Bunny: 2001-1 Space & Stuff;
[11:00 PM] The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman #4;
[11:30 PM] The Business: Episode 4;
[12:00 AM] Office Space;
[01:45 AM] Greg the Bunny: 2001-1 Space & Stuff;
[02:00 AM] The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman #4;
[02:30 AM] The Business: Episode 4;
[03:00 AM] Gummo;
[04:30 AM] Suckers. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has the movie 'Boa', followed by the movie 'Stir Of Echoes'.
Sundance -
[07:15 AM] The Glass Menagerie;
[09:30 AM] Leaving Normal;
[11:30 AM] Arrowhead;
[12:00 PM] It's All Gone Pete Tong;
[01:45 PM] The Tree Officer;
[02:00 PM] House of Boateng: Episode 2;
[02:30 PM] The Hill: Episode 1;
[03:00 PM] Kath & Kim - Season 2: My Boyfriend;
[03:25 PM] Condo Painting;
[04:50 PM] Bound For Glory;
[07:25 PM] It's All Gone Pete Tong;
[09:00 PM] House of Boateng: Episode 2;
[09:30 PM] Kath & Kim - Season 2: My Boyfriend;
[10:00 PM] Love + Hate;
[11:30 PM] Arrowhead;
[12:00 AM] A Tale of Two Sisters;
[01:50 AM] In the Name of the Father;
[04:05 AM] Twin Town;
[05:45 AM] Leaving Normal. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Actor Actor Denis Leary, left, and his wife Ann arrive at the 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards nominees reception in West Hollywood, Calif., Friday, Aug. 25, 2006.
Photo by Chris Pizzello
Sen. Barack Obama and his wife took HIV tests before a crowd of thousands Saturday at a clinic in Kenya in an effort to battle the fear and social stigmas that have slowed progress in fighting the spread of AIDS.
"If you know your status, you can prevent illness," Obama, the only African-American in the Senate, told the crowd. "You can avoid passing it to your children and your wives."
Thousands of well-wishers lined pot-holed roads to greet Obama as he began a journey to his ancestral home, Nyangoma-Kogelo, a tiny village in the rural west where his father grew up herding goats and attending tin-roofed schools.
This was Obama's third visit, but his first since being elected a Democratic senator from Illinois in January 2005. His last visit to Kenya was in 1995.
Actress Sandra Oh arrives at the 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards nominees reception in West Hollywood, Calif., Friday, Aug. 25, 2006.
Photo by Chris Pizzello
Hollywood star Sandra Bullock's husband Jesse James has launched a scathing verbal attack on US resident George W Bush, calling the leader "a dickhead". The motorcycle maker visited American soldiers outside Baghdad, Iraq - and is convinced the majority of the US military agree with him.
James says, "Everyone in Iraq knows Bush is a dickhead. He's the boss' kid. "Everybody I know who has a successful business who has a kid - the kid is always a fuckhead. Have you ever noticed that?"
Five hours of color footage of writer Eudora Welty has been found in the National Endowment for the Arts media archives and returned to Mississippi.
"This is the only known 60 millimeter film of Eudora Welty reading and discussing her work," NEA chairman Dana Gioia said Thursday during a press conference at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson.
The footage, which Gioia said was in superb condition, was shot in 1975 as part of an NEA funded project. Several minutes of the footage were used in the documentary "The Writer in America."
The organization decided the film would best be displayed at the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's home in Jackson's historic Belhaven district, where Welty lived most of her life and wrote almost all of her fiction and essays. In 2004, three years after Welty's death at the age of 92, the home was declared a National Historic Landmark.
Phil Nicol won Britain's top comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe festival on Saturday for his dynamic show about love, life, pacifism and a touch of nudity.
Nicol, a Scottish-born Canadian, won for "The Naked Racist," which the Independent newspaper called "a daring show delivered at break-neck speed about a weekend in Amsterdam."
A veteran of the four-week festival which culminates each year with the awards, Nicol beat four other nominees for the 8,000 pound ($15,000) main prize -- David O'Doherty, Russell Howard, Paul Sinha and the three-man We Are Klang.
Emmy nominee Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report' and his family; wife Evie, daughter Madeleine, sons Peter, left, and John, pose outside Disneyland's 'Star Tours' attraction on Saturday, Aug. 26, 2006. Colbert and his family spent the day at Disneyland during their visit to Los Angeles to attend the 58th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday.
Photo by Paul Hiffmeyer
After 40 years of performing rock music, pop ballads and movie soundtracks, Elton John is looking to cross over to yet another musical genre -- hip hop.
"I want to bring my songs and melodies to hip hop beats -- a bit like 'No Diggity' by Blackstreet,"' John said in excerpts of an interview posted on Rolling Stone's Web site on Friday.
John told the music magazine he would like to work with producer Dr. Dre and a variety of artists, although he had yet to contact them.
Matt LeBlanc has been sued for defamation by a woman who claims the former "Friends" actor made sexually charged comments about her that were published in the National Enquirer.
Stephanie Stephens claims in a lawsuit that LeBlanc told an unspecified person last August that she was sexually aggressive, gave him a lap dance in a private room and engaged him in a "night of sexual debauchery ... at her place of employment."
In the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles, Stephens said she was never sexually aggressive toward LeBlanc, never made sexual requests and never gave a lap dance.
The lawsuit also says that "all sexual contact between the defendant and the plaintiff took place in the privacy of (Stephens') residence."
Newman Haas Racing co-owner Paul Newman, right, watches the qualifying session at the Champ Car race Saturday, Aug. 26, 2006 in Montreal. Newman Haas driver Sebatien Bourdais from France, posted the best time to take the pole position for the Sunday race.
Photo by Paul Chiasson
U.S. authorities have arrested a New York man for locally broadcasting Hizbollah television al-Manar, which the U.S. Treasury Department has branded a terrorist entity.
Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday on allegations that his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New York-area satellite customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.
Defense lawyers said Iqbal had done no wrong, branded the arrest as a violation of his free-speech rights, and linked it to the recent fighting between Israel and Hizbollah in which al-Manar broadcast news and propaganda for Hizbollah and was attacked by Israeli air strikes.
Federal authorities searched HDTV's Brooklyn office and Iqbal's Staten Island home, where he was suspected of maintaining satellite dishes, the statement said.
Glass sculpture installation by artist Dale Chihuly float among the aquatic plants outside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the New York Botanical Garden, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2006 in the Bronx borough of New York. The exhibit 'Chihuly at the New York Botanical Garden' opened to the public June 25, and runs through Oct. 29, 2006.
Photo by Mary Altaffer
A reclusive Russian won the math world's highest honor Tuesday for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century - but he refused the award.
Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal - often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize - for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
A protestor takes part in an anti-war rally near the home of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, where his son President George W. Bush is staying for the weekend, in Kennebunkport, Maine, August 26, 2006.
Photo by Jim Young
Arizona seniors had no idea what the flourishing plant they nurtured in their driveway was until a passing deputy told them it was marijuana.
A Yavapai County sheriff's department said a deputy spotted the blooming 5-foot-tall marijuana plant growing in the driveway of a retirement community near Prescott, midweek.
"The residents just thought it was a pretty weed and so they decided to nurture it," department spokeswoman Susan Quayle told Reuters by telephone.
The officer yanked out the plant, which Quayle said was either "self-seeded or could have been dropped by a grandchild visiting the community."
A dragonfly perches on the tip of a lotus flower at the New York Botanical Gardens, in the Bronx borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006.
Photo by Mary Schwalm
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