As the housing boom lifts the median home price way beyond the budget of huge numbers of Americans, middle-income home buyers are increasingly turning to interest-only mortgages - a decision that could well come back to haunt both them and the banks behind the loans later on.

Many use interest-only mortgages to push their borrowing and buying power as far as it will go. On average, they borrow 94 percent of the value of their homes. Even though they are paying only interest, they devote a whopping 45 percent, on average, of their income to debt service.

"Everyone's fear is what happens when rates go up and people are stuck."

"Lenders have more to lose than borrowers."

Good News, Bad News: Your Loan's Approved

When landlords want to demolish a building, take over an occupied brownstone or pull a stabilized apartment off the regulated rent rolls, they call in brokers to perform the seemingly impossible feat of wooing the tenants out of their cheap apartments. They are the pied pipers of Manhattan's rental market, operating on the belief that every tenant, no matter how entrenched, will make a deal. Their job is calculating each person's price tag.

The Art of Persuading Tenants to Move

Get yourself a wagon already -- and paint it good! [mp3], [snpp], [imdb]

It seems a hazy memory, but Keith Wilson, a spiky-haired club promoter, can recall what it was like before MySpace.

"I conduct my entire business through MySpace," said Mr. Wilson.

Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly.

"As far as a cultural phenomenon, MySpace is as important, if not more important, than MTV."

"... gonna use oil-based paint, `cause the wood is pine ..."

Do You MySpace?

Is "intelligent design" a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science?

Daniel Dennett rants again. Long after the NYT OpEd retreats into the walled garden, you'll still be able to read Show Me the Science on edge.org.

Show Me the Science

Sudoku (数独) is the number placing game taking the world by storm.

The rules of Sudoku are simple. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square.

Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing.

One nice feature of this site is that it clocks you and provides feedback on your performance, plotting your time to completion within the distribution of all players.

Sudoku

Andrew Krepinevich would like you to set up MemeStreams in Iraq. Can you work that into your schedule this week? The Iraqis would really appreciate it.

Because they lack a coherent strategy, U.S. forces in Iraq have failed to defeat the insurgency or improve security. Winning will require a new approach to counterinsurgency, one that focuses on providing security to Iraqis rather than hunting down insurgents. And it will take at least a decade.

It will require a good understanding of Iraqi tribal politics. In many areas of Iraq, the tribe and the extended family are the foundation of society, and they represent a sort of alternative to the government. There are roughly 150 tribes in Iraq of varying size and influence, and at least 75 percent of Iraqis are members of a tribe. Creating a coalition out of these groups would require systematically mapping tribal structures, loyalties, and blood feuds within and among tribal groups; identifying unresolved feuds; detecting the political inclinations of dominant tribes and their sources of power and legitimacy; and determining their ties to tribes in other countries, particularly in Iran, Syria, and Turkey.

Accurate tribal mapping could guide the formation of alliances between the new Iraqi government and certain tribes and families, improve the vetting of military recruits and civil servants, and enhance intelligence sources on the insurgency's organization and infrastructure.

On second thought, maybe we'll just use MySpace instead.

How to Win in Iraq

One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan was gloating and boasting.

The Bird Cage

For the bibliophile, what to do with the books is life's central decorating issue, an ongoing discourse, a debate, and often an outright decor war, between aesthetics, the practicalities of storage and the consuming mindlessness of passion.

When you're buried in books

Q. Wow. Wait, what exactly are those numbers?

A. What? What kind of question is that? This is just the kind of foot-dragging that's kept you paying rent on the same roach-infested closet for years while your home-owning friends have gotten fantastically wealthy. Did you know that we homeowners are having Champagne-and-caviar parties every weekend and not inviting you?

Q. Come on.

A. It's true. And sometimes we hire the White Stripes to play. That's right, the White Stripes. You love the White Stripes, don't you? Then buy a house!

Bubble? What Bubble?

Glenn Fletcher was genuinely pleased to be paying almost $56 to fill his tank Wednesday afternoon because he recognized that the prices on the pumps on the Garden State Parkway were unusually low. He had caught on to an anomaly that many drivers never notice: The price of gas on New Jersey's two main toll roads changes only on Fridays, usually just before the morning rush.

Since Aug. 10, the average price of a gallon of regular gas in New Jersey has set a new high - unadjusted for inflation - every day, hitting $2.49 yesterday, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.

New Jersey already has among the cheapest gas prices in the country because of its low fuel taxes. But at the eight rest areas along the Garden State Parkway, which pump Mobil gas, and the 12 that line the New Jersey Turnpike, which sell Sunoco, the price was lower still, stuck at $2.38 since Friday morning.

The price is the same up and down the two toll roads, the result of the contract the New Jersey Turnpike Authority has with its fuel vendors.

"I will get on the parkway just to get gas because it's so cheap. Isn't it weird?"

Pricing Quirk Means New Jersey's Cheapest Gas Is on Its Toll Highways