| Redman keeps sense of humor
The average career life span of a rapper, even a seemingly searing-hot rap star, is about three albums, or if he's lucky about five years, before he either has to diversify (usually by going into acting) or risk fading into the land of ``whatever happened to'' hip-hop trivia. Reggie Noble, aka Redman, came to prominence in the early '90s as part of Erick (EPMD) Sermon's Def Squad and became a favorite of thugs, backpackers and casual hip-hop fans. He could infuse the standard tough-talk and boasting with an unusual and sometimes surreal sense of humor, and with a never-ending stream of pop-culture references and similes peppering his energetic rhymes (most of which aren't suitable for a family newspaper). A few gold albums later, he teamed up with Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man, and the pair discovered a chemistry that jumped from their 2000 platinum-selling CD Blackout! into movies (How High) and a mercifully short-lived and embarrassing Fox sitcom, Method & Red.
Gold Rush Goes Hollywood Announced By AOL
AOL announced that Gold Rush is making its return this fall, exclusively on AOL. As with the original, “Gold Rush Goes Hollywood" is co-produced by legendary TV pioneer Mark Burnett. The groundbreaking interactive game lets players turn their pop culture smarts into real gold. The original Gold Rush attracted nearly 11 million users and five blue chip sponsors. .
XMM-Newton pinpoints intergalactic polluters
Warm gas escaping from the clutches of enormous black holes could be the key to a form of intergalactic 'pollution' that made life possible, according to new results from ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory. Black holes are not quite the all-consuming monsters depicted in popular culture. Until gas crosses the boundary of the black hole known as the Event Horizon, it can escape if heated sufficiently. For decades now, astronomers have watched warm gas from the mightiest black holes flowing away at speeds of 1000-2000 km/s and wondered just how much gas escapes this way. XMM-Newton has now made the most accurate measurements yet of the process. The international team of astronomers, led by Yair Krongold, Instituto de Astronomia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, targeted a black hole two million times more massive than the Sun at the centre of the active galaxy NGC 4051.
King celebrates his 50-year reign on top of TV talk
When CNN Presents: Larry King -- 50 Years of Pop Culture airs, Anderson Cooper says a joke about his CNN colleague Larry King is that King likes to ask questions. His favourite question: Will you marry me? Yes, King has had many queens -- he's been married seven times to six different women. But while his matrimonial record is curious, it's just part of the legend of Larry King the broadcaster. The show was pre-empted for continuing coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. It will air on a later date. This week, the mighty, suspenders-wearing mouthpiece is celebrating 50 years in the broadcast game. During that half a century, King has notched 40,000 interviews. .
Why we must address both economics and values
From the 1970s through the mid-1990s, poverty policy was among the nastiest battlefields in the national culture war. Left and right slugged it out over why people were poor and how (or whether) to help them. Conservatives generally enjoyed the upper hand in these debates by focusing on individual-level causes of poverty, like family breakdown, drug addiction, and poor work habits -- pathologies said to be enabled by government largesse. This story line struck a chord with the American public, helping ensure the demise of the federal welfare entitlement and the introduction of strict work requirements in 1996. But since then, a structural understanding of poverty has come back in vogue, fueled by more awareness of globalization and dead-end jobs. Popular books like Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed and Beth Shulman's The Betrayal of Work have drawn a fresh picture of the poor -- as mostly hardworking Americans who can't make ends meet through no fault of their own.
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