A lawsuit against the City of Kyle for violation of the federal Fair Housing Act started yesterday. The suit was filed by the national and Austin branches of the NAACP, the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin and the National Association of Home Builders. It alleges that Kyle has increased the cost of local housing by instituting revised zoning ordinances. According to the NAACP, the resulting increase in prices disproportionately affects minorities and the Fair Housing Act prohibits cities from zoning in a way that excludes housing for certain classes of people, even if officials did not intentionally discriminate....

But what if attitudes and religious memeplexes aren’t changing because adapting to social pressure is necessary? What if the new millenarianism, instead of crashing computers, will be a fight to the death with a Frankenstein version of Mother Nature? What if environmentalism is becoming the new faith? What if responsible consumerism is the new moral ethic? What if recycling, dear Green God, is the new ritual of absolution?...

We all know that Austin is a great city for kids looking to date around or have a drink, but according to a new study, it's also among the top ten job markets for college grads. Bizjournals, the national publisher of metropolitan business newspapers with branches in over forty cities, reports that current economic conditions couldn't be better for the million-plus college seniors entering the workforce this year. "The outlook this year is very good,"......

Kevin Durant, the University of Texas freshman basketball phenom, was announced today as the Division I Player of the Year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). Racking up an impressive 903 points this season, Durant set the Big Twelve single season scoring record. He is also second all-time in the NCAA Freshman scoring records and third all-time on the NCAA Freshman rebound list. Durant is the first freshman, as well as the......

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday [subs. required] that Austin's economy has again picked up, bringing with it a flood of real estate developers and investors: The rebound comes after the Texas capital lost about 31,000 jobs from the end of 2000 through the close of 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as high-powered tech employers such as Dell Inc. slashed payrolls and some smaller Internet start-ups fizzled. The tech bust also......

Austinist heartily congratulates Waterloo Records on being named one of the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) Retailers of the Year! For the fifth time, our favorite local record shop was the Medium Division winner - nestled between Tower Records of Sacramento, CA and Twist and Shout of Denver, Colorado. The nomination/decision process was as follows: NARM invited all of its members to nominate trading partners in the various industry segments (small, medium and......

The Austinist loves food. We often take for granted that there will be food for us to eat everyday, and we forget that so many of our fellow citizens do not know where their next meal will come from. We have much to learn about the hunger problem here in Central Texas. For example, did you know: One in ten children under the age of 12 in Texas are hungry. Texas ranks second out of......