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Cyberhomes.com analyzed 7,000 ZIP codes based on a formula of housing affordability and called 38018 -- that's Cordova -- the most-affordable home market in the country for first-time home buyers. Here's how the formula works:

First we calculated how much buyers earning the median income for the ZIP could afford to spend on a home -- assuming a 20 percent down payment, 5 percent rate on a 30-year mortgage and a house payment of no more than one third of monthly income. We then compared that figure with 2009 median home sale prices for that ZIP. In ZIPs where the affordable home price is equal to the actual median sales price the affordability index is 100. Anything over 100 is affordable. Anything under 100, not so much.

With median income of $86,000 and median home price of $117,000, Cordova scored a whopping 436. The next-highest score was 85044 in Phoenix, Ariz., with 340.

One commenter on the story mentioned the flip side of housing affordability in the Memphis area:

Memphis, TN, is one of the worst cities to live in (I did for many years). Crime is skyrocketing. There are countless sexual assaults in schools, that the school officials refuse to report. The mayor is a self-servicing, glory-seeking, sleeve who keeps putting the city deeper and deeper into debt. People are leaving the city in droves.

Brand management guru Bruce Turkel mentions Corky's barbecue as one of his "secret airport vices" in this little Q&A on The New York Times Web site. This short discussion from a couple of years ago on Chowhound weighs Corky's airport store vs. its other locations, and vs. other Memphis barbecue favorites.

I just ran across this news release about Tropical Nut & Fruit Co.'s distribution plant in Memphis earning the 2008 Audit Platinum Award from the food-testing company Silliker Inc.  Tropical Nut & Fruit has more than 3,000 products, including nuts, snack mixes, dried fruit and the like. Silliker VP Rena M. Pierami praised "the preparedness of their highly dedicated safety teams and the outstanding integration of their quality assurance systems." Recent news has shown that nut-packing plants that don't follow safety guidelines can cause major problems, so kudos to all the workers in the Memphis plant for doing their job so well.

Smartphone fans, if you want to represent Memphis with something more substantial than the odd iPhone app, AT&T soon will unveil a product for you, according to a number of reports out this week.

On June 24, AT&T is to roll out an HCT (makers of T-Mobile G1) handset powered by the Android platform and featuring a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Get this, the name of the phone is Memphis! (An alternative name for the product is Lancaster, perhaps as a tribute to 3G wireless mania among the Amish?)

It might seem counterintuitive that the presence of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart correlates to better measures of health, but Rhodes College professor Art Carden makes just such a claim in an essay posted at Forbes.com:

The University of North Carolina-Greensboro's Charles Courtemanche and I are finishing a study of big retail stores and obesity. In our first round of statistical analysis we found that greater consumer access to a Wal-Mart store was associated with lower body-mass indexes and a lower probability of being obese.

As we gathered more data on Wal-Mart discount stores, Wal-Mart Supercenters, warehouse clubs like Sam's Club, Costco and BJ's Wholesale Club, and other outlets, we found that the correlation holds up under a variety of different circumstances, with a clear relationship between warehouse clubs and better eating habits emerging over time. Further, we found that Wal-Mart's effect on weight is largest for women, the poor, African-Americans and people who live in urban areas.

Carden suspects that these effects are due to the lower prices available at these stores. So people are able to afford more healthful food items, and their overall purchasing power is increased, ostensibly enabling a more healthful lifestyle.

It's a pretty interesting bit of pop-econ. After all, Wal-Mart sells a lot of cheap cases of soda and bags of chips. And its stores are temples of urban sprawl, reachable only by car and floating on seas of treeless concrete. How could Wal-Mart, this icon of old-school non-green capitalism, correlate to better health?

Now think about the flip side of the coin, the disadvantaged segments of society who don't have access to a Wal-Mart or a Kroger, much less a Whole Foods or a farmers' market. Their only available place to shop might be a corner grocery with no fresh produce, no butcher, and no discount card -- but plenty of cigarettes, sugary drinks and snack cakes. If these people were able to shop at a Wal-Mart Supercenter, they could buy more healthful products and still have some money left over to save for a new pair of running shoes or a bicycle. As Carden says, the study shows us "how truly incremental economic progress really is."

President Barack Obama mentioned Memphis today during his speech announcing the administration's new cybersecurity policy. The theme of the remarks was that the blessings of the interconnected digital age also can be a curse: The networks we depend on are vulnerable to attacks that could be crippling to the economy. A highly networked just-in-time delivery service like, say, FedEx would be among those threatened. Here's what Obama said:

This is a matter, as well, of America's economic competitiveness. The small businesswoman in St. Louis, the bond trader in the New York Stock Exchange, the workers at a global shipping company in Memphis, the young entrepreneur in Silicon Valley -- they all need the networks to make the next payroll, the next trade, the next delivery, the next great breakthrough. E-commerce alone last year accounted for some $132 billion in retail sales.

The Politico has video of the speech.