Normally that would get me accused of “smearing” Barack Obama. During the election, as ABC’s Jack Tapper points out, the Obama campaign was branding anyone suggesting that Obama had a Muslim background as a lying liar. But this time it’s ok given that the person saying it is the White House National Security Adviser.
When people fabricate stories about someone’s faith to denigrate them politically, that’s an attack on people of all faiths.
During the 2008 Campaign Barack Obama's website claimed that Obama's father was an agnostic or atheist.
Carlos Araya used to order lobster, filet mignon and $200 bottles of red wine at the Palm Restaurant in midtown Manhattan.
Now, he seats customers at its Tribeca branch.
Mr. Araya, 38 years old, lost his job in 2007 as a crude oil trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. After visiting dozens of headhunters with no luck, he applied in August 2008 to be a host at the Palm to support his wife, two young daughters and mortgage payments. His salary has plunged from $200,000 to $25,000.
$25K is damned good, even if it is only a third of what it takes to support Aravosis in the style to which he's become accustomed.
"It was a hard reality at first," he says. "I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it's happened to me."
Empathy! So I can't work up a real populist rage against the guy, now that he's had to jioin the proles and get a real job -- especially since Araya was a trader, and not one of the worst of the worst in some bucket shop like Goldman Sachs.
Still, you can't help but wonder why there's no focus at all on the thousands of people all over the country who've been undergoing the same losses -- for years.
On a recent holiday in my beloved Manhattan, a taxi ride brought me instant inspiration.
I flagged a cab on Houston on the eastside, got in, and tacked to the back of the seat in front of me was a professional resume announcing the job search intentions of recent LaSalle MBA graduate James A. Williamson III.
I asked, "Is this your resume?"
"Yes, ma'am," came the polite reply.
Thus began a delightful conversation. James A. Williamson III is a dedicated young man. He went right from undergraduate school into his MBA program, and moved to New York City to land a job in marketing in the City that never sleeps.
"Why are you driving a cab?"
"I haven't been able to get a job." He's been looking diligently since before he graduated.
"James," I asked, "do you have a copy of your resume?"
"Yes, ma'am." He handed it over. His objective is clearly stated at the top.
"To begin a career path with a stable corporation that will allow me to utilize both my technical and analytical skills to develop integrated strategies for maximizing company profits and expanding existing customer sales."
I gave this enterprising young man my card and asked him if his mama was a woman of faith. She is. I told him to tell her I'd be praying with her for his job search for 30 days, and I took his resume and showed it to everyone I met that day.
When I got home to Boston, there was a polite email from James thanking me for my wisdom and encouragement. He also sent me a URL for a CNN feature interview with him by John Roberts: Watch it -- he's a gem.
James has worked for Michelin and for General Motors. He's a Big Brother and member of multiple honor societies.
When asked what to do to survive until the economy improves, Suze Orman responded, "This is the time when you take your ego and put it aside." That's just what James has done.
He's driving a cab to earn money, and learn more about the city that he so wants to call home, just doing what he has to do to live, and it's time for him to do more than live. It's time for him to thrive.
So here's a shout-out to anyone who has a marketing department in Manhattan. You're missing a great asset: James A. Williamson III. He's waiting to hear from you.
Mr. Araya, 38 years old, lost his job in 2007 as a crude oil trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange. After visiting dozens of headhunters with no luck, he applied in August 2008 to be a host at the Palm to support his wife, two young daughters and mortgage payments. His salary has plunged from $200,000 to $25,000.
If the financial crisis was the flood, then the Arayas are one of the families standing in the stagnant waters left behind. Some former Wall Street employees, highly trained and accustomed to comfortable salaries, are having trouble translating their specialized skills to other fields that pay well, and instead find themselves forced to accept low-wage work. Now, Mr. Araya is on the brink of losing it all and is doubtful that he will ever return to Wall Street.
And he isn't alone. Nearly 25,000 jobs have been lost in New York City's financial sector since August 2007, according to the New York State Department of Labor. The finance industry in New York is expected to lose 56,800 jobs from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2012, according to projections from the Independent Budget Office, a publicly funded information agency.
John Carbonaro was let go as a floor clerk by Bank of America in January 2009, and despite his job-hunting efforts, remains a "Mr. Mom." Joe Morrone, a laid-off trading clerk from Prudential, has been unemployed for two years and struggles to support his daughters and grandson. He has had stints as a deli worker, a doorman and a bouncer. "I used to have three cars," Mr. Morrone says. "Now I share one."
The result is an unlikely stream of erstwhile Wall Street pros need help.
"I've got 'em all -- Lehman, AIG, Citi," says Bob Townley, head of Manhattan Youth in Tribeca, an organization that gave the Arayas financial assistance to pay for childcare while they are working. "I can hear it in a parent's voice when there's trouble. Others are too proud to ask for help."
Many of these parents once made donations to Mr. Townley's program. Now they are asking for aid to pay for their kids. Mr. Araya's daughters, ages 6 and 7, are in an after-school program at Mr. Townley's center.
Nowadays, during Mr. Araya's late nights at the Palm, reminders of his old life crop up when former colleagues come in. Some are encouraging and offer hugs. Others sneer, he says. "The way they look at you, you know they're thinking negatively," he says. Some are laid-off like him, and ask if the restaurant is hiring.
As a host, Mr. Araya wears a suit and tie. He's on his feet most of the day, either escorting guests to tables or manning the podium at the front, answering phone calls, managing reservations on the computer and fielding orders from wait staff and managers.
Although he's thankful for the work at the Palm, paydays can be bittersweet. "At the end of the week, I get my paycheck," he says, "and I think, 'I used to make this much in a day.' "
Mr. Araya's wife, Dennise, has gone back to work as an administrative assistant for a construction company and leaves home at 6 a.m. Mr. Araya often works until one or two in the morning and on weekends, leaving little time for the family to be together. He calls his daughters every night during his break at the restaurant on his cellphone to say good night.
Mr. Araya now is the one who gets his children ready for school. He's learned to tie pony tails, inadvertently shrunk sweaters in the wash and knows which grocery store has the best price on milk.
The Arayas stopped dining out, pulled their daughters out of ballet and tumbling classes, and dropped cable television -- even though the flat screen he bought when they first moved in still sits in the living room.
Last month, for the first time, the Arayas didn't make a mortgage payment. Their savings are almost depleted. The mortgage, taxes and fees for the family's condo cost $6,200. Combined, he and Denise bring in $4,000 a month. Three months ago, he and his wife applied to restructure their mortgage. The bank told them it is still processing the request. They fear foreclosure and bankruptcy.
Recently, their oldest daughter asked Mr. Araya if the family would have to move. He told her he didn't know. She countered: "How much money do we need?"
"The way she looked at me," Mr. Araya says, "I could tell she was counting the money in her piggy bank." He went into the bathroom and cried. After a few minutes, he dried his eyes and walked back into the living room.
Mr. Araya, the son of a cab driver, grew up in a working-class neighborhood in nearby Queens. Like thousands of New Yorkers, he used a Wall Street job to vault into a comfortable lifestyle that included his apartment -- bought for $960,000 four years ago -- in Manhattan's Battery Park City neighborhood and family vacations to Cabo San Lucas, Disneyland and Las Vegas.
The Arayas purchased the condo in 2005 with a 20% down payment and a pre-construction price. The proximity of the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment to the trading pit allowed Mr. Araya to spend more time with his family and less time commuting. Ms. Araya diligently managed the family budget with Excel charts to ensure that they had no credit card debt, good credit histories even an emergency fund saved over five years that is now depleted. Mr. Araya says he would be lucky to find a buyer and break even on the apartment now.
Mr. Araya dropped out of college in 1992 to work in the pits, where he quickly advanced from runner to trader. He shifted between large firms like J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and smaller shops like Aren Brokerage Service, the firm that eventually laid him off.
A wrestler in high school, Mr. Araya was known for elbowing his way through the loud commodities pits. Nights were late; mornings began at 4:30 am, fueled by coffee.
"You'd clock in and just try to kill each other till the bell rang," Mr. Araya says.
He had a knack for the Merc job. He could gauge from the roar of traders' voices how the market was faring. He gained loyal clients, and was confident enough to engage in profane shouting matches with them on the phone. Mr. Araya still has dreams about the hand signals traders use to indicate orders. His trading jacket hangs in his closet.
Every day lately, he spends two hours online, trolling job Web sites like Monster.com and e-mailing former colleagues. The leads have dried up, since some of them are laid off themselves. He's contacted headhunters, been on a dozen interviews in the last year and a half, but nothing has come of them.
"It was a hard reality at first," he says. "I used to see unemployed people and think they were lazy, that it was all on them. Now it's happened to me."
NBC officially announced the cast for "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" on Friday morning and it includes stars from film, music, sports, reality TV - and possibly one impeached politician.
he weirdest aspect of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! is that the worst thing about the show isn't the celebrities, it's everything surrounding them: the hosts, the competitions, the lack of imagination. The celebs, they've got imagination to burn. Spencer Pratt was his usual repulsive self, but it was pretty clever of him to call NBC entertainment president Ben Silverman to complain about the living conditions he was enduring in Costa Rica.
Bing, Microsoft's newest take on web search, is open to everyone this morning. What makes it different from its really, really well-known competition, and what unique features does it offer? Let's take a look at early reviews and discoveries.
In the wee hours of the morning, Microsoft flipped the switch and whether you like the name or not, Live Search has been bumped by Bing.
After finally getting a chance to test it out, I'm definitely more likely to use Bing than I was to use Live search. While it doesn't have the same tricks up its sleeves as Google (like unit conversions and exchange rates yes, yes it does - thanks, Bob!) it's still got plenty of nice touches. Search for a pro athlete, like the Red Wings' Jonathan Ericsson, and you'll get stats from his last performance, upcoming games, and more. Pretty slick.
You can also subscribe to any set of results via RSS and save search history in your Live account. The related searches, suggested refinements (like fights, biography, and quotes in the picture), and on-hover snippets help make researching a topic easier.
You might have heard the news of search engine Bing – Microsoft’s rebranding effort after Live failed to take over the search crown from Google – going live. Expectedly, the web search results are often copying Google’s style but are of [edit]somewhat lower quality on a couple of queries I tried (but please add your comments in regards to search results quality)[/edit]. One interesting feature however is the video search, because it offers direct animated previews as soon as you hover over a given video thumbnail; combine this with the site operator, as in the search site:blogoscoped.com*, and you can get a good, uncluttered overview of videos shown or embedded on a given domain. The same search on Google Video returns... zero.
The image search of Bing – a word meaning “cold [mp3]” (as in fridge [mp3]) as well as “sick” in Chinese, among other meanings depending on the tones** – offers one noteworthy difference in comparison to Google Image Search. When you click on an image from the result thumbnail list, you’ll land on the target page with the image on top as with Google. But on the left side, you can also see other thumbs from the result page you were on before, so you can quickly click through the rest of the images. However, on the downside, you can’t use shift-click on a thumb to open a page in a new instance... this greatly lowers usability for people who like to control their browser windows or tabs.
A nice thing about Bing is that they automatically insert in-page anchor links below some snippets. A search for scientology wikipedia, for instance, has links like “Etymology”, “History”, “Organization” and more pointing straight to that part within the Wikipedia.org page. (There’s also an “enhanced view" for Wikipedia pages, which basically reprints the – GNU-licensed – wiki entry and adds an always-visible navigation box to the right.)
Just as with Google these days, Bing also has auto-completion. This picture was posted on Reddit under the headline “Seems like bing.com is indexing a different [Internet] than Google”.
As Inquistir's Duncan Riley points out, things aren't all working the way we were promised in teaser videos. Example: hotel and shopping searches don't automatically present the tweaked results views - you'll need to go to bing.com/shopping or bing.com/travel to try them out.
Firefox users wanting to add Bing to you search box, here's your addon - contributed by our pal Long Zheng at IStartedSomething. Live Search addons will still work just fine, too.
As of this morning, Bing.com seems to have replaced Live.com (with Live.com redirecting to Bing) as Microsoft's prime search product. It was supposed to launch Wednesday, but apparently went live early in the morning today. Many international users have noted different results and features in different languages and IP addresses, so be aware that everything listed below might not apply to all "versions" of Bing.
Video Previews: Right now, it's a blessing and a curse for Bing. Digital Inspiration suggests that international users can use Bing to watch fairly lengthy previews of Hulu clips by hovering their mouse over the results for search terms like "The Office." That's pretty helpful, assuming you like automatic video plays with sound. Then Loic Le Meur tweaks the safe search settings and points out that Bing will preview any video clip—including the kind that get you fired at work. Yikes.
Search Categories: Jury's still out on whether these will grow to become truly helpful, or just provide a Search For Dummies outlet. Right now, broad searches for terms with deep results bring up suggestive, possibly helpful categories to try searching under. The results are pretty entropic, though—"digital cameras," a term for which there has to be a helpful way to organize things, yields links for repairs, price comparison, and other good stuff, while "dual monitors" includes just shopping links and related videos.
Shopping: Bing has pretty much taken over Microsoft's previous search entity, Live.com, and that includes the occasionally great cashback bonuses and somewhat sophisticated shopping organization. Honestly, if Bing wants to set itself apart from certain other search engines, it could focus on being a truly great shopping start point that offers incentives and smarter results. As it is, it just neatly organizes results for single products and semi-specific categories.
RSS results feeds: Nothing too sexy to show off, but your browser should auto-detect an RSS feed on the results page for search terms, and, given that it's a new and growing search database, Bing's results feeds might give you some new and intriguing links on the items you're keeping up with.
Early Reviews
* Gizmodo: "In the automatically generated top links for Gizmodo are months-old links to single posts about the second Bill Gates/Seinfeld ad and leaked box shots of the Zune 16GB and 160GB models. Really?" * Ars Technica: "The results for some queries blow my mind: how is it possible that the results can be so preposterously useless? Other times, though, a comparison with the old Live Search shows that Bing obviously has had its algorithm tweaked for the better." * Mashable: "There's at least three very different versions of Bing right now, and depending on where you are, your Bing experience will be very different. It's a very weird decision from Microsoft, bound to cause a lot of confusion, but hey: it's the Microsoft way." * Technologizer: "Bing attempts to differentiate itself from what Steve Ballmer would call "the market leader" in search by focusing on helping users with four common action-oriented search tasks: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business." * ReadWriteWeb: "The main difference between the two search engines is that Bing offers more options on the left, including special sections for symptons, medication, children, etc. It also offers 'related searches', which with health-related searches is typically helpful ... With Google you can get more options too, but you have to click "Show Options..." - which we're not sure how many users do."
Finally, here's a video tour of Bing, for those voyeuristic types who aren't into actually testing out a search engine with real queries.
While Bing brings a few nifty amenities to the table (I do like the Related Searches and Search History in the sidebar), ultimately any search engine is only as good as its results. Live Search’s results always sucked, IMHO. Bing’s are better — though far from perfect.
For example, a search for “Business Hacks” yielded yours truly as the top result (well, the top after two ad links), but no related results on the side. A search for “iPhone” produced all kinds of goodies, including subcategories (Accessories, Software, etc.), images, and the like.
Bing’s coolest feature is video preview: Mouse over any video thumbnail and it immediately starts playing — no need to click through to the hosting site. Alas, it remains thumbnail-size — it’d be great if you could opt for a larger window.
So, yeah, there’s some good stuff here. But for now Google will remain my go-to search engine, because I know it’ll give me the most accurate results.
Give Bing a try for yourself, then let us know what you think. Better than Live Search? Better than Google, even? Or still just an also-ran?
Another strange thing is that bing, from Microsoft, is using Flash from Adobe and not Silverlight from Microsoft. Now if you think about that, it’s not all that strange. They want the widest possible adoption of the service most likely and Silverlight isn’t the predominant video player on the web so they had to go with the strongest player in the market. After all, how many of you would choose to install a video player plugin over just going someplace that already let you search based on a plugin you probably already had installed?
In regards to the advanced search capabilities, Google still gives more options and that means easier searching overall in my book. I can drill down to exactly what I’m looking for far more clearly. Plus Google offers some serious keyword search filtering and with the coming of HTML 5 and the Video tag I think that’s going to put them in the forefront though the others will have plenty of time to bolster their keyword search options before it becomes widely accepted. Microsoft knows that it won’t become the world leader in search overnight but they’re hoping that it will gain some widespread use.
Of course what is bing at its most basic? It’s LIVE search right? It’s LIVE search with a new coat of paint, some additional options and a new name. And doesn’t it look a lot like Google from the top left corner of the browser? Almost the same list of options even.
Sure it’s another place that will catalog and index all of our video content and some people will always prefer Microsoft over the others so it will probably find its niche in the market.
Zipcar has expanded its partnership with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority by adding six new on-site vehicles and one new Zipcar location to various T stations in the Boston area, the company said Thursday.
It is. But this isn’t a yard sale nor an eviction. No T-shirt uniformed street teams promoting Blackberrys to government workers. No ad-hoc charity lovers selling Krispy Kreme donut boxes for $5 in front of the Metro escalators. No sidewalk floormat signs that appeared until DCRA put the kibosh on them. Enter Zipcar, the popular car sharing service that has its DC office at 717 D St, NW, and what we think is the most unorthodox attention getter we’ve seen downtown. Unorthodox enough that we call it news.
Speaking at the National Press Club today, Dick Cheney, who has a lesbian daughter, offered a full-throated endorsement for same-sex marriage. "I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," he said. But lest you take this as some sort of breakthrough, recall that Cheney said almost the same thing all the way back in 2000, during a vice-presidential debate with Joe Lieberman. "We live in a free society and freedom means freedom for everybody" is how he put it at the time, three years before gay marriage would be legal in Massachusetts, and eight before Connecticut followed suit. Many people associate Cheney more with waterboarding or poorly lit bunkers (or laughing maniacally while waterboarding people in poorly lit bunkers) than with gay rights, but the man has been pretty consistent.
It would happen on a day when I’m running errands and thinking about things other than politics when one of my political heroes says something which shows why I so respect him.
The newly established Peter G. Peterson Foundation today announced its first round of eight grants, among them one to Public Agenda, the opinion research and citizen engagement organization, for $500,000 to expand its Facing Up to the Nation’s Finances public engagement initiative with the two-year project “Students Face Up to the Nation’s Finances” to advance college campus conversations on the United States’ looming fiscal crisis.
As President Obama seeks to steer the Supreme Court in a new direction, what sort of leader should he look for in his first appointee? An unwavering jurist who will articulate a new liberal judicial philosophy? Or a judge who will nudge the court from the center, winning over swing votes?
Normally that would get me accused of “smearing” Barack Obama. During the election, as ABC’s Jack Tapper points out, the Obama campaign was branding anyone suggesting that Obama had a Muslim background as a lying liar. But this time it’s ok given that the person saying it is the White House National Security Adviser.
