Born free
August 24, 2007
Someone finally managed to break the lock that ties the iPhone to AT&T’s network.
The New Jersey teenager confirmed to the AP this morning that he was using his iPhone on T-Mobile’s network, the only other major U.S. carrier that’s compatible with iPhone technology.
-JACKIE SAUTER, Daily Record Multimedia Editor
Sphere: Related ContentNot just at Christmas
August 24, 2007
Karen Buckelew reported today on the finances of the Salvation Army’s Baltimore Area Command, which focuses its charitable efforts on area schoolchildren, the homeless and disaster relief.
From the story:
It also is a charity that has been stretching its resources to meet evolving needs. Its $504,802 deficit for fiscal 2006 was a 70 percent jump over the previous year’s shortfall.
The growing deficit was a wake-up call for administrative cuts, said Lafeea Watson, development coordinator for the Baltimore Salvation Army. “There was some belt-tightening,” said Watson.
During the past year, the organization has cut programs, closed its Highlandtown Boys and Girls Club and turned over management of its residential camp in Monkton. It has replaced paid contractors for maintenance and informational technology services with volunteers. It has secured corporate grants for services that once taxed its operating budget.
Almost 700 children participated in the Boys and Girls Clubs in Middle River, Glen Burnie and South Baltimore last year. Operating the Glen Burnie club costs just over $11 per child per day during the academic school year.
Many of us attended after-school programs or clubs or visited rec centers as youth. For me, it was Longwood Recreation Center in Brookeville, MD.
What about you - any memories from after-school programs to share?
Above: Wanda Newton, executive director of the Salvation Army Baltimore Area Command Boys and Girls Clubs, plays with 5-year-old Mikayla Gonzalez at the club in Glen Burnie.
-JACKIE SAUTER, Daily Record Multimedia Editor
Sphere: Related ContentRemembering the man who shot George Wallace
August 23, 2007
Word that Arthur H. Bremer likely will be freed from a Maryland prison in a few months brought a rush of memory to me Thursday - as one of the handful of reporters who saw him on the fateful day in May 1972 after he shot Democratic presidential candidate George C. Wallace on the Laurel Shopping Center parking lot.
I was working in the Baltimore Sun newsroom amid the commotion wrought by one of the rare events big enough to make Maryland the center of the media universe, but not involved in the immediate coverage of the story. When my shift ended in late evening, I found my way into the game wearing another hat – as a paid-by-the-story local stringer for the British news agency Reuters.
With Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor, hospitalized in critical condition, federal authorities were coy about where Bremer was being held and when and where he would be hauled before a U.S. magistrate for an initial court appearance. The Sun’s federal court reporter had been assured it would be the next morning, perhaps in Hyattsville.
I joined a small media stakeout at the old federal courthouse, in Baltimore’s then-main post office on Calvert Street, where the hapless Bremer – bloodied and bruised from his pummeling in the crowd after shooting Wallace – arrived amid tight security for an unannounced and brief late-night appearance.
Few events in my 40 years at The Sun could rival the spotlight that Bremer’s crazed act brought to this area. I can remember the day in 1968 that Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon named Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew as his running mate (phones at the city desk, which I was answering, rang off the hook with the question, “Spiro Who?”), and the story’s other bookend in 1973 when Agnew unexpectedly turned up in that same Baltimore courthouse as Bremer to resign the vice presidency and pleaded no contest to tax evasion (and me, sitting back around the fifth row, about to earn a big raise from Reuters).
But Bremer was really my first big-time story, if only through a piece of the action. Wallace awoke from surgery paralyzed for life from a bullet in his spine, but for a day politically triumphant after winning Maryland’s Democratic presidential primary. He died in 1998.
Thirty-five years after the shooting, now recently retired from The Sun, I would love to chat up that unrepentant sad-sack loser Bremer – who has declined interview requests and done his best to avoid any spotlight. Many aspects of his life before the shooting have emerged, adding up to a portrait of a socially and sexually awkward outcast who stalked Nixon before turning his gun on Wallace.
Is he still crazy after all these years? Long denied parole, he remains an enigma.
But with credits for good behavior behind bars, he will soon walk among us again.
-DAVID ETTLIN, Temporary Assistant Business Editor
Sphere: Related ContentIt’s like Netflix, only it’s books
August 23, 2007
Do you think the price of books has grown prohibitive? Is $25 or $30 too much for the latest James Patterson or Dan Brown thriller?
BookSwim.com, a Web site now in beta, hopes there are plenty of people who feel that way. The company is looking to take the Netflix model of movie rentals and apply it to the world of books. Subscribers can rent books, keep them as long as they want, and return them as often as their plan allows.
Like Netflix, users line books up in queue for shipping depending on the plan. Also like Netflix, there is no charge to ship or return the books. The site says it has more than 150,000 titles in its library.
Plans start at $19.99 per month for the company’s three-at-a-time option. As an example of what they have, BookSwim’s top rentals are:
1. A Thousand Splendid Suns
2. Nineteen Minutes: A novel
3. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
4. Bright Lights, Big Ass: A Self-Indulgent, Surly, Ex-Sorority Girl’s Guide to Why it Often Sucks in the City, or Who are These Idiots and Why Do They All Live Next Door to Me?
5. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel
Bookswim might just be on to something. The site was pretty much shut down Wednesday afternoon due largely to high traffic in the wake of blog and media attention like a mention on Lifehacker.com and a write-up at C/net’s Webware site.
—BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor
Sphere: Related ContentThe Bow Tie Club for Law
August 23, 2007
Awhile back, the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog created the Bow Tie Club, an exclusive society made up of top lawyers, judges, etc. who have made the bow tie their own.
Following in Law Blog maestro Peter Lattman’s footsteps, let’s get some nominations in the comments section for a Maryland chapter of the Bow Tie Club.
There are a few obvious ones already, namely everyone’s favorite sartorially gifted state court chief judge, Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert M. Bell (pictured at right with Fred Godman of The Daily Record). The chief judge even presented his Supreme Court counterpart, Chief Justice John Roberts, with a Maryland flag bow tie when Roberts spoke at the Maryland Judicial Conference last year. (Roberts accepted the gift and told Bell he’d wear it “on an appropriate occasion.” No word on whether that occasion ever presented itself.)
Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Larry Daniels should also be inducted into the club. Real estate attorney Ronald P. Fish, who passed away in June, would have made a wonderful charter member; when my colleague Brendan Kearney interviewed his friends and associates for an obituary (subscriber-only link), they told him that Fish was famous for his extensive bow tie collection, even possessing one in the shape of a fish.
The Daily Record’s own “Raising the Bar” columnist Paul Mark Sandler wrote (subscriber-only link) a few months ago that “[m]any lawyers avoid bow ties based on the belief that juries will not trust someone wearing a bow tie, but those who argue appellate cases or non-jury trials have no hesitation to wear them.” Is this true? Do any trial lawyers out there flout the conventional wisdom and wear that professorial accessory with pride before a jury?
Who else should be a part of our Maryland chapter?
-CARYN TAMBER, Daily Record Legal Affairs Reporter
Sphere: Related ContentTo buy, or not to buy?
August 23, 2007
As problems with the housing markets persist and credit standards tighten, automobile showrooms are starting to feel the crunch.
Tom Markides, owner of Prestige Imports in Randallstown, said in a story in Thursday’s Daily Record that his dealership, which sells higher-end used cars such as Lexus and Mercedes, has always had a good mix of customers with both good and bad credit. But with banks tightening their standards, it has become more difficult to get customers financed. Borderline customers are finding it extremely difficult to get car loans, and it’s even getting tough for customers with perfect credit or significant down payments to get financed, he said.
So, tell us, are you going to put off buying a new car or are you going to try and cash in on dealers’ desperation to move inventory?
Let us know.
-LOUIS LLOVIO, Daily Record Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentBlogs need controversy
August 22, 2007
I’ve decided the Blogosphere is a lonely place and maybe what makes a good blog posting is a little controversy.
The world of rap music is familiar with controversy. Take the reported feud between rappers Kanye West and 50 cent (pictured at bottom) regarding whose latest album will do bigger sales volume during the first week of release. That kind of public debate is guaranteed to generate some media buzz.
Better yet, what if businessmen followed the same model for their business competition? Suppose Under Armour Inc., founder Kevin Plank (top) said, “If my third quarter profits in athletic shoes aren’t greater than Nike’s, I’m going to get out of this athletic footwear business”?
I bet that would generate some media buzz. It might even make covering Baltimore businesses a little more exciting and unpredictable. Plus, it would definitely generate some more traffic to my blog posts.
My fingers are crossed. I’m ready, Kanye and 50. And maybe, Under Armour or some other Baltimore company could add to the mix. I’m still waiting for those third quarter profit results.
-TODD ZIMMERMAN, Presentation Editor
For love or money
August 22, 2007
Can’t buy me love?
A poll of the nation’s youth by the Associated Press and MTV has found that today’s young people ages 13 to 24 rank money nowhere near the top of the list of things that make them happiest.
Instead, friends and family are rated tops, followed by God, pets and favorite pastimes. But at the same time, poll respondents say money can help them find happiness and the lack of money can cause unhappiness in their lives.
Do these findings ring true for young people you know? And what’s the bottom line for you on love and money? Let us know.
-TOM LINTHICUM, Executive Editor
Sphere: Related ContentTrouble brewing
August 22, 2007
The attorneys general of Maryland and 29 other places have asked federal regulators to crack down on companies that sell alcohol-and-caffeine blends, claiming their ads target young people and make questionable health claims. (AP, “Attorneys general target drinks that mix alcohol with caffeine”; The Daily Record, Aug. 22).
The companies are using popular nonalcoholic “energy drinks” as a springboard to their alcohol-containing products, one AG claims. “Beverage companies are unconscionably appealing to young drinkers with claims about the stimulating properties of alcoholic energy drinks,” Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers said.
The companies say the products — Miller Brewing Co.’s Sparks and Sparks Plus; Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Extra; and Charge Beverages’ Liquid Charge and Liquid Core drinks — are simply malt beverages with caffeine, which comply with all federal requirements.
Is the beverage industry preying on under-age drinkers, holding out the promise of a beer buzz with an edge? Is an ad that replaces a nuclear power plant’s tower with a can of Liquid Charge making a health claim? Are imbibers of any age likely to think that adding caffeine to alcohol turns it into a health drink?
What do you think?
-BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor, Law
Sphere: Related ContentThe baddest of the bad bosses
August 21, 2007
One of the worst bosses in the country could be looking over your shoulder right now.
The unnamed scoundrel is somewhere in Maryland, according to the just-completed “My Bad Boss Contest” from Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
“A Miscarriage of Justice” tells the story of a Maryland woman who lost her pregnancy, took a week off from work and returned to increased hours and zero sympathy.
“I come back to work to a boss whose entire demeanor has changed. He actually says to me, with a sneer, ‘Well, I hope you had some good time off.” Yeah, miscarriages are great, man. Can’t wait to do it again sometime. Can you believe that?”
All that’s missing is a pale horse and three equally unpleasant buddies.
The story doesn’t get any better from there. And it was only one of the six semi-finalists. Imagine how bad the others must be.
Rallying against workplace Napoleons seems to be a popular subject at the moment. The Wall Street Journal ran a column Tuesday on the difficulty of navigating the bitter demeanors of coworkers with even the smallest bit of power. Several states are even considering legislation that would let employees sue for “an abusive work environment,” according to the Los Angeles Times. (Free registration)
The Times piece raises an interesting question: are bosses really getting worse, or are today’s employees simply less tolerant of abuse? Let us know what you think.
And maybe you’re sitting there wishing you’d known about the “My Bad Boss Contest.” If so, here’s the perfect place for an anonymous rant, though please omit names of bosses and places of work. And if any of the posted stories seem familiar, now would be a good time to run, because that boss looking over your shoulder is probably about to explode.
-JOE BACCHUS, Daily Record Web Specialist
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