Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
Gary Weiss campaigns against naked short selling, and takes a dim view of much financial journalism. Weiss singled out Bear Stearns in his criticism, and his comments on anti-naked-shorting activists provoked threats. "Ayn Rand Nation" (2012) is an analysis of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and its influence on the political and economic environment in the United States. George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, argues that Weiss shows in the book that Rand 'has become to the new right what Karl Marx once was to the left: a demigod at the head of a chiliastic cult.' Gary Weiss Gary Weiss is an