The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, November 29, 2004, Page 8, Image 8
THEY SAID IT
“I am bound, you are bound, to everyone on
Page 8 this P'ane* ^ a trail °f six people.”
Monday, November 29, 2004 -six degrees of
& WS < --1 *- y
[thefacebook.com has students
logging on to look up friends]
By MARIA CHARLES
STAFF MEMBER
Second-year marine science student
Sara Powell was so distracted by it, she
almost missed her online registration for
spring classes. Second-year visual
communications student Kim Blair
looks at it every day, and second-year
finance student Sean Healy checks it
three or four times a day. •
And they are not alone.
The newest technological craze,
www.thefacebook.com, has students all
over the nation checking up on old
friends and finding new ones. Last
month, the number of registered users
was more than 500,000, which includes
students at more than 261 colleges and
universities in the United States and
Canada. The service connects students
to high school friends and helps them
make new ones. It’s also, Powell said, “a
very good way to procrastinate.”
The facebook is a social networking
Web site for college students, where
users can post pictures, contact
information and personal descriptions
on a profile. The site then allows users to
search through the various profiles and
invite other users to be their friends.
The link between friends and mutual
friends are identified on the site,
creating an extended social network
between people and between colleges.
Students registered on the site can
browse the profiles of students in their
same dorm, in their classes or from their
high school. To restrict use to college
students and to allow some privacy,
access to the site requires a valid school
e-mail address, and students from
• different schools can only view the
profiles of mutual friends.
Created by Harvard computer
science and psychology student Mark
Zuckerberg, the site was launched in
February when Zuckerberg grew tired of
waiting for the Harvard administration
to post an online directory and crafted
his own. Soon more than half the
Harvard undergraduates had joined in.
Zuckerberg paid $85 of his own
money every month to rent the server. He
realized that other colleges could be added
at no extra cost and expanded access of
the facebook to other Ivy League schools.
Now monthly costs are about $3,000 a
month, but ad revenue, especially from
Google, takes care of the costs.
Columbia, Stanford and Yale all
hosted the facebook by the end of the
month, and other universities were quick
to follow. Students at USC petitioned
for the site to become available by going
to the facebook home page and putting
in requests for the server to include the
university. Furman, Appalachian State
and Alabama are among schools that
recently received access to the site.
Growing rapidly, the facebook has
students hooked.
“It’s addicting,” admitted Blair. “It’s
interesting to be able to keep up with
people you graduated with in high
school and haven’t seen in forever.”
Word of mouth from enthusiastic
users has helped registration at USC
spread. Second-year elementary
education student Laura Conrad was
sent the link to the site, and whe^r she
did not join immediately, Blair sat down
with her “and did it for me,” Conrad
said. Now Conrad has 24 certified
friends and is amassing more.
“I’ve had a lot of people want me to
be their friend that I haven’t talked to in
forever. I think it’s a good way for you
to realize that they’re thinking about
you or saw (your profile) and maybe you
can start talking again,” Conrad said.
Healy uses the site to “keep in touch
with people in my classes.” He said he
had a problem in a statistics class, and a
classmate on the facebook was able to
answer his question.
Healy also used the facebook as a way
to spread the word about his favorite
local band, Rudy.
Users can join and create groups that
connect people through common
interests. Healy started the Rudy Fan
Club group, which now boasts around
20 members.
“We use it to let people know when
shows are and news about the band. It’s
actually pretty useful,” Healy said.
Other groups are more symbolic,
such as Gamecock Students for
Procrastination, Caffeine Addicts,
Clemson Haters, All Nighters
Anonymous and Conan O’Brien Rules
Late Night.
There is also an element of
competition that surrounds the
facebook.
“I know a lot of people who try to
have as many friends as possible,”
Powell said.
“You want to seem interesting to
people you haven’t talked to in a long
time,” Blair said.
Blair said the key to an appealing
profile is to change the picture often.
“The facebook is so addicting and
most people click on their friends and
see if their profiles have been updated,”
Blair said.
Whatever purpose students find for
the facebook, it seems like a trend that
has staying power.
“I don’t know what it is. There is just
something about it. You just have to get
on,” Powell said..
Comments on this story? E-mail
gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc. edu
Black Friday
signals start
for shoppers
By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pour the coffee into a thermos, put
the mittens on and line up before dawn
with hundreds of fellow bargain-hunters.
Those were the marching orders
Friday for families around the country at
the beginning of the holiday shopping
season, with the super-organized arriving
armed with cell phones and detailed
game plans as they snapped up hot gift
items such as portable video players and
flat-screen TVs.
At a Best . Buy store in Plano, Texas,
Martin Clouser stood watch just after 6
a.m. over a shopping cart stufFed with a
printer, television set, a $14 DVD player
and a voucher for a desktop computer.
His wife, Teri, was hunting the aisles for
more gifts.
“It’s like a war plan,” Clouser said.
“She runs in ahead of me, and I get the
cart. She picks out all the good bargains
and carries as much as she can, then
throws it in the cart and moves to the
next station.”
The couple had good reason to be
organized. They arrived at 4 a.m., only
to find several hundred people already in
a line that would snake around the store
and down the block.
Mindy Williams arrived at an
Oklahoma City Wal-Mart fresh from her
12-hour nursing shift at an intensive
care unit. Still wearing hospital scrubs
and a stethoscope, Williams snapped up
a television, a Big Wheel and a few
scooters before mid-morning.
“It’s kind of exciting to see if you can
get it all done in a day,” Williams said.
“It’s the challenge.”
Despite ' freezing temperatures in
some places, and huge crowds
everywhere, shoppers came armed with
lists, credit cards and precise game plans.
They created shortages already in some
popular gadget gifts.
Several merchants, including Toys R
Us, KB Toys and Sears, reported that
traffic was as least as good as last year.
Some stores, like Toys R Us, opened
their doors even earlier than planned to
accommodate the hordes of shoppers
who were waiting in line before dawn.
At the flagship Toys R Us store in
New York’s Times Square, giant poster
images of SpongeBob SquarePants and
“The Incredibles” loomed over shoppers,
and seats on the indoor Ferris wheel were
hard to come by.
The company’s U.S. president, John
Barbour, said his store, and toys in
general, are usually protected from
dramatic economic fluctuations.
“What we find with parents is that
they might cut back, but rarely are they
going to cut back on their kids,” he said,
♦ Please see FRIDAY, page 9
COURTESY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Shoppers make their way through a bottleneck as they enter a Target
Store in Nashville, Tenn., at 6 a.m. on Friday.
MOVIE REVIEW
‘Christmas With the Kranks’
should have skipped theaters
“Christmas With the Kranks”
Starring Tim Allen and Jamie
Lee Curtis
★ out of ☆☆☆☆☆
By MARJORIE RIDDLE
THE GAMECOCK
“Christmas with the Kranks" brings
John Grisham’s “Skipping Christmas”
to the big screen by boring viewers with
stale humor and an unoriginal, yet
subtly touching ending.
Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis play
the Kranks, a couple who decide to skip
Christmas because their only daughter,
Blair, is spending the holidays in South
America with the Peace Corps.
Normally the Kranks host a
Christmas Eve party for all of their
friends and neighbors and fully
decorate their home, but with Blair
away for the holidays, Luther Krank
convinces his wife to instead take a
Caribbean cruise.
Seemingly a good plan, their
neighbors take offense to their
Christmas boycott and, with extreme
antics, attempt to force the Christmas
spirit on the Kranks. As the couple gear
up for tropical weather with ridiculous
bathing suits and tanning bed
catastrophes, their neighbors make
skipping Christmas nearly impossible.
Blair calls on Christmas Eve to tell
her parents she will be coming home
the next day and will be bringing her
new fiance, leaving the Kranks to enact
their beloved Christmas traditions in
mere hours.
The previews for this film promise
great comedy, but they’re full of the
only scenes that are actually funny; the
restj of “Christmas” presents otherwise
brilliant comedic actors, including Dan
Aykroyd, as dry and downright
I—MU 1 I Ml Ii Ii ill'lll|||
SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK
Jamie Lee Curtis stars in “Christmas with the Kranks,” which is
based on John Grisham’s novel “Skipping Christmas.”
obnoxious. Allen and Curtis are
certainly capable of much more, but it
seems the problem is the script, not their
acting.
Luther Krank represents Scrooge
throughout the film, and his change of
heart would impress viewers if only they
couldn’t predict the overly corny
sentimentality.
The most bothersome aspect of
“Christmas with the Kranks” is the
.unrealistic depiction of the relationships
between the neighbors. While the
perfect neighborhood would contain
neighbors who do everything together
and still uphold a 1950s closeness, but
the movie loses its credibility in the
emphatic portrayal of the perfect
neighborhood where every house has a
snowman atop its roof and lights
decorating its exterior. Neighborhoods
simply jdo not exist where everyone
would pull together and share in their
Christmas spirit, although the
implication for such togetherness is
somewhat appealing.
As improbable as the neighborly
bonds are, moviegoers will long for the
kind of neighbors the Kranks have and,
in retrospect, will come away with a
deepened appreciation for the memories
Christmas invokes.
“Christmas with the Kranks”
almost redeems itself with its
surprisingly endearing conclusion, but
even this falls short of its potential.
The ending suddenly changes the tone
of the movie, leaving viewers feeling
slightly more inclined to embrace the
spirit of the season but still
disappointed there isn’t more
substance to this shallow film.
If viewers want an entertaining
Christmas movie to see for the holidays,
they should look elsewhere.
-y
Comments oh this story? E-mail
gamecockfeatures@gwm.sc. edu
Older, wiser Krauss
relates to sad songs
By JOHN GEROME
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For many
entertainers, growing older is a liability,
and age is best kept a secret.
Not Alison Krauss.
The 33-year-old says the years help
deepen the well she draws from to sing
about other people’s lives.
“I think the older I get the more I’m
able to relate to the songs I’m singing,”
she says. “I’ve been doing this since I
was a teenager, and I had a very nice
childhood. You’re not going to sound
like you’ve lived much if you haven’t.”
On Tuesday, she and her bluegrass
band Union Station released their latest
album, “Lonely Runs Both Ways.”
Krauss describes it as their most
emotional work yet, with songs that
explore transition (“Goodbye Is All We
Have”), lost love and loneliness
(“Borderline”) and spirituality (“A
Living Prayer”).
Her somber, breathy vocals come
across like a gray November day on the
Gillian Welch/David Rawlings
composition “Wouldn’t Be So Bad”
and on other ballads like “Doesn’t
Have to Be This Way” and “If I Didn’t
Know Any Better.”
The album’s tide is taken from the
lyrics to “Borderline,” and it sets the
tone: “So you’re on your own / Looking
down the road / That goes only by one
name / And you don’t need the signs /
To see lonely still runs both ways.”
Krauss’ crack band keep things from
getting too morose. There’s the up
tempo Jerry Douglas-penned
instrumental “Unionhouse Branch”
and Dan Tyminski’s twangy delivery
on covers of Woody Guthrie’s
“Pastures of Plentw’ and Del
McCoury’s “Rain, Rain Go Away.”
Ron Block sings on the self-penned “I
COURTESY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Alison Krauss is the lead singer for the Union Station, which
released their album “Lonely Runs Both Ways" Tuesday.
Don’t Have to Live this Way.”
Four of the 15 songs were written
by Krauss’ friend Robert Lee
Castleman, a former truck driver whose
“The Lucky One,” “Let Me Touch You
for Awhile,” and “Forget About It”
were previously popularized by Krauss.
“They all sound like classics but
they don’t sound like anything else,
which doesn’t make any sense,” Krauss
said of Castleman’s work. “Bht the next
time the chorus comes around you
know it. And you think you’ve known
it your whole life.”
Krauss spoke at her management
office while her 5-year-old son, Sam,
played in the next room. She was dressed
casually in denim overalls and a T-shirt
with her hair pulled up and wearing little
makeup — more like a busy mom than a
superstar singer who’s won more
Grammys than any female artist. ,
♦ Please see KRAUSS, page 9