Continued on page 3

YUKON DAMOV

JAMAIAS DACOSTA

MNRUPE VIRK

Continued on page 2

Continued on page 3

September 30, 2010University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly Vol. XXXIII N0. 3

page 8 page 4The social nitwit A carpe noctem guide to Nuit Blanche

the newspaper

the artsthe backpage

Proposed changes to A&S meet opposition

at town halls

Students reacted against cuts made to A&S at two town halls held over the past week.

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane,

it’s...anornithopter!

University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) PhD student Todd Reichert has recently become kind of a big deal, especially in the world of aeronautical engineering.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of international interviews and media cover-age, making headlines in every major media outlet worldwide. The big deal is Reichert’s recent triumph: the world’s fi rst fully functional, human powered or-nithopter, which Reichert and his team have dubbed “Snow-bird.”

What exactly is an orni-thopter, you may be wonder-ing? According to Reichert, it is a lightweight aircraft that takes fl ight just as a bird would: through the fl apping of wings.

Reichert began his project four years ago under the super-vision of Dr. James DeLaurier, Professor Emeritus at UTIAS. “Dr. D,” as he is affectionately known amongst his students, established a research team in the 1970s that eventually led to

Making LOVE @ UT

Given the daunting size of U of T’s student body, most students fi nd asking for lecture notes a challenge, let alone fi nding “the one” on campus. Despite this, the students behind Love@UT believe they have the solution to this problem.

Love@UT is a brand new on-line dating service designed to help U of T students in meet-ing new people, starting a new relationship, or simply making friends. The brainchild of Joey Nodalo, Matthew Saunders,

Samantha Joel, Andrew Danks and Lori Lee, Love@UT seeks to make campus a “more friendly and romantic place.”

“The U of T student body is so large that it creates a barrier for students to be able to fi nd oth-ers with whom they can develop a meaningful connection” ex-plains Danks. “In addition, we all have assignments, tests, and perhaps part-time jobs which leaves little room for building a social life.”

Unlike other online dating sites, which match individuals up using automated algorithms,

Love@UT puts the work in the hands of the students. Students create profi les for themselves containing information regard-ing their academics, their ap-pearance and their lifestyle. In addition, they can also write up little blurbs to provide more personalized information about themselves.

Other students can search these profi les by fi ltering a num-ber of properties (such as pro-gram of study, campus, drink-ing habits, hair colour, etc) and

By this time next year, the Fac-ulty of Arts and Science may ex-perience considerable changes if major planks of its existing Academic Plan are implement-ed.

This past week, two town halls were held as part of a pub-lic consultation process. There was broad opposition expressed toward the plan, including con-cerns surrounding the consulta-tion process itself, as well as the economic rationale underpin-ning the plan.

Before an almost-full OISE auditorium, Meric Gertler, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, made a short presenta-tion before handling questions from concerned parties. In his responses and by extending the consultation process into next summer, the Dean showed a willingness to compromise on parts of the Plan that were most controversial. Such a disposi-tion, combined with hefty op-

The lust-tron says it all.

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Ornithoptercont’d from page 1

Art DeskCara SabatiniMnrupe Virk

2 September 30, 2010

the newspaperEditor-in-Chief

Helene Goderis

Web EditorJerry Saskatchewan

ContributorsDave Bell, Dan Christensen, Jamaias DaCosta, Yukon Damov, Andrew Gyorkos, Cara Sabatini,

Mnrupe Virk, Aaron Zack

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what DeLaurier refers to as “the Grandfather of the Snowbird” – the world’s first, successful radio controlled ornithopter flight in 1991, and later in 2006, a powered, piloted ornithopter using a small engine from a model airplane.

It was this groundwork that made it possible for Reichert and his team to develop the world’s first human powered ornithopter. “Working in Dr. D’s lab, the dream was always there. Simulations showed that it would be possible.”

DeLaurier agrees, “A student a few years back did a study with positive results. I indeed felt the distinct possibility of human powered ornithopter flight. I knew that Todd was motivated and athletically capable.”

The Snowbird took flight on August 2nd at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, On-tario. One of the biggest chal-lenges was getting it off the ground. “We used a smart car, towing the Snowbird until it lifted off. During the 20 second flight, when [Reichert] flew over us you could literally hear him

grunting as he was [operating the ornithopter].” DeLaurier describes, adding that Reichert had literally trained for months just to be able to do the 20 sec-ond flight.

Although the ornithopter weighs in at a mere 94 lbs, the wing span is 105 feet, similar to that of a Boeing 737, and of course, the fuel is strictly hu-man based. Reichert had to lose 18 lbs in addition to his rigor-ous training to be able to take flight.

When asked what kind of practical use the ornithopter could have, DeLaurier replied, “I’m not sure that this will give rise to flocks of ornithopters taking to the skies anytime soon...however it is an incred-ibly useful educational tool as it extends the knowledge of un-steady aerodynamics and non-linear structural analysis.”

Both Reichert and DeLaurier also agree that the Snowbird is monumental in the sense that it is “the completion of the last of aviation firsts.” Reichert elabo-rates, “This is what man has al-ways dreamed of doing. We’ve been able to go to the moon and back, but not fly like a bird. Now we can.”

DeLaurier notes that the success of the Snowbird orni-thopter project was also in part due to the ability of the project to attract capable volunteers. In particular, a father-son team who happened upon the Snow-

bird project in the summer of 2009, quite by fluke.

Robert Dueck and his high school aged son Carson were visiting from Vancouver, and had initially stopped by the UTIAS building in hopes of getting a look at Dr. DeLau-rier’s 2006 ornithopter, known as “The Great Flapper.” Upon suggestion, they instead made a trip to the Snowbird base in Tottenham, Ontario, where Re-ichert and his team were toiling away. The two ended up staying on for the rest of the summer, as well as returning this sum-mer and were an integral part of the volunteer team.

When asked about the ex-perience of being part of this monumental project, the senior Dueck says: “It was exhilarating to be part of the project and to see the team through its pro-duction phase. The success as a possible aviation first is an added bonus…”

Reichert credits Dueck’s abil-

ity to streamline solutions saved days of work. “There were over 100 wooden ribs to make for the wings…a painstaking process. With each wing Robert Dueck was able to come up with solu-tions to improve the time and energy spent on each rib.”

The Snowbird team, dubbed “the five amigos,” consists of Reichert, along with another U of T Engineering Grad student Cameron Robertson who played the role of chief structural engi-neer, the Dueck father and son team and of course, DeLaurier.

Reichert says he is looking forward to finishing his PhD and has many ideas, as well as options due to the success of the aircraft, including the pos-sibility of applying some of the engineering to aerodynamic bi-cycles. Dr. DeLaurier says of his student’s success, “For a Profes-sor, students are often akin to academic sons and daughters. It was a proud moment, such a beautiful and amazing day.”

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“When [Reichert] flew over us you

could literally hear him grunting as he was [operating the

ornithopter]”-Dr. DeLaurier

Reichert takes the ornithopter out for a spin.

A&Scont’d from page 1

3September 30, 2010 the news

position, could suggest that the Plan will not be implemented as it currently stands.

The Faculty’s Academic Plan for 2010-15 was released this past summer. The impe-tus for the Plan was last year’s $22M struc-tural defi cit (expenditures outstripped revenue) and a $60M cumulative defi cit. In order to balance its fi nances, the Fac-ulty embarked on a strategic, rather than across-the-board, reconfi guration of the Faculty itself to fi nd savings and free up funds for specifi c goals regarding ‘the stu-dent experience.’

“The plan is largely about redirecting resources to improving the student expe-rience,” says Meric Gertler, Dean of the Faculty. “For example, we want to be able to increase international opportunities for students, service learning, introduce fi rst-year multidisciplinary Big Ideas courses and increase counseling support in the college registrar offi ces.”

The contentious issues in the plan in-volve restructuring within the Faculty. It proposes the creation of a School of Lan-guages and Literatures that would involve disestablishing the departments of East Asian Studies, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Italian Studies, Slavic Lan-guages and Literatures, Spanish and Por-tuguese, and the Centre for Comparative Literature while amalgamating them into the school. The acclaimed and world-re-nowned Joint Centre for Ethics would also cease to exist. Ostensibly, this would de-crease the overhead administration costs.

“No faculty will be forced to move to an-other unit against their will. And it bears repeating: there are no proposals to cut undergraduate programs in the plan,” in-sists Gertler.

These assurances haven’t assuaged the affected parties.

“There are a number of mysterious things about it,” said Thomas Keirstad, head of the Department of East Asian Studies, which the Dean has promised will remain intact as a unit, perhaps as a Department. “There is a mismatch between the context that we’re given, which is principally about big budget defi cits and what appears to be fairly modest savings in terms of what’s in the Plan. It might be that the Dean has much more modest goals from the various amalgamations or consolidation or cancel-lation of units in the order of a couple mil-lion dollars rather than the $22M that he keeps saying is the structural defi cit.”

The defi cit was $22M for 2009-10, but by the end of 2010-11 it is expected to be a more modest $14M, according to a memo that Dean Gertler sent to the faculty two months before the Academic Plan was re-leased. Furthermore, the memo states that the year after that, a $2.5M surplus is ex-pected. This information undermines the argument presented in the Plan that it is designed to shrink the structural defi cit.

Other concerns question the consulta-tion process, or lack thereof. A Strategic

Planning Committee (SPC) consisting of mem-bers of the Faculty was set up to direct the plan-ning process. They asked for each unit in the Fac-ulty to submit academic plans. These plans were then analysed by the SPC and used to create the Academic Plan.

“The lack of real consultation from students, as well as staff, led directly to bad ideas like the proposed School,” said Gavin Nowlan, president of Arts and Science Students’ Union. No student was on the committee.

“We made a submission and then the SPC met over the summer and then came out and said ‘this is happening’ and things began to be implement-ed. One of the centres was told that they were not going to be around next year,” said Adam Awad, president of the University of Toronto Students’ Union. Hints of a stringent top-down approach leave many student leaders unsettled.

The most offi cial opposition concerning the consultation process has come from the U of T Faculty Association, which has fi led a grievance with the University.

The ultimate outcome of the plan is still to be determined as consultation between the adminis-tration and affected groups are ongoing.

then scanning through the resulting pro-fi les. If a profi le of interest pops up, they simply send a message and see where the budding interaction go.

Given the size of Love@UT’s user base already, students will have a lot to choose from. There are already 196 us-ers signed up, with “new users signing up every day” according to creators.

Contrary to the idea presented by the overfi lled reading rooms at Robarts near closing, university does not have to be just about studying. In fact, university can be just as much about meeting new people, fi nding new relationships and making new friends as it is about poorly cited essays and piles of problem sets.

Finding LOVE@UT just got a whole lot easiercont’d from page 1

Those passing through the University af-ter sunset this Saturday may find them-selves in a bit of a squeeze. Originally performed in 1977, Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia involves a narrow door-way flanked by two performers...in the buff. The space between the nude per-formers is tight, forcing viewers to turn sideways, inevitably choosing one per-former to face. The participants have already started tweaking their diet and exercise regimes in preparation for the project in which visitors literally pen-etrate the “physically and emotionally intimate space between the performers,” says Program Coordinator Rebecca Gim-mi.

The project is part of this weekend’s Nuit Blanche exhibition, One at a time, concurrently curated by the University’s

Art Centre and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. The exhibit revolves around the means and procedure of measurement. Says Gimmi: “Each project reflects how one creates units of measurement to manage information on a daily basis.”

One measurable work of art is that of Gerald Ferguson’s, by which viewers can see how large of a pile one million pen-nies produce. Being quite the logistical feat, works such as Ferguson’s are not typically viewed in an institutional set-ting.

Gimmi sees the exhibition as a chance for students to experience “some of the greatest hits of conceptual art that are not often staged in institutions.” A large part of the exhibition consists of the re-imag-ining and re-installation of prominent conceptual artwork curated by Barbara

4 September 30, 2010the arts

All night long ...

AuroraZone A #5273 Bloor St. West

City dwellers will forget the lack of trees in town as they walk through a forest of light. Sensors will track visitors’ movements through the space, projecting streams of light from their individual locations. A rippling effect will be produced as the streams ema-nate from each visitor. As individual ripples collide, a complex pattern of light forms. The project gives Torontonians a chance to not only see the Northern Lights, but also to tangibly experience them. In a place where spotting a star is an unusual delight, walking through Aurora is not to be missed. Phillip Beesley’s work is located in the atrium bordering the Royal Conservatory of Music.-CARA SABATINI

Whimsical Wabi-sabiPresented by Bata Shoe Museum and Unincorporated Artist CollectiveZone A #15327 Bloor Street West

The Bata Shoe Museum is transformed into a garden of giant orbs – made of paper. Immense origami spheres constructed of hundreds of pieces of paper, folded thou-sands of times, that will be illuminated throughout the entire museum. The installa-tion’s focus on the spherical form is meant to mirror the natural beauty of symmetry. The project draws its inspiration from the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-sabi, which stresses minimalism, imperfection and the ephemeral. It brings to life the elements that define the night as Nuit Blanche: a temporal exhibition of beauty.-CARA SABATINI

Future CityPresented by the Gardiner Museum, Diaspora Dialogues and the Humber School of Creative and Performing ArtsZone A #19111 Queen’s Park

On Nuit Blanche, the Gardiner Museum invites Torontonians to experience an al-ternate future for Toronto, in which the public city square belongs to artists and as a result, calls for different rules of civic engagement.

Future City will be a multimedia installation involving sculpture, performance art, and poetry. In the artist-created city, civic responsibility requires that you “give a

Carpe noctemA guide to Nuit Blanche

on campus and beyond

Fischer, Executive Director and Chief Cu-rator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. According to Gimmi, the components of One at a time have the intentional effect of questioning “the academic and admin-istrative organization of institutions such as universities and art galleries.”

A key part of the exhibition relies on student involvement. Flags are to be in-stalled to represent the birthplaces of U of T students and staff, recorded by survey. This work of Danish artist, Jens Hanning, showcases the multicultural-ism of the school, displaying “a micro-cosm of the ever-growing diversity of the city of Toronto itself,” says Gimmi.

The Or-gasm Energy chart requires participants

to be even more intimately involved as they are asked to record the number and “energy level” of orgasms over a certain amount of time. Viewers of the install-ment will even be provided with their very own charts – so they can continue the artwork at home.

Something even hotter will be served by the city’s own artist and “Barchitect,” Dean Baldwin, as he hosts the bar and grill for the evening – or rather all night. In the Hart House courtyard, food and al-cohol will be available until 4 am. A drink – or two – might ease the passage back through Abramovic’s Imponderabilia.

5September 30, 2010 the arts

One at a time

by Cara Sabatini

Illustration by Dave Bell

little art in order to get a little art.”Future City is organized by Diaspora Dialogues, the Humber School of Creative

and Performing Arts and the Gardiner Museum, each bringing their own concept to the installation. In the interactive exhibit, participants add to the alternative public city square, where artists call the shots.

Diaspora Dialogues, a diverse organization of Toronto writers, have organized a “fused glass poetry performance,” called Nice Bumping into You. The piece is the creation of spoken word artist Heather Hermant and glass artist Melina Young. Par-ticipants add to an emerging dialogue using vibrant fused glass tiles posted on a large glowing light table.

The Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts will be contributing four “es-pecially designed and constructed wave-like installations” under the title of Planet Kindergarten. The installations seek to recapture the fun and creativity character-istic of childhood. Groups of Humber students along with professional artists and musicians will provide short improvised and interactive scenarios featuring shad-ows, music, fi lm, and laughter in order to create Planet Kindergarten.

The Gardiner Museum’s contribution to the Future City is an exhibit entitled, Face of Toronto. Organized by artist, Jim Hake, Face of Toronto is a unique instal-lation seeking to create a ceramic mosaic from portrait photographs collected over the course of the night. Members of the public may have their portraits taken in or-der to be a part of the fi nal product. The fi nal piece will be exhibited at the Gardiner in December.

As Canada’s only museum of ceramic art, the Gardiner Museum promises to pres-ent a display as unique as its mandate for Nuit Blanche. The Gardiner Museum is located at 111 Queen’s Park, right across from the Royal Ontario Museum.-MNRUPE VIRK

“El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa”Presented by the ROM and the Institute for Contemporary CultureZone A #30

Nuit Blanche will see the world premier of the fi rst career retrospective of interna-tionally renowned Ghanian artist El Anatsui at the Royal Ontario Museum. His fi rst solo show in Canada, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa will span four decades of work from the artist and feature a vast array of media.

El Anatsui is one of the most dynamic, infl uential, and culturally signifi cant con-temporary artists from Africa. He is most famous for his incorporation of found ob-jects and everyday materials in order to create works evoking both Africa’s colonial past and the postcolonial present.

Among the pieces within the exhibit will be El Anatsui’s stunning metallic tapes-tries. Created from metal bottle caps that have been fl attened, folded or twisted and then stitched together with copper wire, the massive tapestries recall traditional Ghanian kente textiles.

The exhibit will also include gestural acrylic and ink paintings that have never before been exhibited outside Nigeria, where the artist has been teaching since 1975. El Anatsui draws on both Ghanian and Nigerian cultural references and motifs to create these works.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote To You About Africa features 63 pieces includ-ing wood and metal scuptures, ceramics, paintings, and drawings. Visitors will be able to see the development of El Anatsui’s ideas over the past four decades and be drawn into his thought-provoking and stimulating discussion of Africa’s complex histories, cultural themes, and social issues. -MNRUPE VIRK

6 September 30, 2010the inside

University of Ottawa Graduate Studies

Explore with Canada’s leading researchers.

»uOttawa at the University of Toronto – St. George Campus

Visit us at the University of Toronto (St. George) Graduate and Professional Schools Fair on October 4, 2010.

Your next step starts

here.

It used to be that talking to your-self was a sign of craziness, but now it turns out that it might just be a rather healthy prac-tice. New research from UTSC, headed by PhD candidate Alexa Tullet and Associate Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, is demonstrating how using inner voices can lead to better self-

control.“We essentially had partici-

pants complete a classic self-control exercise - the Go/No-Go task - while we attempted to block their inner voice,” ex-plains Alexa Tullet. “During the Go/No-Go task, participants saw symbols that indicated that they should either press a but-ton or refrain from pressing the button. The "Go" (press) trials were more common than the

"No-Go" (don't press) trials, so the impulsive response became pressing the button.”

Subjects had the luxury of using their 'inner voice' during these trials, as they were only focused on a single simple ex-ercise free of distractions. “To block the inner voice, we had people complete the Go/No-Go task while they repeatedly said the word "computer," thereby preventing them from talking

to themselves in their heads,” continues Tullet. “As a control, we had participants do the Go/No-Go task a second time, but this time they repeatedly drew circles.”

“Drawing circles was also dis-tracting - like saying the word 'computer' repeatedly - but does not occupy the inner voice. What we found was that occu-pying the inner voice caused people to act more impulsively - to press the button more - rela-tive to the control condition.”

It would seem that the aver-age mind is only able to use one voice, either the 'inner' or 'outer'

one, effectively at a time. When the internal monologue is inter-rupted with external dialogue, full control over the words and actions of that person are com-promised.

“Situations where we are constantly talking make it dif-fi cult or impossible to use the inner voice and may have con-sequences for our self-control as a result,” concluded Tullet. “Being at a dinner party, for ex-ample, might result in us eating much more food (or drinking much more alcohol) than we would have if we were monitor-ing our actions.”

Science

ANDREW GYORKOS

Inner voices not so bad after all

YOUR AD HEREAdvertise with the newspaper for the most competitive rates on campus!

email: ads@thenewspaper.ca

the crossword the clues

AN

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EW

GY

OR

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S

7September 30, 2010 the diversions

Across

5. Sags7. Unique9. Run away10. Not true12. Throw out (as a legislative bill)13. “The Book of ___” (2010 Movie)14. Common video fi le codec15. Straight to the point18. Tuck away for future use19. “___ facto”20. Desktop shortcut21. Cottage, in French22. Soil24. Bullets26. Fire (as a weapon)28. Ostrich cousin29. Dictator ___ Amin30. Slender31. “Following” director Christopher34. Killer whale35. Capable of fl oating36. Tornado

Down

1. Nuclear aftermath2. Actress ___ Fisher3. Egyptian goddess4. Secures (as a seatbelt)6. Jealous8. The Aztecs, Incas, Romans, Greeks, etc.10. White lie11. Dine16. Meal between breakfast and dinner17. Salsa partner23. Narrow strip of connective land25. Lighter alternative26. Our star27. Aluminium32. Palindromic name33. Fine ___ (paiting, drawing, etc.)

First completed crossword to be handed in at our offi ce at1 Spadina Cres., Suite 245 gets a free drink on the editors.

Check Local Listings for Locations & Showtimes.

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FUBAR II • CAMPUS AD REVISED • 6" x 6.21" • Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T STAY IN SCHOOL

If there’s one thing that can be said about the trio of Aaron Sorkin’s script, David Fincher’s direction, and Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in “The Social Network,” it’s that they pull no punches to Facebook co-found-er Mark Zuckerberg, and if there is any amount of truth we can attribute to the story they told, it’s not difficult to see why.

The story is that of Zucker-berg’s rise from his anything but humble beginnings as a Harvard computer program-ming prodigy to billionaire dot com CEO, through the lens of two lawsuits from peers whom he stabbed in the back on his way up.

No time is wasted establish-ing Zuckerberg’s twin traits of lethal ambition and impressive ability to be an asshole.

In the first scene, he mounts a rhetorical attack upon his girlfriend, borne out of an ob-session with being accepted into an elite Harvard fraternity. Upon being dumped moments later, he requests forgiveness as if asking for a term paper exten-sion.

Eisenberg (Adventureland) can be credited with turning this nearly unforgivable jerk into a fascinating character of emo-tional depth. We can’t take our eyes off Zuckerberg, whether to see if he will crack a single smile through the whole picture or to watch him dangle on the preci-pice of slitting the throat of his best friend Eduardo Saverin, by whom he is sued in the present-day foreground of the story.

In adapting from Ben Mez-rich’s “The Accidental Billion-aires,” Sorkin (The West Wing) fashions dialogue that is flashy,

In today’s society, how does one balance the seemingly mutually exclusive worlds of data sharing and data privacy?

This was the question on the minds of four young computer engineering students at NYU’s Courant Institute when they began to develop Diaspora, an open-source distributed net-work tasked with decentralizing the world of social networking.

The four students, lya Zhi-tomirskiy, Dan Grippi, Max Salzberg, and Raphael Sofaer, funded their project through the website Kickstarter, which allows people to plead their case for funding to the net at large. The group initially asked for about $10,000 in funding, but the project quickly received an overwhelmingly positive re-sponse from the public, eventu-ally receiving over $200,000 in individual donations.

On their website, the teamed stated “Together, we have struck a chord with the world and identified a problem which needs to be solved.”

Diaspora’s emergence marks a response to the recent privacy issues raised by social network-ing sites such as Facebook, whose voracious appetite for personal data have drawn ire from the public and from vari-ous privacy commissions.

Diaspora aims to address these issues through a totally new approach to data sharing. The network functions via high-ly encrypted nodes or ‘seeds’. This is where Diaspora begins to diverge from popular social networking sites like Facebook. Whereas on Facebook, a central-ized hub mediates interactions between users, Diaspora utilizes these encrypted seeds for direct computer-to-computer interac-tions, ensuring safe and private content sharing and communi-cation. Speaking on the philos-ophy behind Diaspora, Mr. So-faer explained, “In life, we talk

AARON ZACK to each other. We don’t need to hand our messages to a hub and have them handed to our friends. Our virtual lives should work the same way.”

Large social networking sites continue to dominate, it would seem, because of the conve-nience they offer users. But as these sites demand more and more personal information to participate, an ever larger por-tion of the public has come to censor what they post, or opt-out from networking entirely.

“The value [networking sites] give us is negligible in the scale of what they are doing, and what we are giving up is all of our pri-vacy,” said Mr. Salzberg.

Diaspora then seemingly ex-ists not as an alternative to Fa-cebook, but instead as the logi-cal and ethical progression of social networking in general. In fact, the site will offer users virtually all the same features as Facebook (yes, even Farmville), and in addition, individual seeds will be able to ‘aggregate’ all existing information from sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social media to provide users a safe, secure and conve-nient social networking experi-ence.

Diaspora is slated to launch alpha testing later this month. To learn more visit www.join-diaspora.com.

at times to the point of being glib. His characters engage in snappy verbal sword fights or pissing matches.

This in no way detracts from the film, however, and instead emphasizes the disappointing dichotomy between Zucker-berg’s peerless intelligence and wit, and his childish selfishness and starry-eyed infatuation with success.

Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) once again masterfully crafts a dark, ominous tone throughout the film, and even manages to imbue euphoric party scenes and the bright, hip Facebook

headquarters with an uneasy sense of foreboding.

This is aided in no small part by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, which deftly blends the classical Hollywood sound-track sensibility with the pair’s industrial and dark ambient roots. The result is the sounds of Zuckerberg’s harsh social and professional self-torture.

You don’t have to use Face-book to appreciate this story of ambition and malice, but it may take membership to relate to Zuckerberg’s isolation – an iso-lation he’s managed to release upon all of us.

DAN CHRISTENSEN

the newspaper asks: Last Thursday, Facebook’s servers shut down temporarily. Dare we

ask the difficult question: what would you do without Facebook?

Connor Bailey, Construction WorkerI pretty much live without Facebook anyway.

Matt Hunt Gardner, PhD LinguisticsIt would be more difficult to find and talk to acquaintances. I don’t have everyone’s number and I use it to plan parties. I would actually have to talk to my friends.

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Social not-working

8 September 30, 2010the backpage

“ the campus comment ”

Krystal Walsh, 2th year HumanitiesI would be unable to stalk people. That’s always fun.

Status update: a Facebook exodus?

“Our real social lives do

not have entral man-

agers, and our virtual

lives do not need them.

Eventually, today’s hubs

could be almost entirely

replaced by a decen-

tralized network of truly

personal websites.”

-Max Salzberg

DA

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Zuckerberg pinned to the wall in

The Social Network