4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 24, 2004 OPINION U 420 MAYNARD STREET. ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE We congratulate him on all he has accomplished and look forward to the future." - CBS chairman Leslie Moonves, com- menting on the retirement of long-time CBS anchor Dan Rather, as reported yesterday by ABC News. SAM BUTLER C_:. c S"SA ox AN [IVN& [ (._- 0 Welcome to the desert of the real ELLIOTT MALLEN iRRAFIONL EXUBERANCE We all know that it's becoming harder to stay connected with friends given our hectic lives as students. Between enduring a grueling 16 hours of class every week and braving temperatures that can often fall below 40 degrees, the average Michigan student faces many obstacles for socializing. Fortunate- ly for us, we have Thefacebook.com, the online social network that manages to dilute human interaction to an empty-yet-readily quantifiable caricature. For those who aren't hip, Facebook is an online social network a la Friendster that links users based on their universities. It now consists of more than 200,000 students, several thousand of which go to our very own University of Michigan. It was created by a couple of guys from Harvard, and, like Napster did in a bygone era, it rapidly spread throughout the country's colleges and universities. Through Face- book you can see who is in your classes, who lives in your dorm, who went to your high school, who else is interested in your favorite book and all kinds of other stalker-serving information that isn't pro- vided by the university's online directory. Facebook is perfect for those who prefer the translucent distortion of reality provided by a computer monitor to the dour world in which we live. Instead of having aimless, drawn-out con- versations, Facebookers can opt instead to send grammatically dubious three-line snippets of information. No longer is it necessary to interact with classmates; now you can form fruitlessly impromptu online study groups. Participating in extracurricular activities has been rendered obso- lete through the creation of hollow groups like Ann Arborites for the Appreciation of Assonance or People Against Eating Other People. Going to parties is no longer required, as all of your hook- up needs will be satisfied by formally indicating your desire for "random play" in your profile. What once required physical human interaction can now be accomplished from the womb-like safety of your own bedroom. One void that Facebook fills is the need to quan- tify personal relationships. Friendship becomes a form of competition as users race to make as many connections as possible. This is incompa- rably easier than the messy process of building legitimate friendships. All that is required in the world of Facebook is to click "add to friends" and have the target confirm that he doesn't despise you. Of course, even pure hatred won't stop someone from confirming the request because that would prevent him or her from claiming another friend as well. And after all, it's not about legitimate personal connections. It's about main- taining an Internet-based image of popularity. The birthday notification is an especially unset- tling aspect. Every time a user logs in he or she is told which friends have an approaching birth- day. When a Facebooker's birthday comes, that person's Facebook friends will wish him or her a happy birthday when bumping into one another on the street. It's eerily gratifying - the only reason these people know of the birthday or feel any kind of desire to acknowledge it is because of a superficial online social network. This transfer of information gleaned from the artificial world of Facebook to friends that exist in reality just underscores Facebook's growing clout. Another key aspect of Facebook is posting a pic- ture of yourself for everyone to see. These pictures range from the jovial partying-with-friends-so- you-know-I'm-popular variety to the melancholy looking-away-from-the-camera hipster type. Some people even use their high school senior portraits as their Facebook pictures, suggesting that despite months (if not years) of living away from home, they still would prefer to be known by their high school personas. It is crucial that your picture projects sufficient levels of popularity or hipsterness to ensure that potential friends won't be embarrassed to add you to their roster. The picture is overwhelmingly important because the fundamental nature of Facebook is its lack of content or purpose. There is nothing to show the depths and intricacies of one's personal- ity except for a listing of favorite books and films, meaning that the picture is the only aspect that reveals anything resembling individuality. The essence of Facebook's existence can be boiled down to the "poke" feature, which sends a prefab- ricated message inherently devoid of content to a friend. The creators of the virtual network explain the existence of poking by saying, "We have about as much of an idea as you do. We thought it would be fun to make a feature that has no specific pur- pose and to see what happens from there." The same could easily be said about Facebook itself. All of this makes it readily apparent just how surreal Facebook is. Time that could be spent building real personal relations is spent in front of a computer harvesting "friends." Human communication is reduced to its most fundamental components and then stripped of any remaining value or substance. Interac- tion becomes the mere swapping of symbols, as devoid of meaning as the mundane fluid exchange of a one-night stand. Mallen can be reached at emmallen@umich.edu. 4 U LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Bible is no defense for cowardly, dishonest ideology TO THE DAILY: Kyle Burleson is an example of what is wrong with conservatives who base their politics on reli- gion. Would it be fair to call him a bad person? I don't know - I've never met the kid. But from reading his letter to the editor, Democrats don't fol- low Christian values (11/22/2004), I can safely con- clude that I don't like him. I can guarantee that I don't have nearly the base of biblical knowledge that Burleson has, as he so eloquently established in his article in noting how Medicaid somehow proves Jesus wouldn't be a Democrat today. What would he be, Kyle? A "compassionate conservative?" Damn straight Kyle Burleson, you tell Jeff Craven. Tell us all. Tell me how Jesus would have smiled on tax cuts for the wealthy, how the rich do indeed deserve their tax breaks and most importantly, how Republicans are morally supe- rior to Democrats because they support a ban on abortion. Burleson, I liked how you invoked the Ten Commandments as a defense for your abor- tion argument, but let me offer a critique, if I may. How about we use a modern set of social princi- ples based on the evolution (oh wait, is that a blas- phemous word?) of human thought to determine the laws of our nation rather than a multi-millen- nia old religious document? How about that? I have a problem with Burleson and others who invoke such strict interpretations of the Bible as a defense for modern political stances. They hide behind religion as a means of resisting change, and I find that cowardly and dishonest. Arguments that gay marriage is a plague on this country and will erode the sanctity of marriage are but one example. Now I won't infer your feelings on same-sex marriage. Frankly, I don't really care. Let's just allow your "morally superior" administration to speak for you on this one. Karl Rove made it abundantly clear that the Bush administration seeks to amend the U.S. Constitution to maintain marriage as a union of one man and one woman only. One more time: We are going to permanent- ly change the fundamental political document of our country to support a religious principle - one that boils down to discrimination. In this administration's eyes, all men are not equal, and unlike you I am not "truly grateful." John Mittelbach LSA senior Letter writer fails to defend the sins of the GOP TO THE DAILY: Kyle Burleson ineffectively attempted to defend the Republican Party as being "the party of moral values" (Democrats don't follow Christian values, 11/22/2004). The mixed hypocrisy and ignorance of this statement is amusing at first (he seems to forget our beloved president's drunk driving and drug abuse record), but when one realizes that people like Burleson, as the election shows, are in the majority, the statement becomes almost frightening. The Republican Party is the party of the wealthy and powerful. Burleson and many other conservatives seem to forget the holy aphorism, "It is more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." Could Jesus be saying that it is not virtuous to exploit the impoverished and horde material wealth for personal gain? But if he were saying that, he'd sound like a gasp liberal! Burleson writes of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) opportunistic dishonesty. Now, ol' Teddy is definitely a disgrace to Democrats and humanity in general, but let's not forget President Bush's rushing into war (Iraq), disrespectfully taking advantage of an opportunity (post-Sept. 1I anti-terrorist sentiment) and also lying about it. Which brings me to the next point. Burleson brings up the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill" and condemns the Democrats as murderers for their typical pro-choice stance. Well, that may be, but I am positive that sending troops into harm's way and commanding them to kill people is a more direct means of murdering than giving people the option of having an abor- tion. Not to mention Bush is notoriously pro-capi- tal punishment. Just because the state says it's OK to kill someone doesn't mean Jesus wants it to happen. Sorry. The fact is, it is necessary for politicians to lie, mislead, and misinform, thus abandoning Chris- tian values. And when they are in position to send people to their deaths, they usually do. It's all part of the job requirements. The moral of this story is: Don't vote based on morality. Politicians are by nature immoral and any that claim otherwise are lying, which should come as no surprise. Andy Petrovich LSA sophomore VIEWPOINT Dow Chemical responds BY JOHN MUSSER Your Nov. 4, 2004, editorial attacking The Dow Chemical Company (Dow's at it again, 11/04/2004) raises serious questions about the Daily's standards for checking facts before taking extreme positions. Granted, an editorial is only an opinion, but even mini- mal standards of responsible journalism sug- gest that editorials should be based on facts, not unfounded, hyperbolic assertions. Minimal research into the two issues you raised - the presence of dioxins and furans in mid-Michigan and the Bhopal tragedy - would have shown the following: U The principal component of the dioxins and furans found in and along the Tittabawassee River are furans, which most likely were produced as byproducts before World War I. This preceded Departments serving Midland and Saginaw Counties, it is stated that "there is no evidence of any known health effect or illnesses that may have occurred in people as a result of exposure to dioxins in the flood plain." There are hundreds of different types of dioxins, but only one has been classified as a human carcinogen. Less than 2 percent of the dioxin-like-compounds found in Midland and Tittabawassee River flood-plain soils are com- posed of this one type of dioxin. More than 95 percent of the dioxins in our bodies come from the food we eat. Soil con- taining dioxins is not considered a significant contributor to dioxins in people. Seventeen published studies of Dow work- ers exposed to dioxins in an industrial setting have been conducted during the past 50 years. To date, with the exception of chloracne, a severe skin condition known to be caused by holder in Union Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL), the Indian company that owned and operated the plant in Bhopal at the time of the tragedy. Union Carbide was prohibited by the Indian government from having any direct involve- ment in managing or running the plant. At the time of the tragedy, however, Union Carbide stepped forward to accept moral responsibility for the situation and immedi- ately undertook significant actions to provide relief to the victims. In 1989, UCIL and Union Carbide entered into a settlement agreement with the Govern- ment of India and paid $470 million to settle all claims arising from the tragedy. The Supreme Court of India concluded that this agreement was a "just, equitable and reasonable" settle- ment. - In February 2001, 17 years after the trag- edy, Dow acquired Union Carbide, which has T _ -