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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY GANSAN
MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2009
New Web site offers forum for relationship advice, gossip
BY MICOLE ARONOWITZ
maronowitz@kansan.com
Gossip now has its own Web site.
KissandDish.com, a socialnetworking relationship Web site that launched last month, serves as a forum for people to share their relationship highs, lows and everything in between. The site features 14 main writers, who are all at different stages in their own relationships.
Co-creator Kristen Ricordati said each writer contributed a new article each week. Users can write about their own love lives while remaining anonymous. Users can also submit questions to a dating therapist.
Ricordati said she wanted to start a site where people could give relationship advice. She wanted to gear the site toward college students and described it as a way to share stories, connect with people
or simply be a "fly on the wall" of another person's life.
"People could really use a site like this," Ricordai said. "They could be their carrie Bradshaw. They could be their own relationship advice columnist."
Tiffany Harrell, Kansas City, Kan., senior, who met her boyfriend on Facebook, said she would be interested in a Web site like KissandDish.com to read about what was going on in other people's relationships.
Jeff Hall, communications studies professor who has also worked for EHarmony, said KissandDish was an outcome of the Facebook and MySpace phenomenon.
"I have been surprised by the degree to which students are willing to disclose their personal lives
online." Hall said. "It's fundamentally changing the way that people interact with others. People feel they are really connected with others without sharing more than a status update and a picture."
Harrell said her generation was computer-orientated and was reliant on the medium to communicate.
"We use Facebook to keep in touch with people instead of just calling them or talking to them and seeing what they are up to," Harrell said. "It's a sign of change in our generation."
Ricordati said KissandDish, com was a modern relationship Web site. She said its appeal was its ability to make users feel less alone on the relationship journey.
"It's people helping people," Ricordati said. "You can learn from other people's mistakes and triumphs."
Photo Illustration by Jerry Wang/KANSAN
— Edited by Grant Treaster
Playing to win
Jon Goering/KANSAN
Madison Shriner, Wichita freshman, calls bingo to a group comprised of KU students and residents at Frost on Saturday afternoon. A group of students with Weekend Breaks, a program under the University's Alternative Breaks, volunteered by playing games and visiting the residents. Visit Kansan.com/videos to see a slideshow of photographs and listen to Shriner talk about her volunteer experience.
POLITICS
Specter faces another difficult vote
Republican senator could play important role in union legislation
Associated Press
BY MARC LEVY
HARRIBURG, Pa. - Twenty-nine years into his U.S. Senate career, Arlen Scales cast what he calls his most difficult vote — a "yes" on the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that made him the only Republican facing re-election in 2010 to support it.
Now, with GOP anger still simmering, Specter is under pressure to buck the party again and support "card check" legislation to make it easier for workers to form unions.
It is the latest tight spot for the 79-year-old Specter, a moderate and maverick who is used to being on the political rack, stretched between the wishes of an increasingly conservative party and an increasingly liberal state.
He is in meetings every day about the card check bill, he said, but isn't revealing to anybody which way he is leaning.
long enough that people ... know my arm's not twistable". Specter said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press.
"I've been in this line of work
It is that streak of independence that the fifth-term Specter flaunts and Republicans fear.
Republicans appear to be otherwise unified against the card check bill, which is expected to surface later this year. They worry that Specter could exert influence over its final form and whether it comes up for a vote, as he did on the stimulus.
"I think he again could be the swing vote on the issue," said Bill Darr, chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party's 11-count south wuest caucus.
The simulus won support from no House Republicans and just two other Republican senators; Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Many Pennsylvania party elders have been unwilling to criticize Specter and have not forswn him as the party's candidate in 2010.
Yet they are not endorsing him enthusiastically, either.
Pennsylvania's GOP chairman, Robert Gleason, would not say whether he will work against Specter's candidacy in the 2010 primary, or whether Specter must vote against the card check bill to win the endorsement.
"It's pretty far away," Gleason said. "A day is a lifetime in politics."
Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee chairman, said in television interviews last week that he would follow the state party if it chooses to back a primary challenger to Specter.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by conservative Sen. John Corynn of Texas, "unequivocally supports Senator Specter and will do anything we can to get him re-elected," spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson said.
So far, no Republican challeng er to Specter has emerged.
NATIONAL
Farrakhan praises Obama at Chicago convention
BY SOPHIA TAREEN
Associated Press
ROSEMONT, Ill. — From a three-hour keynote address by Minister Louis Farrakhan to $10 T-shirts, mentions of President Barack Obama were everywhere at the Nation of Islam's annual convention in a Chicago suburb.
Despite a flap with the Nation of Islam on the campaign trail, the enthusiasm for Obama within the Chicago-based movement — which has embraced black nationalism since its founding in the 1930s — was used as a launching point for celebration, intellectual discussion and a call to action.
"There's an energy among our people that has never been seen before, never produced by any man
or organization before," Farrakhan said of Obama before an estimated 14,000 followers Sunday. "But we must not allow our people to live in a false world of euphoria. We must accept our responsibility to build our communities."
Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have vigorously supported Obama, even when Obama's campaign tried to distance itself from the 75-year-old Farrakhan. After the minister spoke highly of Obama last year at a convention in Chicago, Obama's campaign released a statement condemning some of Farrakhan's past statements that many have considered offensive.
In a speech days after the election, Farrakhan acknowledged that he then purposely laid low, keeping his praise quiet, so as not
to affect Obama's chances at winning the presidency.
It was a move many attending the weekend conference in Rosemont said they understood.
"Minister Farrakhan didn't take offense," said Audrey Muhammad, who edits "Virtue Today" magazine, geared at women in the movement. "We understand how politics work."
"He did not want to say anything the media could use to hurt his (Obama's) chances to become the president," Muhammad said. "They want to keep demonizing Farrakhan, despite the good he does."
Ishmael Muhammad, the movement's national assisting minister, claimed Farrakhan's words were twisted.
Farrakhan, who temporarily
ceded leadership in 2006 to an executive board while he recuperated from prostate cancer complications, looked strong and healthy Sunday.
He spoke for three hours in a rousing keynote address, often interrupted by standing ovations. Religious leaders, including the Rev Michael Pflerger, as well as rappers Snoop Dogg and DougE, Fresh also attended, sitting on the stage behind Farrakhan, nodding and clapping.
The minister spoke mostly of Obama and the duty that Nation of Islam members have before them. He also criticized U.S. and local leaders for privatizing state and government businesses and for U.S. attitudes toward war-torn Gaza.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Honorable Minister Louis Farraghan addresses Saviours Day Convention in Rosemont, Ill., on Sunday. Saviours day is the Nation of Islam annual commemoration of the Birth of Master Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation of Islam.
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