Southampton students empowered by innovation of local legislators

Defiant Southampton students along with local legislators are battling the cuts at their campus with a multi-pronged strategy, as the August 31 official axe date looms.

Lawmakers had immediately requested an investigation into President Samuel Stanley’s early April decision to scrap much of the college. Now, other options are being explored: the town where the campus is nestled has offered to buy the rights to it, legislators are asking that the elusive state budget contain a measure to reverse the cuts, and the displaced students are planning a legal battle to keep their campus fully operational.

When was the last time you thought about the Boxer Rebellion?

I recently had to make a video essay for a broadcast journalism class. I sat down with Newsday writer Mitchell Freedman, who spent an afternoon telling me all about one of his hobbies– painting these teensy, tiny little soldiers, no taller than a matchstick. He pays meticulous attention to detail, adding gunpowder to their guns or splotches of mud onto their gear. When he’s done painting the little guys, he plays wargames with friends who also paint soldier figurines. Together, they reenact some of the biggest battles in history, right there on a tabletop.

Obama’s health bill to force eateries to post nutrition info

There’s something new coming to menus near you! Patrons at restaurants and fast food joints across America will no longer be able to remain blissfully ignorant of the calorie and fat content of the food items they purchase. A measure in President Obama’s historic health care bill will force all eateries with more than 20 locations to post nutrition info in menus and on menu boards. This legislation will apply to over 200,000 restaurants across the nation and will be placed in effect next year. Vending machines will be required to post counts, too. Similar legislation is already in place in New York City, California, and other jurisdictions.

I visited a few Long Island McDonald’s and Panera Bread locations to have customers weigh in on the new law.

CoCo coming to TBS!

Team CoCo prevails! It was announced today that Conan O’Brien will make his return to late night in November 2010. There was lots of speculation as to which network O’Brien would team up with to make late night greatness after his nasty rift with NBC, his former employer of 17 years. In a surprising twist, CoCo will join TBS‘s late night line-up, which currently consists of only George Lopez. O’Brien’s new show, which has yet to be titled, will air directly before Lopez Tonight.

Stony Brook gives red light to it’s green campus in Southampton

Last week, Stony Brook president Samuel Stanley announced plans to slash most programs at the university’s satellite campus in Southampton. The small, eco-friendly, east end school, where studies mostly center on the environment, currently houses approximately 525 students who will be forced to transfer elsewhere.

The closure comes as an unwelcome deja-vu for most of Southampton’s faculty and students. The campus used to be part of privately-owned Long Island University, who was forced to sell the school in 2005 for financial reasons. At the time, students, teachers and local representatives initiated a massive Save the School campaign to preserve the south fork’s sole institution of higher learning. That campaign proved successful when Stony Brook purchased the campus for $35 million in 2006.

Spending Spring Break with Every Family in America at Universal Studios, FL

Me and my boyfriend traveled down to Florida over spring break last week and spent some time in Orlando, Cocoa Beach and Jacksonville. We rather stupidly bought 2 day passes to Universal Studios, without realizing that literally every family in America would do the exact same thing that week. On the third day of our trip down south, we decided to brave the crowds and hit up the theme park. Despite the massive hoards of people that surrounded us, the weather was wonderful, steadily hovering in the mid-eighties, and we came prepared with bottled waters and buckets of SPF 30.  After paying $14 to park our overpriced rental car, then walking half a mile from the parking garage to the front gates, then having our bags searched, and of course waiting in monstrous lines to validate our pre-purchased tickets, and finally waiting in more lines to have those tickets scanned, we were ready to have fun (actually, we were ready to go back to the hotel and go to sleep, but we couldn’t turn back at that point). The first thing we both wanted to do was go on the Back to the Future ride so we beelined it to that part of the park, only to find that the old familiar De Loreans have long been replaced by the famous yellow-faced family, The Simpsons.

Ahoy, mateys! I’ve got meself 12 new favorite songs!

Arrrrrrg. Ye may have previously read that I be a huge Deftones fan, and have been hungrily awaiting the release of their newest record. Diamond Eyes, the group’s latest studio album, is set to be released on May 20. They’ve been courteously releasing tracks via the Internet to keep their fans satiated starving for more. First, they released the track “Rocket Skates” last month (incredible), and then, last week they put up the album’s title track on Facebook. After steaming it a few times, greedy little me did a BT search on Saturday in hopes of nabbing an mp3 of the new track “Diamond Eyes”, and I happened to stumble upon absolute gold. The glorious new album, in all of its magnificent entirety, has been leaked and is now easily attainable online. (That’s right kids, I’m a pirate.)

Checked Luggage: The High Price of Taking to the $kies

When my boyfriend and I first decided to go away for spring break a few weeks ago, I was super excited. It’s my senior year here at Stony Brook, and I’ve never gone away for spring break before, usually opting to make a little extra money by picking up more hours at work for the week. But this year, since it’s technically my last chance to have a real college spring break vacation, we decided to book a week in Florida, where it should be in the low 80′s by the end of March (yay!).

Video in the News: Examples

Viral Video: Here’s an example of a news site covering a viral video. The original video, showing a kid who got drugged up at the dentist and then trips out in the car on the way home, has been viewed over 53,000,000 times and has gained the attention of various national media companies and personalities, including outrage from Bill O’Reilly. In this story, the WSJ covers David’s rise to the top, thanks to his dad taping his trippy experience. An aside: the family now has its own website where it sells DavidAfterDentist merch and donates the proceeds to various dental-orientated charities.

Attention Muggles: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park to Open This Spring

If you’ve read one of the +400 million copies of Harry Potter books that have sold worldwide, or if you’ve seen any of the silver-screen adaptations of the stories, you know that J.K. Rowling has conjured up a fantasy world that lies within our own world, full of creatures and characters, spells, horrors and magic. In keeping with the idea of worlds within worlds, Warner Bros. Studios and Universal Studios have teamed up to create a spankin’ new theme park within a theme park called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, located at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Potter’s park is set to open May 2010; you can already book trips at their website. Here’s a virtual map of the Wizarding World park: