Just outside the Stamp Student Union, students can often be seen eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich and milling around the famous Jim Henson statue.

But while these two Stamp institutions co-exist harmoniously on the campus, a battle is brewing between the national companies.

In a statement released on Facebook last Friday, The Jim Henson Company — created by University of Maryland graduate and puppeteer Jim Henson — announced it does not wish to partner with Chick-fil-A on any future endeavors.

This is in response to comments made by Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy in an interview with the Biblical Reporter which was released July 16th.

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy stated in the interview with the Biblical Recorder.

The Jim Henson Company said current CEO Lisa Henson “is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage.” The company has now donated all payments from Chick-fil-A to GLAAD, The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

According to Business Insider, Chick-fil-A was giving Muppet toys with kid’s meals until a recent “voluntary recall,” which came after the Jim Henson Company posted its statement on Facebook. The fast food chain says the decision was made for safety reasons because children were getting their fingers stuck in the small toys.

In response to the recent media attention, Chick-fil-A has also released its own statement on Facebook, saying the company does not wish to take a political stance on same-sex marriage.

“The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,” the chain says.

According to Kermit on the Muppet Wikipedia chicken page, “You have to treat the chickens pretty well because they’ve got a very tough union.”

— Teddy Amenabar is a staff writer for The Diamondback

Photo courtesy of Cardplayer.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: The original post incorrectly stated how much Merson won. The post has been updated. 

I sent a routine request last Friday, a Facebook message asking for an interview with a former Terp.

Laurel native Greg Merson dropped out of this university when he was 19 but just more than a week ago, he raked in more than $1 million by besting a field of 474 to win the six-handed no-limit hold’em tournament at the 2012 World Series of Poker.

He agreed on Saturday to talk about his accomplishment. But not yet, the 24-year-old wrote. He was still sort of busy.

“I’m still in the main and won’t want to do the interview until I bust,” Merson wrote. “Day five is tomorrow. Will contact you when I win/bust!”

The “main,” or “main event,” was a $10,000 entry no-limit hold’em tournament that caps off the World Series of Poker every year.

The winner takes home a cool $8.5 million and the fame and notoriety that comes with winning what is widely seen as the most prestigious poker tournament in the world.

As the days passed, the field narrowed. Flush draws came up empty. Players busted. Merson didn’t.

On Monday evening, the field finally narrowed down to the nine players who will reconvene in October to compete for the main event title.

Merson made the cut. In fact, he has the third-largest chip stack, at more than 28 million chips. The chip leader, Jesse Sylvia, has more than 43 million chips.

Suffice to say, Merson has taken the poker world by storm. On the night — well, morning — of the final cutdown, ESPN.com’s poker editor, Andrew Feldman, tweeted “Gregory Merson is dominating.”

The next morning, an article in Card Player Magazine summed up Merson’s ascent in a headline: “Greg Merson Becoming A ‘Legend’ As World Series Of Poker Main Event Reaches Final Table.”

After making the final table, Merson, using the handle @Gregy20723, tweeted one word at approximately 3 a.m.: “Boom.”

He provided more clarity in his next tweet, three hours later: “Thanks for all the support everyone. So exhausted, gonna get some sleep and back home tm!!!”

I’m still waiting to speak withMerson, who is likely fielding a few more inquiries than last week. But I’ll be patient. It’s not everyday a former Terp is sitting on a stack of more than 28 million chips with the chance to permanently etch himself into the annals of poker history.

— Jeremy Barr is a student blogger for The Diamondback

A team of university and industry researchers are one step closer to curing malaria with a $3 million grant in hand from the National Institute of Health.

The three-year business grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, a division of NIH, funds an existing partnership between the university’s Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research and the biotechnology company Sanaria, in genetically modifying mosquitos. Entemology professor David O’Brochta has been working on the project for a few years, and his team of university and Sanaria researchers hope the grant will allow them to finalize their Sporozite vaccine.

Although the official award of the grant came in January, the funding have just started coming in, said Stephen Hoffman, CEO of Sanaria. Hoffman said he hopes to finalize a vaccine within three to four years.

O’Brochta said because mosquitos spread malaria through parasite-infected saliva glands, researchers can create a vaccine from harvesting this saliva. While Sanaria has been carrying out this process, some mosquitos carry far fewer parasites than others, he said; in order to make the vaccine affordable, researchers must find a way to maximize how many parasites are in the mosquitos.

In the Insect Transformation Facility at IBBR, researchers will work to genetically engineer mosquitos to be incredibly susceptible to infection, and therefore would become more infected by parasites so Sanaria can harvest greater quantities and produce more vaccine.

Partnerships like IBBR’s with Sanaria allow the university to pair research with real problems, O’Brochta said. While university researchers had expertise in mosquito biology, they gained a practical application by working to eradicate malaria.

“There are extensive connections between IBBR and UMCP, and many researchers have joint appointments here,” vice president of research Pat O’Shea wrote in an email. “This is a wonderful example of how our translational (applied) research will result is great benefits to people in regions afflicted with malaria.”

— Rashee Raj Kumar is a student blogger for The Diamondback

Aroy Thai was set to be the newest addition to the city’s growing number of dining options.

The College Avenue restaurant opened at least two weeks ago, but all signs — apart from the one fixed to the storefront — indicate it did not stay that way.

The display cases next to the register are filled with soda; the hours are taped to the door and mock-ups of dishes are on display in the window. Everything seems ready, but its doors have remained locked and calls to the establishment have gone unanswered.

Nothing indicates that we got the wrong opening date. Aroy Thai’s website does not say “coming soon”; shopcollegepark.org claims the restaurant is “Now Open!” Nobody seems to know the answer to why this restaurant is not open.

It’s an interesting tactic. Perhaps the owners plan to build anticipation for as long as possible, displaying rows of plastic-wrapped dishes in their windows to tease passerby who might actually want to eat something.

Or maybe they’ve adopted a daring business technique in which they advertise normal hours but are actually only open 15 minutes every Tuesday.

The small restaurant, nestled between On Cloud 9 and an empty retail space with “for lease” signs in the window, shares the block with other dining venues such as Papa John’s and Wasabi Bistro. None of

Aroy Thai’s neighbors have seen or heard anything in the back alley shared by the building and have yet to see anyone working to open the restaurant.

Aroy Thai has a sister restaurant, Thai Tanium, in Gaithersburg. Calls to that establishment about the state of Aroy Thai have also gone unanswered.

For now, if any student wants to test whether Aroy Thai really offers “The BEST Thai Food in College Park,” they’ll just have to wait.

— Morgan Gilliam is a graduate student and blogger for The Diamondback

Alex MacRae knows a lot about picking up women.

He may not lead with the winning line, “I study engineering at the University of Maryland,” but he does know that many things adults say can be taken the wrong way if they are not conveyed with “energy and fun.”

MacRae, who gained YouTube fame in 2007 after he made an informative web video on impressing the ladies for askromeo.com, had a chance at redemption June 26 on Tosh.0, but not before viewers had a chance to hear a bit more of his good advice.

In the offending video, replayed for viewers, the university alumnus gives his rock-star pick-up line: “Wow, your eyes are like blueberries … I’m actually kind of hungry, can I have one?”

In the video, MacRae then repeated the line without energy or fun, in a flat affect, so we can see how that line can be creepy. The result is a hilarious zombie with a soul patch coming over to eat your eyes.

I don’t want to insult MacRae’s intelligence, but I must point out that his line was already pretty creepy to start with.

To his credit, MacRae has a good sense of humor and made light of himself with comedian Daniel Tosh on his Comedy Central show. He told Tosh that even 200,000 YouTube hits later, his life is largely unchanged and no one recognizes him from his brief stint as an Internet cassanova.

For his “web redemption,” MacRae and Tosh try their skills at speed dating, where MacRae meets a girl with blue eyes and finally gets to use his line. As luck would have it, she has a glass eye. Tosh challenges him to eat it and, well, he makes the university proud.

I Google-stalked MacRae to no avail. University directory? Not helpful. Google? Nothing Tosh didn’t already tell us. I am dying to meet the real Alex MacRae. If I find him, I want to double-dream hands dance with him under a double rainbow.

Seriously, email me, Alex. rashee@umd.edu.

— Rashee Raj Kumar is a student blogger for The Diamondback

Image via Twitter

Last night, some otherworldly things happened on the beltway just outside of our beloved College Park. Twitter exploded after a flatbed truck was seen hauling a UFO-like figure down I-495, escorted by police.

The government (psshh) was quick to cover up the incident, saying that the UFO was actually a Northrop Grumman X-47B aircraft, one that does not need to be operated by a human. Can we be sure to trust the word of a few military spokesman though? I’ve come up with a few of my own solutions.

Konspiracy I: These are actually UFO’s that are being covered up by the world’s top governments. 

Last week, a UFO was videotaped over the Middle East and it was the Russian government who claimed it was a missile test gone awry.

Let’s dig a little deeper. So, within a week, the United States and Russia have both deterred UFO theories by claiming it all had to do with their militaries. Both of these governments, because of the Cold War, are the most advanced technologically and possess the most information that cannot be leaked to the general public. For the USA, exhibit A is Area 51 (which was also the name of my beach week house).

Seems a little suspicious to me.

Konspiracy II: The UFO was a marketing ploy for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.

This past weekend, the long awaited Ridley Scott film Prometheus finally premiered, finishing second at the box office to Madagascar 3. The films advertising campaign left much of the film’s details out: All anyone knew was that it had it had something to do with aliens.

They did well — $50 mil ain’t bad, but they still lost the top spot to a kid’s movie. Perhaps this UFO was just another ploy that Scott had up his sleeve in order to raise alien buzz and to get people to see his movie. Sometimes when a movie topic lines up with current events it fares better (here’s your example). Maybe Prometheus had everything to do with this UFO.

Konspiracy III: This.

This year, July 4th will mark a historic Independence Day, 200 years after our nation first had to defend its independence against those damn redcoats (War of 1812, if you were unaware).

This year is also the 25th anniversary of Will Smith (the Fresh Prince) and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s debut album. Smith starred in Independence Day, which featured aliens trying to take over the world. What does this all have to do with what happened on the beltway? I don’t know, but I’m sure Jeff Goldblum could decipher something from it.

So there are your three konspiracies. I personally love talking about the possibility of extra terrestrial life existing since reading Chariots of the Gods? (look it up, fool) my sophomore year. But even I know better than to actually thing that this was a UFO. If it was, then don’t you think the government would have tried harder to mask it?

Juan Cervantes is a senior history major and student blogger for The Diamondback.

Offered in conjunction by the state’s attorney general’s office and the university’s Institute for Governmental Service and Research since May 23, the course offers a detailed analysis of the Open Meetings Act. The OMA, enacted in 1977 to foster clarity in government, aims to educate citizens on the need for public bodies to keep certain information confidential.

“We recognized the need for citizens to be aware of their rights, and such a course seemed to do just that,” said David Paulson, communications director of the state’s attorney general’s office.

There are no restrictions as to who may take the course, although the university recommends a basic understanding of government functions prior to enrollment.

“One of our goals with this course is to see fewer and better-quality complaints about public meetings and how they connect to the law,” Paulson said, “In that sense, I believe the course will be very helpful.”

The course is composed of six lessons along with quizzes included at certain intervals to test understanding. Attorney General Doug Gansler makes periodic appearances in videos to elaborate on topics covered. Although the course is open to all, it specifically targets government officials that may encounter the OMA in their line of work. The rather elementary contents of the course serve as a refresher of the law’s tenets and stipulations.

Estimated course completion time is approximately 2.5 hours, and a certificate is awarded to those displaying mastery of the concepts. Although the course’s recent introduction makes opinions hard to gauge, Paulson mentioned that the focus group going through the material reported a positive experience.

“Hopefully, this course will have a positive impact on the public’s knowledge of the OMA and increase the transparency of local government,” Paulson said.

David Oganesyan is a freshman finance major and contributing blogger for The Diamondback

Dom Mazzetti is accomplished for a college super senior. He has a passion for girls, partying and working out, an accent reminiscent of Jersey Shore, and more than 25 million views total on YouTube and more than 76,000 likes on Facebook.

In celebration of Cinco Dom Mayo, I mean de Mayo, The Barking Dog brought this Internet phenom to Route 1.

Because the bar’s managers expected 500 people to crowd the Barking Dog on Saturday, they hired three extra security hands for the night — only 50 people showed up.

“It was embarrassingly small,” said senior economics major Bret Greer. “You would think for Cinco de Mayo, more people would be out.”

Downtown College Park was busy all night; at 1 a.m. there were 36 people lined up in front of Cornerstone Grill and Loft.

“We love Dom. He is so funny. We are so excited to meet him,” said Rachel Cesario, a junior biology major standing with sister Kristen Cesario, a senior criminology and criminal justice major, and her friend Claire Tolbert, who attends the College of Southern Maryland. “We hope he does a vs. Rachel, Kristen and Claire after meeting us tonight,” she said, referring to the way Mike Tornabene, who performs as Mazzetti, titles his videos.

“Dom Mazzetti is the stuff,” said mechanical engineering and government and politics major senior Jonas Tizabi. “I would have gone, I’m tempted to go right now, I’ll probably end up there later on tonight,” as he waited in line to go into Cornerstone. As to why he isn’t at the Barking Dog: “All my friends are here.”

Some believe it was the presence of the liquor board that deterred some partygoers.

“We obviously would have liked a stronger turnout,” said Michael Rice, general manager of The Barking Dog. “We are kind of living in the sins of our father.”

The Barking Dog paired Route One Apparel to design a shirt for the night. Wearers of the shirts received drink specials all night. The shirt featured a sideways Italian flag with an outline of Mazzetti’s face and an oversized mustache and sombrero in the white stripe. A presale of “Cinco Dom Mayo” shirts, which almost sold out by Wednesday May 2, according to Route One Apparel founder Ali Von Paris, a senior business major. At the appearance, only five people were wearing the shirts other than bar employees and Route One Apparel employees.

Despite the low turnout, Tornabene said he would not mind making an appearance in College Park again. “The turnout is a little light, but I heard that had something to do with the liquor board being here tonight,” he said.

Attendees got more than they bargained for having an intimate night with Mazzetti. A group of twelve usually surrounded him.

— Theresa Sitentos is a student blogger for The Diamondback

As we pushed the hose and nozzle closer to the fire using muscles I had no idea existed, it became clear Capt. Steve Gallagher and the other instructors weren’t joking when they told me to tuck all of my hair into my turnout hood so it wouldn’t catch fire.

“We don’t want you writing about how we ruined your hair,” they said.

The Prince George’s County Professional Firefighters and Paramedics Association IAFF Local 1619, the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department and the Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute hosted the second annual Fire Ops 101 training Friday. The departments invited state and county officials and media personnel to learn how to become a firefighter for the day at the MFRI station in College Park.

Charlie DeBoyace, a Diamondback photographer, and I were among the first to arrive. We were told to grab all the bottles of water and Gatorade we wanted.

“Make sure you keep drinking,” an official said. “And check your urine with the color chart in the bathroom. You’ll get dehydrated very quickly.”

We listened to opening remarks from IAFF President Andrew Pantelis, county Fire/EMS Chief Marc Bashoor and MFRI Director Steve Edwards before being escorted into a storage room to be fit into full turnout gear.

Once dressed in official boots, pants, coat, hood, gloves and helmet, we were taken to the flammable liquids station, where I thought I would spend my last moments with intact eyebrows.

Capt. Dana Brooks showed us how to approach a car fire with a hose and successfully handle the emergency situation. We quickly learned the biggest rule: “Never turn your back on a fire, because you never know what will happen,” and of course, someone almost instantaneously did.

In the 80-degree weather, dressed head-to-toe in heavy protective material, just feet away from a 600-degree fire, most of us were already exhausted. Luckily, we had listened to officials’ advice to hide water bottles in the large pockets of our pants.

As we rehydrated and prepared to move on to our next station, Brooks and Gallagher gave us tips on how to stay cool. Getting dressed at 7 a.m. on Friday morning, I thought I was so smart for deciding to wear Under Armour — something that would keep my body temperature down. But I was quickly singled out.

“The worst thing a firefighter can wear is Under Armour,” Brooks and Gallagher said. “We wear cotton T-shirts because if you’re burned wearing something like Under Armour, you’ll be in the hospital with doctors picking it out of your skin.”

Our next station was the search maze — a pitch-black tunnel we had to navigate in full gear using just the sense of touch. Capt. Timothy Yates taught us to feel everywhere before moving, in case there was a hole in the ground caused by a hypothetical fire or a window with no ground on the other side.

In the maze, we had to find our way up a ladder, around corners, through a window and down a staircase with no light. Although fun, it was much harder than anticipated.

Again, we rehydrated before our next station: the fire observation. For this segment, we were fitted with self-contained breathing apparatuses (what’s another 30 or 40 pounds in the 80-degree weather, right?)

We were led into a burn building that MFRI uses for training. Doors were locked, and there were no windows. Again, it was dark. The only noises were the Darth Vader-esque sounds of our air masks. Trained firefighters then lit bales of hay on fire, causing a rapid temperature increase and a thick cloud of smoke.

The burn was so hot and close, a member of our group panicked and had to be escorted out early. Exhaustion and fear got the best of almost half the participants by the end of the day.

Firefighters put out the small inferno. The smoke was so thick I couldn’t see my hand a foot in front of my face. Finally the door was opened and we filed out of the building, holding onto the person’s shoulder in front of us and the wall on our side to guide our way out.

We were served fried chicken, pasta salad and French fries for lunch before heading to our final station. I couldn’t have been any more excited to get indoors. We were permitted to take our coats, helmets, hoods and gloves off as we filed into a classroom to learn hands-only CPR.

The instructors taught us the life-saving gesture to the tune of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” — we were told to push hard and fast on a dummy’s chest, keeping the beat to the popular disco song.

The six-hour training program drained all of my energy. Other participants joked they wouldn’t need to go to the gym for weeks. DeBoyace and I dreamed about cold showers and long naps for the entirety of our five-minute drive home.

Fire Ops 101 was an eye-opening experience that gave us a small look into what firefighters go through every day. Let’s just say I’m happy to be studying journalism, and to still have my eyebrows.

- Erin Egan is a senior staff writer for The Diamondback