Opinion

By now, you’ve probably heard about AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile for $39 billion. As reported in the New York Times, the deal would “create the largest wireless carrier in the nation and promise to reshape the industry.” The immediate effect is that the number of nationwide wireless carriers would drop from four to three, with Sprint placing a distant third behind a combined AT&T/T-Mobile and Verizon.

After strategizing and debating for the past few years, the New York Times decided to have its readers pay to read its online journalism, beginning March 28.

The doors open and the chilly air rushes in tainted with tobacco smoke. It is finals week in the Gateway Study Center; home to garish bright lighting, trashcans full of used coffee cups, energy drinks and stressed students. Study sessions at Gateway are not only a finals week ritual, but also a necessity. The hushed murmurs of other students and long hours make it a haven for any college student.

This letter is in response to the recent New University article titled, “Irvine: No Pets For You!” I was not aware that the City of Irvine was considering a ban of the sale of dogs or cats, but I am extremely happy that they are. I do not see how banning the sale of animals in Irvine will hamper anyone’s ability to have a dog, cat or reptile as a member of their household. There are so many animals ready for adoption at the Irvine Animal Shelter. There are even more pets available for adoption at the extremely overcrowded shelter in Orange, across from the Block.

Americans love a celebrity train wreck. For some reason, we want to know every detail of a star’s downfall. Whether it’s drugs, booze, sex or crime, we hang on to every scandalous detail. We’ve all indulged in the guilty pleasure of cruising gossip blogs every now and then in order to know what Lindsay Lohan is wearing to court or if Britney Spears still has custody of her kids. It seems harmless, but if we’ve learned anything from the recent downfall of Charlie Sheen, this obsession with celebrity culture isn’t as innocent as we’d like to believe.

The last thing students want to hear is that coffee, the life source for many of us approaching finals, is unhealthy. So I, self-proclaimed coffee-snob, am here checking in with a mission: to assure you once and for all that coffee is not bad for you. In fact, it has a number of beneficial health effects, which I think outweigh all else.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Even if you did not study the Bible in school, you probably recognize this iconic phrase found at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible in the first verse of Genesis.

President Obama appears to be playing both sides once again. The Obama administration has recently decided to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, despite the president’s insistence that he does not support gay marriage. Everyone is surprised, both those in favor of gay marriage celebrating what appears to be a shift in the president’s opinion and those on the right who believed gay marriage would not be on the agenda in this administration. Both praise and criticism has been coming in, but none of it is justified.

Riddle: What can you buy on Ring Road for $2? Did you guess? Yes! That’s right! Boba! And for another $5 you can buy yourself a nice plate of Korean BBQ. Any day of the week! Just walk through Ring Road, and after getting bombarded with fliers from sororities and fraternities, you’ll walk into a Korean BBQ and boba paradise.

It seems the past few weeks have demanded some clarification of the term “peaceful protest.” As the Muslim Student Union exemplified last year, there appears to be a fine line between protesting and autocratic silencing of dissenting opinion.

Dealing with North Korea is like playing poker with the guy that goes all in on every hand. Eventually you have to start calling his bluff, or you will lose. Yet, it is important to note the degree of the situation to figure out whether or not the bluff is real.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights defines free speech as: “Everyone having the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontier.”