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Category Archives: Sci/Tech

MTV Hopes to Smarten up with New Show, “16 and Pregnant with Caveman”

January 30, 2013 Casey Kendall Leave a comment

NEW YORK — When George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School—a small medical training facility in Massachusetts—first announced that he was looking for volunteers to be impregnated by a Neanderthal embryo constructed from DNA ripped from bone fragments, he was cautiously optimistic that someone would step up. But it soon became clear there were no takers, and Church was about to call the whole thing off. Enter MTV, formerly known as Music Television. An MTV representative contacted Church last

Read more Entertainment, No. 99, Sci/Tech

Area Man Defriends Facebook “Friend” on Friend’s Birthday

January 19, 2013 Brian Earl Leave a comment

MILWAUKEE, WI — Milwaukee native George Waterson defriended his Facebook friend David Debbleby Monday night. Monday was Debbleby’s birthday. “I really don’t like David,” said Waterson. “I had actually forgotten we were still Facebook friends, but I guess he was just hidden from my newsfeed.” The two became Facebook friends in 2007, when both men were in the same group for a high school English project that involved a computer slideshow presentation, a speech, a short written report, and the

Social Media Savvy Students Look for Job Availabilities

January 9, 2013 Noah Rawitz Leave a comment

EVANSTON — With annual winter job and internship fairs approaching, many Northwestern students are crossing their fingers in hopes that their “social media skills” will be as highly sought-after as that one article they read on Forbes a month ago reported was a possibility. “I’m a social media expert,” said Weinberg junior Justin Thomas. “I am proficient in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and now SnapChat.” According to a recent career services survey, over the past year many formerly undecided undergrads

Top 10 Rejected Handles for the Pope’s Twitter Account

January 7, 2013 Alex Finkelstein Leave a comment

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI recently entered the Twitterverse with the twitter name @pontifex. The question remains: how did he choose this handle? The Flipside has received, from an anonymous papal butler, an exclusive list of the final candidates that didn’t quite make the cut. Here are 10 handles that the Pope unfortunately didn’t pick. Maybe they were already taken – the list did not specify, and we were too lazy to look it up ourselves. 1. @infallableoopsimeantinfallible 2.

Comments That Didn’t Make it Through Our Spam Filter

November 26, 2012 Brian Earl Leave a comment

Here are some of the recent comments that were blocked by the Flipside’s Uber Cyber Killer Spamfilter (no acronyms please).

Creepy Friend Request Guy Actually Requesting Kidney, Nbd

May 16, 2012 Rachel Beal

SILICON VALLEY, CA — In a press conference last Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced several new updates to the timeline template, the most noteworthy being a new feature which indicates whether or not the user is an organ donor. “Eighteen people around the world die each day waiting for a heart, liver, or kidney transplant,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference, “and by adding this new feature, I hope to change that. Kind of like Bono and…AIDS, right? Bono

[Graduation Issue] Study: 50% of Graduating Seniors Already Alcoholics

May 9, 2012 Andrew Schneider

“The real world is gonna hit these poor schmucks like a sack of bricks,” Shamberg noted, sneaking sips from a hip-flask between questions.

Facebook Already Planning to Coat Everything in Shitty Sepia Filters

April 17, 2012 Andrew Schneider Leave a comment

PALO ALTO, CA – Following a billion-dollar acquisition of popular photo-sharing app Instagram, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced a complete overhaul of Facebook’s user interface featuring Instagram’s characteristic “vintage” filters. The new interface will be launched without any warning to users within the next week. “This may be the biggest re-design we’ve ever done,” Zuckerberg declared from Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters. “Expect some major Instagram integration in the coming days. Like pictures of lakes at sunset? There’s gonna be

Jesus’ Face on Toast Turns Out to be Flesh-Eating Fungus

March 31, 2012 Brian Earl Leave a comment

FRANKFORT, KY – Adam Curtis found new religious convictions Thursday when he noticed that the burn-marks on his toast formed the image of his lord and savior Jesus Christ. The “burn-marks,” however, later proved to be a new type of deadly fungus, since named Corpus devoratus. “I was scramblin’ eggs while my toast was toastin’,” said Curtis, his eyes twinkling with his recently-discovered love of God, his cheeks black and decaying with the mold that will soon cause his death.

New CTEC Categories to Include Quality of Rec Letters, BS Tolerance

February 22, 2012 Nick Zessis Leave a comment

EVANSTON – Recent aesthetic changes to the Course and Teacher Evaluation Council (CTEC) will be followed up with entirely new categories at the end of Winter quarter, according to one Registrar administrator. “We were getting complaints from the students that teachers and classes weren’t accurately reflected by prior CTEC scores,” Alice Andrews told Flipside reporters. “We submitted a survey to a good portion of the student body and will soon add new categories that better reflect what NU students look