EVANSTON-NAGS (Northwestern’s Annoying Geek Squad) released NU’s iPhone app version 1.3333 (repeating) yesterday in order to fix bugs in the old system and add more student-friendly features.

“Our first priority was to fix minor problems and glitches within the software. The most obvious error was an unfortunate spelling error in ‘Lunt Hall’ on the GPS map,” said head developer Smith Bergman.

“Students also requested that we add ‘Thirsty Thursdays’ to the campus events calendar. I assume that’s an ASG initiative to install more water fountains in campus buildings. It’s great to see students using the app to work together,” he added.

The updated version also includes more features targeted directly at students, most notably an action that allows for direct chatting with NU President Morty Schapiro.

“I just thought about, like, dumb stuff I wish I could do on my phone, and then, like, designed the software around that,” said McCormick senior Dave Brenning, who also worked on the app’s design.

When asked how the application enables the school president to BBM, a function currently only capable on the BlackBerry, Brenning responded, “Want to do worthless and unfeasible things using valuable Northwestern resources? There’s an app for that.”

The updated application also makes greater use of the interactive map that was created in the first version of the app. Now students can use the GPS system to find their way back to their dorm room from anywhere in Evanston and the greater Chicago area.

“Perfect for one-night stands,” explained freshman Sally Merkelson, who uses the Northwestern app on her purple bejeweled iPhone.

“Knowing that now I’ll somehow make it back to Bobb in the morning takes a little bit of headache out of my already horrible hangover.”

While Bergman is proud of NAGS’ work on the app, he knows there will be more room for improvement. He said he hopes to develop a breathalyzer for the phone, which rates inebriation on a scale of “buzzed,” “schwasted,” and “shitfaced”.

“It’s all about making life more enjoyable for the kids, even if it will cause tuition costs to double in the next two years. I really look forward to getting to work on version 1.667,” he said.

EVANSTON – Members of the Northwestern University student organization Coalition Against Climate Change announced today that they were “satisfied” to see the return of wintry weather.

“We are pleased and happy to report that the cold weather is back,” said senior Mike Daly, president of the Coalition. “You guys don’t understand how freaked out we were last week.”

Daly is referring to the flash of warmth Evanston experienced last week, when high temperatures reached mid-40s.

“Seriously, we were freaking out about global warming. I mean, it’s January. It’s supposed to be icy cold, not moderately chilly. For a while we thought we were too drunk to realize it was cold, but as it turns out, that had nothing to do with how warm last week was.”

Other members of the club shared similar sentiments of relief.

“We didn’t even need our thick jackets and mufflers. I saw a guy walking down Sheridan in a hoodie. A hoodie!” reported junior Wendy Frost, a member of the Coalition against Climate Change. “I’m just really glad to see all the people around with winter gear on again, especially those big, goofy hats.”

“I almost died last week,” said the snowman residing behind the Norris student center, an active member of the Coalition. “It was just too warm.”

However, not everyone on campus is happy that the frosty weather is back. Freshmen April Lim was overheard muttering, “I could have gone to Berkeley,” during a particularly strong wind gust.

The biggest loser in this entire situation seems to be freshmen theater major George Lebow, who mistakenly thought winter was over and sold all of his warm clothing in exchange for beer money. While Lebow will probably suffer the consequences of hypothermia, it is likely that he will not feel anything at all.

EVANSTON–A new study by the For Research Association Today (FRAT) revealed that people who spend more time looking at their cell phone than engaging in face-to-face conversations are much more popular.

“Think about it,” said Nick Kite, “When you talk in person you can only talk to a couple of people at once, but I have hundreds of contacts on my cell phone.”

“And don’t get me started about how many Facebook friends I have” added Kite.

When meeting somebody for the first time, the male who glances at his cell phone more often takes on the dominant role in the relationship. Researchers note that these males usually just check the time, although they often pretend there is something ‘Stephen Demos making a field goal’ important going on.

Girls, on the other hand, use their cellular phones to be passive aggressive, equating popularity to a 3-G network. These females emphasize the fact that they have a call to anyone who will listen,  often talking to their parents the same way they would talk to a friend to play up their immense popularity.

Cool girls also call people and immediately hang up so they will get called back and “have to take this important call.”

“U no,” says Grace Aoba as she glances at her phone, “IKMCISAATSPKTITCIA, IHMOPTTT (I keep my cell in sight at all times so people know that if this convo isn’t awesome, I have many other people to talk to.)

“I am popular!” concluded Aoba.

WASHINGTON – The EPA recently released a shocking comprehensive report in which they revealed the true cause of global warming: the end of the Cold War. Although the Cold War neared its end twenty years ago with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, its effects on global temperatures are just now being discovered. According to lead scientist Bill Nye, “the frigid diplomatic relations between the United States and the former USSR were the chief source of global cooling and an effective combatant to the forces that present themselves today as global warming.” He goes further to say that, “all of those stories about the rise of pollution in cities contributing to global warming are just urban legends.”

The groundbreaking report has angered environmentalists everywhere. Former Vice President Al Gore, crusader against global warming, is having trouble coming to terms with this new, even more inconvenient truth. “All this time, I thought I was helping the world by carpooling, conserving energy, and ‘going green’,” said Gore. “In reality, what I should have been doing all along was using my political connections to build up China into a superpower, thus facilitating the creation of a Colder War.”

In accordance with the report’s findings, the EPA has issued a list of recommendations to combat global warming. The organization suggests that people act with a detached demeanor towards anyone they meet while making sure not to allow any situation to escalate into open confrontation. Other advisable steps to take include attempting to see a lunar eclipse before your neighbor, and accumulating a larger collection of tools than any neighbor possesses. Frequent awkward contact with ex-lovers is also encouraged. Smith is confident that with this new information, society will be more capable of fighting the global problem. “If we all do our part to make our personal diplomatic climates a little bit colder, we can solve the problem of global warming once and for all.”

BOSTON – Thomas Fine, a linguistics professor at Harvard University, reported that he was “stumped for the first time in his life” after trying to analyze the words in Soulja Boy’s new single, “Trix be smackin my 24s, nah?” After a full perusal of the song’s lyrics, Fine concluded that the rapper’s lyrics “do not match up with any sort of language ever observed in the vast canon of human speech.”

Fine began his press release by speaking on Soulja Boy’s rhyme schemes. “In the second verse, Mr. Boy attempts to rhyme the words ‘hoes and bitches’ with ‘I throw them some fifties’. I have searched the Harvard database and there is no dialect known to man in which these words have even slightly similar phonetic construction.” The linguist also noted that approximately 75% of the rhymes consist of words ending in ‘ah’, such as ‘nah, ‘yah!’, and ‘cuzz ah’. “There are simply not enough words that end with this particular phoneme,” Fine noted, “that would make it possible for about half of these rhymes to be remotely original.”

In addition to nonsensical ryhmes, Fine explained that Soulja Boy also displayed a perplexing lack of sentence construction abilities. “He constantly interrupts his sentences to interject with seemingly random shouts and hollers. For instance, he starts a line with ‘I say to the hunnies every day,’ which seems normal enough, but then continues “YUZ SAYS WHAT CHYA YAHIN IN MY GRILL,” which makes absolutely zero lexical sense.”

Fine’s final analysis reported 90% sentence fragments, 4 words per sentence, and a second grade reading level. “The most bizzare line in the song,” he said, “is the 3rd to last one. Mr. Boy raps, ‘I wanna chill around.’ Doesn’t he know that prepositions aren’t something you can end a sentence with?”

OXFORD, England – Sir Martin Digby-Walsington, resident witch doctor at Oxford University, is on a mission to prove the dangers of science’s latest affront on humanity. Pasteurization, he claims, not only fails to keep so-called “germs” out of milk, but also causes autism in babies. Invented by Louis Pasteur, the eponymous process purports to prevent disease by heating milk to 138˚ Celsius. Immediately adopted by dairy farmers and hailed as an “incredible breakthrough” by the British Royal Academy’s Nigel Pennington, pasteurization has faced little scrutiny since announced to the public six months ago.

Digby-Walsington and his group of co-researchers, graduate students looking to earn their witch-doctorates, aim to reveal the ugly side of Pasteur’s darling. Their new report cites extremely circumstantial evidence, proving that pasteurization has, without a doubt, probably caused autism in 33% of the babies participating in the study. “We rented twelve newborns from Goddard’s Home,” he says, referring to the notorious London orphanage for incestuously-conceived children, “and split them into two groups. Those in the control group received a standard diet of meat, potatoes, and ale. In the experimental group, however, the ale was substituted with pasteurized milk. Of the six children in the experimental group, four showed sings of mental slowness after three weeks. Only three from the control group became autistic.”

Other prominent witch doctors agree with Digby-Walsington’s findings and are quick to expose Pasteur’s other discovery, homogenization. “It’s a clear plot to turn us into sodomites,” declares William Shoebie, acclaimed pseudoscientist at the Dairy Institute of Cambridge. “Pasteur wants everyone to be homos.”

Shoebie and Digby-Walsington are together forming a Lactose-Intolerance League to fight Pasteur’s developments.

LANCASTER, PA – Ezekiel Lambright has found an outlet for his frustration at the complexities of modern society: the internet. A Pennsylvania Amish hog farmer, Lambright says that his desire to speak out began six months ago, when he found that his sons had been hiding their cell phone use. “I couldn’t believe my eyes! It’s like all our teachings were for naught! Jebediah and Abraham had not only been using cellular telephones, but they had run up an astronomical charge for doing something called ‘text messaging’ with the neighbor girls — almost $5! After showing them the business end of a belt, I decided that the world needed to feel my outrage for making such evils available to my children.”

Every week after finishing his morning farm duties, Lambright gets in his buggy and makes a 2-hour journey to the nearest library for internet access. “On Fridays, I’m down to 14 hours of work per day! Shameful! But my message needs to be heard.” Lambright’s blog, disciplinefirst.wordpress.com, is focused on how technology distracts people from virtue.

“People today are coddled,” posted Lambright about the automobile. “What’s the point of making a journey if you can’t feel every minute passing? Cars today have sinfully soft seats — seats like beds! Shouldn’t a mile in a vehicle leave you feeling like you carried the vehicle for a mile? It’s proper penance!” Regarding entertainment, the farmer told us that he was “aghast at the loose morals of the popular musicians that the children idolize nowadays. That Taylor Swift is a bedeviled harlot!” Since its advent, the website has received a number of comments, both positive and negative. “A flame war erupted on my post about the evils of pornography. Those weak-willed addicts will see a real flame war… on Judgment Day!”

However, no matter the reasons, the traffic received by the blog has encouraged Lambright to launch a twitter account (@bighatzeke) so he can spread his message without leaving the farm. “I’m even on facebook now! This new Blackberry lets me pwn religion n00bs from home; sometimes I can even send instant messages while I work. At this rate, I’ll have converts in no time!”

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – Atlantis’ astronauts grabbed hold of the Hubble Space Telescope at the end of last week, quickly setting their sights on the unprecedented spacewalking repairs they will attempt over the next couple of days.

“It’s going to be tough,” explained head astronaut, Jim Bernstein. “My hands are shaking just thinking about it. One wrong move and we could float off into space.”

The Atlantis astronauts tried to keep cool on the way up as a way to cope with the difficult mission ahead. One astronaut, Dave Leighton, purchased thousands of dollars in beer to ease the stress. “The trip up is stressful enough. It’s a good way to keep cool. Plus, have you ever been drunk in space? It’s a shitload of fun.”

Other members of the Atlantis team joined in the revelry, citing the difficult task ahead of them as justification for getting drunk. “I’ve thrown up before, but it’s so different in space,” noted Jill Osterman. “If you’re not careful, there could be a nasty aftertaste.”

If the repairs don’t go as planned, the crew expects that they’ll have enough beer to forget their worries, at least for a couple more orbits around the earth. Mission control has had trouble communicating with Atlantis, so it’s possible much of the beer has been consumed.

CHICAGO – It is clear that print media has faced hard times as of late. In an interesting revival tactic, Popular Science Magazine is attempting to counter the downturn by releasing a new sister publication entitled Unpopular Science. The format of the new magazine is similar to that of Popular Science, which features innovations from some of today’s most interesting scientific fields. Unpopular Science, however, focuses mainly on geology.

“We were really trying to broaden our demographics,” noted the president of Popular Science, James Fallton. “The people who read our original publication tend to have many friends, go out on weekends, and have had a girlfriend or boyfriend at some point in their lives. That’s not who we’re trying to attract with Unpopular Science. We want the people who stood in line for hours to see the new Star Trek movie.”

The new magazine includes very few pictures, long-winded scientific journal-type articles, detailed and complicated graphs, and small text. “I love it,” Earth and Planetary Sciences major Pat Peterson. “It goes way beyond just stalactites and stalagmites. It even includes minerals. Minerals!”

It seems that after just one issue, the unpopular crowd has responded well to Unpopular Science. Geology is just that popular.

WHEELING, IL – Bernardo Johnson, intern of Midland Paper, was honored today for the Intern of the Year Award. Johnson, a 39-year-old graduate of the University of North Dakota, has been working for Midland for 14 years. This is the first award for Bernardo, as his recent purchase of a Swingline 3-Hole punch has allowed for the company’s stock status reports to be processed three times faster.

An over joyous Johnson told The Flipside, “Maybe they’ll finally hire me. I haven’t paid my taxes since Reagan was in office. This is the best $10.70 I’ve ever spent!” Johnson’s single hole puncher will be donated to charity.

“I was inspired by my great godfather, Roland Wernoff, who invented the automatic paper shredder. Back in the 1920’s in the height of identity fraud in the United States, he used to tear up papers, one by one, with only his bare hands and a lot of motivation. I used to be like him too, doing punches one at a time. But now I’m done with that lifestyle.”

Many other interns hope to follow in the footsteps of Bernardo. It is likely, however, that someone more qualified, and with more 3-hole punching experience, will replace him.

President of Midland, Theodore C. X. P. D. Midland, told us that he no longer intends to keep Bernardo. “Yeah, we just don’t need his, uh, services anymore at corporate. Now that we have that 3-hole puncher, we may consider sending him to one of our distribution centers in Normal, IL.”

The company does not plan to inform Johnson of his termination. Rather, they believe he’ll get the hint when they take away his gold paper clip trophy, which he received early this morning.

Perhaps Bernardo, and Midland, could have used a Staples Easy Button a long time ago, but even that could not have stimulated productivity like the purchase of the 3-Hole punch.