In a recent Flipside editorial meeting, the publication’s staff voted unanimously to resist changes to the university’s IHUM program, claiming it would eliminate the most convenient source of jokes in upcoming years.\

“To be honest, its tough to come up with consistently biting humor to satirize the political, economic and cultural realities of our day, so its nice to always have an IHUM joke to fall back on,” explained a Flipside writer who preferred to remain anonymous due to his connection with a particularly risqué FMOTQ article this fall.

“It also gives us an instant way to connect with freshmen when they arrive on campus,” the writer continued, “For them, the Flipside starts as a sheet of paper that gets thrown in their soup bowls every Monday. Once you mix in a few IHUM jokes, though, they begin to see it as an empathetic document that really speaks to their hopes and their anxieties.”

With the elimination of the IHUM joke safety net, Flipside writers have been working overtime to develop PWR and IntroSem jokes. It’s not like these writers have anything better to be doing; after all, they can clearly just bullshit a B+ quality paper for their IHUM classes later tonight.

Findings from a recent Gallup Poll suggest that Republican Presidential Nominee Ron Paul is the clear leader among citizens who refuse to give their personal information to the government. The poll found that Rep. Paul’s belief in gun rights, desire to limit the federal government, racism and willingness to support batshit conspiracy theories really resonate with these wouldn’t-be voters.

The poll itself was difficult to conduct given than many people in this demographic don’t own phones and so had to be surveyed in person. Said a representative from Gallup, “Among the respondents interviewed in person, Ron Paul was actually only the third most common response behind ‘Get off my property!’ and ‘Obama is Satan!’ However, we decided to register these as ‘no opinion.’”

This is something of a mixed blessing for Paul and his supporters. In light of this news, the campaign is working on a strategy for mobilizing this demographic centered on convincing them that showing up to a primary won’t result in anyone stealing their guns and/or organs.

Cedro freshman Ralph Thomson, 19, was reportedly seen in lecture making an embarrassingly overt attempt to hide his erection in Making of the Modern World lecture the other day. Witnesses described the Ralph’s last ditch effort to hide the boner as sad, pathetic, and downright obvious.

“Really he’s putting his textbook on his lap? How is he even hard? The professor is talking about the slave trade in colonial Latin America,” said Jennifer Baxley, another freshman from Wilbur.

Numerous attempts by his friends to converse were rebuffed due to his humiliation and nervous attempts to conceal the bulging pocket rocket.

“Sweatpants…beginner’s mistake,” commented his roommate as he demonstrated his foolproof waistband tuck technique, “Works every time.”

As of press time a mortified Ralph was seen awkwardly sitting in the lecture hall minutes after class had let out to avoid anyone seeing the stiffening situation and subsequently scampering out of Dinkelspiel holding his laptop in front of his waist.

Alvin Peterson, a freshman who is enrolled in Econ 1A, has recently announced that he has discovered the solution to all of the country’s economic problems.

Having covered the first three chapters of the introductory textbook, which Alvin apparently obtained through a “sweet deal on Amazon,” the FroSoCo resident has gained a sufficient understanding of the subtleties of the nation’s political economy to instruct the Federal Reserve Board, the President’s advisors, and the executive cabinet on fiscal and monetary policy.

“We should cut the interest rates because then people spend more and that’s good”, said Alvin, while drawing a shaky supply and demand graph with a ballpoint pen in his wide-ruled notebook, “I mean, I did get a 9/10 on my first problem set. I think I know what I’m talking about here.”

After years of bitter struggle, the Israel and Palestine camps have reached an agreement: Modern Family is the best show on television.

Negotiations had been at a standstill until both sides realized it was almost eight o’clock and Modern Family was about to start.

Political pundits explained that negotiations had to be put on hold because neither side would tolerate missing the beginning of the show. They also explained that, oftentimes, a recurring theme or joke is established within the first few minutes that ties together the entire episode.

“Those gay guys–they are so funny,” said a man with an accent, who may have belonged to either side.

“When Phil Dunphy came on, we realized it was time to put aside our differences and gawk at the stupid white people on the screen,” said right-wing militant and religious zealot Zev Ben-Hofferwitz.

The peace accord quickly deteriorated when it was discovered that Steven Levitan, Jew, was involved in the production of the show.

Despite this, the agreement marked the biggest advance in Middle East Peace since Jimmy Carter convinced the Israeli and Egyptian leaders to enjoy “Dallas” in 1978.

By A SLAC Employee

This is hard. I don’t want to make things awkward between us, but there’s something on my mind I think we need to discuss. Every day we come to work—we try to solve the mysteries of the universe, try to develop a better understanding of the atoms that surround our existence. But somewhere along the way, I think something got lost in translation.

I think it’s time. We need to talk about the giant particle accelerator in the room.

I know what you’re thinking. “What are you talking about? We work at SLAC—we talk about the particle accelerator all day, every day.” But I’m not talking about that giant particle accelerator. No. I’m talking about the other one. The particle accelerator that keeps you up at night, the one that haunts your dreams and invades your thoughts. I’m talking about the giant particle accelerator in your heart. Sometimes it’s hard to see—sometimes we look at it and think, “Hey, that’s a real particle accelerator.” But at the end of the day, we’re deceiving ourselves. We know it’s not real.

The only particle accelerator is the one in our minds, and the longer we try to delude ourselves, the longer it will take us to realize that those “particles” that seem to be bouncing about are nothing more than figments of our imagination, colliding with each other in some tragic Shakespearian drama.

But that all stops today. I’m not going to let this particle accelerator control me, and neither should you. At stake are not only our lives, but the lives of our husbands and wives, our sons and our daughters. What most people don’t realize is that everyone has a giant particle accelerator in their lives. Some people call their giant particle accelerator “mother-in-law,” others call it “pepper spray,”—I call mine “a giant particle accelerator,” but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is that everyone has two giant metal tubes in their mind, working day in and day out to smash tiny things together, and until we have the courage to talk about it, nothing will ever get done.

Friends and acquaintances of sophomore Will Bradley report that his latest idea for a start-up consists of a product that is functionally indistinguishable from Google Docs. The “revolutionary” product, which Bradley is calling myDox, would allow users to save their documents in the cloud, work collaboratively in real time and “make spreadsheets and stuff.” His plan for myDox also includes a chat sidebar, “once they get most of the initial kinks worked out.”

Bradley rolled out the idea for myDox while leaving chemistry lecture last Thursday, but was disappointed by the lukewarm response it received from his peers. “It’s a good idea. That’s why Google made it, like, 10 years ago,” noted one friend. “He seems to think he’s going to get VC money. He really doesn’t understand how all this works,” added another.

After significant ridicule, Bradley eventually added that myDox is somewhat similar to Google Docs, but added, “myDox is going to be the MySpace to Google Docs’ Xanga. It’s going to be a game changer.”

Last week Coasta Concordia, an Italian cruise ship carrying 4,200 passengers, ran aground and capsized off the coast of Giglio in the Mediterranean Sea. According to Francesco Schettino, the ship’s captain, the decision to send the cruise ship barreling towards the coast at high speed with no time to change heading or to prepare passengers for a collision was made as part of the ongoing protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act, SOPA. In what many have called “a pretty inconvenient week” millions of students and thousands of cruise passengers found themselves cut off from essential services including Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and safety on the Coasta Concordia.

Meredith Wilkins, a Coasta Concordia survivor explained her experience. “No one saw it coming. We’d had discussions about how it was too big to fail, how it was to important to ever go down, how too many people depended on it. We were wrong. I’ve been through a lot of traumatic experiences–I was even on that cruise ship that ran aground, but nothing compares to the feeling I had when I tried to access Wikipedia only to see a black screen. It was like my whole world was turned upside down and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.”

“People think SOPA is harmless, but we’ve seen time and time again that’s simply not true,” remarked Captain Schettino, as he nursed a beer and tried fruitlessly to access megaupload.com. “We saw last week that SOPA is a threat to commerce—just look—it caused a ship with over 4,200 passengers to sink.  It’s time for America to realize SOPA just won’t work.”

Stanford, CA — In an embarrassing incident Monday, staff members at the Arillaga family dining hall accidentally displayed a poster depicting famous actor Morgan Freeman, mistakenly claiming he was Martin Luther King Jr.

Trying to cover for their most recent mistake, Arillaga issued a statement saying that the dining hall “made a grave mistake” and was “deeply sorry for offending any members of Stanford’s African-American community.” Arillaga also plans to send a formal apology letter to Morgan Freeman, as they do not want to incur His wrath.

Surprisingly, however, many members of the Stanford Community did not notice the mistake until it was explicitly pointed out. Hu Huang ’13 explained: “Morgan Freeman, Martin Luther King, they all look the same to me.”

Another student, Mark Christenson ’14 actually appreciated the mix-up. “Martin Luther King is important and all, but Morgan Freeman is really under appreciated. It was nice to have the opportunity to reflect on everything Morgan Freeman has contributed to society.”