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.

If you follow technology news, it will come as no surprise to you that the popular Silicon Valley social network Facebook announced that that they have reached 7.5 billion users, and surpassed their main competitor: Earth.

“People said we couldn’t do it,” said a hoodie-sporting Mark Zuckerberg, as he threw hundred dollar bills in the air. “But through the dedication of our engineers, and the narcissism of all of our users, we were able to achieve the impossible once again.”

The blogosphere has erupted with commentary on the subject. Chief Blogomaniac at FacebookStalkerWorld.com Corey “The Real Deal” Hector writes: “It’s no wonder people switched from Earth to Facebook. Earth has gotten stale. What has it done to its UI recently? Facebook just launches timeline, and boom!–everyone is there.”

As the Flipside tech columnist, I’ve been following social networks in depth for the last two months, and I have to agree. On Earth, you have mountains, and rivers, and skyscrapers. But on Facebook, you have pictures of mountains, pictures of rivers, and pictures of skyscrapers. Mountains go away when you leave the mountain. Facebook Photos are forever.

If your still an ancient Luddite and Earth-user, I say it’s time to hop off the bandwagon and hop on Facebook’s virtual-bandwagon-game, since everyone in the world is there, and then some.

According to scriptural and journalistic sources, God forgot the December 25^th birthday of his first and only son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, for the third time in the last 2,000 years.

“I got really tied up with a bunch of Christmas stuff this year,” God relayed to Flipside reporters through a chorus of angels, “I had a ton of presents to shop for, I was behind on answering work e-mails and prayers, and I had a bunch of relatives staying at my house and raising holy hell.”

Despite the glaring oversight, Jesus was adamant in forgiving his father.  “I love him unconditionally and I completely absolve him of his sin.”

God did claim a more legitimate excuse this year than in the past, including when he missed his son’s birthday in 800 AD for the coronation of Charlemagne and in 2003 for the Die Hard movie marathon on TNT.  He did, however, admit that this was his most shortsighted mistake since he forgot to TiVo Tim Tebow’s first game in the NFL.

The almighty deity is trying to put a positive spin on the whole ordeal, noting that the cards in the “Belated Birthday” section of Hallmark are much more funny than those in the “Son – Messiah and Savior of Mankind” section.  God also plans to set things right by sending a Chipotle gift card in the mail.

“Those burritos are divine,” Jesus acknowledged, “When I step into that store, its like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Sixth King of Babylon and Stanford CS106A student Hammurabi recently received a check-minus on the Code he submitted to his disappointed CS106A section leader after taking two late days.

“I don’t even know where to begin with this Code,” explained section leader Kevin Shin, “For example, look at the part that says ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ First of all, I think he means ‘an i for an i’ and because of the word ‘for’ he was clearly trying to construct a for-loop. I can only assume he was trying to say ‘for (int i = 0; i < TOOTH; i++)’ but then he never initializes TOOTH as an instance variable.”

“This Code is a complete mess,” continued Shin, “We ask for a simple program that codifies a system of 282 laws in the ancient Near East, and he submits this? Its looks it was written in Akkadian cuneiform, not Java.”

Fortunately for Hammurabi, it appears he will not face any charges of plagiarism. When a computer program was used to compare the Code to all previous assignments, it was confirmed that no student had ever written a similar system of codified law in the history of the course.

On Wednesday, Stanford University announced that it would be applying early decision to the United Nations class of 2016. With more Olympic medals, more Nobel laureates, and a larger endowment than most countries, Stanford believes it is finally time for the world to recognize its national aspirations. It’s no guarantee, however, that Stanford University will be admitted to the UN. The application process is rigorous and the admission rate is below 5%. “It’s harder than getting in to Stanford University,” said Stanford University. In order to apply, Stanford must fill out several pages of background information, write five essays including a 1500-word personal statement, and on top of all that, there’s a $50 application fee. “They don’t even use the General Application for multilateral organizations!” exclaimed Stanford President John Hennessy. Nonetheless, Stanford feels that it has a good chance of getting accepted, and has been going to the Hume Writing Center every day for help on the essays. Stanford even has recommendation letters from Canada and George Clooney.
However, if Stanford does not get accepted early decision, it will have to apply general admission to its “safety” multilateral organizations, which are less competitive. For some of these other multilateral organizations, the only requirements for membership are that you have at least 20 people and can cheer in unison. For example, UNESCO is currently considering accepting the Oklahoma Sooners Nation and the University of Phoenix Online Nation, which have a combined IQ of a banana. “That’s not where we want to be,” said Hennessy. “We chose the UN because of the study abroad opportunities, because of the academic atmosphere, and the weather.”

This week, Stanford finalized a proposal to build a $4.5 billion campus in Beijing. Dubbed “StanfordBJ,” the campus will increase the presence of Stanford across the Pacific.

“Stanford has proven to be a major tourist destination for visitors to Silicon Valley,” exclaimed President Hennessy. “StanfordBJ has the ability to help catapult Beijing to be a new center of tourism in not only Asia, but the entire world.”

In very small book of quotes, Hennessy outlined goals for Stanford’s proposal. In addition to an entire campus that looks exactly the same as the one in Palo Alto, Hennessy will place Rodin Sculpture Gardens all over the country and a miniature Lego Stanford in Shanghai.

Students are ambivalent about the announcement, as many are worried that tourism at the original Palo Alto campus will decline. “I just don’t see why we don’t spend that money here,” said sophomore Jack Simmons. “I don’t think Stanford will be the same without so many tourists, and there are definitely things we could improve here for our tourists.”

A member of Israeli parliament lamented that, after five years, they expected to have reached a more successful bargain. “You always start low,” he intoned, stroking his beard, “and meet them in the middle. But those meshuganes drove a hard bargain.” Some malcontents pointed out that the Americans recovered their two captive hikers from Iran for practically nothing. The Flipside Israel correspondent reports, however, that the event met with largely positive reactions, festivities, and much manischewitz.