Throngs of witches with broomsticks in hand wandered through the autumn air, weaving through crowds of wannabe 80s rockstars and skimpily-dressed Catwomen. This might seem like a scene from Disney’s 90s classic, "Halloweentown," but it’s a real sight in the town of Salem. On Saturday night, the Undergraduate Council sponsored a free Halloween outing to Salem, Massachusetts, home of the infamous witch hunts of the late seventeenth century, and I was one of the lucky few to go. A few minutes in Salem, and I realized how ridiculous the whole town looked, especially to a Californian like myself who has never before experienced this level of Halloween hype.', [])

The crisp cold air of fall, filled with swirling, fiery leaves, brings back memories of a carefree childhood. But you can’t reminisce. In fact, your mind can’t complete one clear thought. Because that guy sitting in the next carrell in Lamont has to release an earth-shattering cough every other minute. And then the girl over by the window pierces the room with a sneeze at indescribable decibel levels. And don’t even start about the mysterious sniffles that, like a sharpened knife, slice through your ear drum even when you’re blasting Beyonce on your headphones.

Yes, it’s the season when everyone seems to be getting sick, and no one has the time to sleep it off. But here are some ways that you can save yourself from the coughs, sneezes, and sniffles—share them with your friends and do your part to help reduce the overall sick-noise level on campus.

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To kick off the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ $2.5 billion capital campaign, Harvard administrators and faculty spent Saturday morning wowing supporters and friends of Harvard with tales of all the amazing things students and researchers are doing on campus. It’s no surprise they tried to play this angle up—after all, a good chunk of the money Harvard hopes to raise will go towards improving teaching and enhancing the learning experience.', [])

Only three students attended a discussion last week with Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith about what they want to see in the next Dean of the College. It was on a Thursday night, and it was in the Quad, but that’s still pretty embarrassing.

Flyby put together some suggestions for administrators to keep in mind for future events if they want to attract some student attendance.', [])

Earlier this week, we learned that Harvard University Dining Services will stop serving Barilla pasta in Harvard dining halls after Barilla’s chairman Guido Barilla told an Italian radio station that his company would never feature a gay family in its advertising.

With its decision to boycott the company\'s pasta products for the foreseeable future, Harvard will no longer be a source of revenue for Barilla. This almost sounds like divestment, and we all know that divestment is kind of a big deal. In fact, the University has recently reaffirmed its anti-divestment stance with respect to its investments in the fossil fuel industry, a controversial move provoking\xa0varied reactions.

While we at Flyby are fairly certain that President Faust does not know or care much about the matter of Barilla divestment, we wondered what it might look like to reframe her recent letter justifying the University\'s stance on fossil fuels and apply her language to the Barilla issue.

Here\'s what we came up with:', [])

If you’re anything like us, someone would have to pay you a lot of money (Board Plus times a million, really) to go back to middle school. But with Halloween fast approaching, we’ve come to realize that being 12 has one major perk—the right to trick-or-treat without being asked if you’re “too old” to demand free candy from your neighbors.

In honor of the trick-or-treating we hope you do next week, Flyby came up with some ways to connect with your pre-teenage self on Halloween.

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Want to look good this Halloween but just realized you gained too much weight to go as a sexy cat again? Or maybe you just found out that the Garment District isn’t actually an entire district, and have been too embarrassed to go ever since? Or is it that you realized that the life-sized Furby costume that you’ve been planning isn’t as original as you thought? If you’ve answered yes to one or all of these questions, then you could use a last minute sexy Halloween costume. You could also use a refresher in high school rhetoric. The questions were rhetorical.

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Whether it is used to wake you up in the morning, remind you to do your laundry before lunch, or fill that awkward silence a few minutes before class starts, your smartphone is a necessity. However, you may have been frustrated by the appalling scarcity of apps specificly designed for Harvard struggles. Here is a list of apps that should, but don’t exist (yet). CS50 kids, pay attention:', [])

\'Tis the season for new Apple releases, and with Apple announcing that the latest version of their operating system will for the first time be a free release, it’s almost like Christmas came early. But beyond the irresistible price and cat-free name, what’s new? Here are some highlights.

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Just in time for the World Series, Norwegian band Ylvis has released a perfect paean to the Massachusetts loyalty that Harvard students harbor. In their new music video for “Massachusetts,” the long-tressed, Euro-pop trio—famous for their zoological philosophizing in “What Does the Fox Say?”—go on a Bay State road trip that takes them to the Boston Library, Nelson Mandela’s home, and a homoerotic moment in a truck near Massachusetts Bay.', [])

UPDATED: Oct. 23, 2013 at 10:07 p.m.

We all know—some of us a little too proudly—that Harvard ranks among the best colleges for just about everything, minus HUDS tater tots. Recently, Harvard\xa0was on top as #1 yet again—this time, in \xa0an online ranking of the top 100 social media colleges.

This comes at little surprise, given that Harvard is the birthplace of Facebook and\xa0awkward social norms. But what exactly do these rankings mean?

The site doing the ranking, Student Advisor, claims that “these innovative schools use social media to give students insight into their culture, personality and DNA.” Um, ok. I didn’t really know that Facebook had gene testing, but as long as we’re first, I guess I have no problem with it.

A look through the other schools that rank among the top ten shows that the survey seems really to be based on the connectivity of students and the prevalence of official university accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

Stanford is a close second due to the fact that it “uses social media data to study tourism rates of the world’s natural areas,” which is great for everyone who happens to be looking into visiting rural Palo Alto.

And Yale broke into the top five due to their new Tumblr blog and ramp-up of Facebook and Twitter, most likely due to an overly-defensive PR strategy in the aftermath of the actions of a certain famed\xa0feces-spreader (and no, it wasn\'t their bulldog).

But did we deserve to win?\xa0In my opinion, certainly. I don’t visit the Class of 2017 Facebook group often, but when I do, I see posts about lost phones, half-brags about trips to Djibouti, and wars with MIT. The fact that we even have the term “Facebook celebrities” is indicative of the honor, however dubious, we place on those who have established themselves online. At other places, like my high school, these people would be called “weird”. Kudos to you, Harvard.

So tweet on, my classmates, and I’ll see you online sometime.

Don\'t worry Harvard Law Class of 2014, there\'s still hope that you can take that non-profit or government job after all.

Even with those law school loans piling up, you may not have to sell your soul to the giant law firms—just your Hot Wheels collection. Just like this student, who is apparently\xa0trying to sell 240 die cast cars from his childhood on eBay in order to pay off the debts from his legal education, you, too, can find a way to make it work.', [])

Many Harvard undergrads hail from the state that everyone seems to sneer at, defying the stereotypes that are attached to their beloved home. The Dirty Jerz has one of the worst reps around town, but here are five reasons why Jersey deserves some respect:

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Given the hundreds of emails you probably receive every day, you, like all of us here at Flyby, have probably noticed a disturbing trend. People suck at emailing. Too many emails these days are overly formal when addressed to a buddy, not formal enough for a professor, annoying, trite, or just downright rude. While we can’t even begin to fix all the things even you are (probably) doing wrong, we have come up with a few good places to start.', [])

The Harvard Political Review released the Fiscal Year 2012 Annual Report of the U.S.A. last week, offering an analysis of the federal budget and challenges facing American spending policy.

Coincidentally, the report was published just hours before Congressional leaders announced that they had hammered out a deal to end the federal government shutdown, which began on October 1.

Flyby took a look at the numbers and decided that the best way to make sense of them was to put them in terms of three things we care about and think you probably do too—Ted Cruz, the Affordable Care Act, and the government shutdown.', [])

After watching the University’s new admissions video, current Harvard students themselves will wish they went to Harvard.', [])