When going to a store to find a Halloween costume this year, customers were immediately assaulted by outfits sporting names like "Pocohottie" and "Cottontail Cutie." These costumes were not just taking up shelf space, girls were flocking to buy them. Jenny Cooke has a few thoughts on why girls insist on encouraging frostbite on Halloween.

While driving in town recently, Will Fernandez passed a billboard touting the benefits of "Vitamin D from the Sun and Tanning Beds." If the billboard was to be believed, using a tanning bed could help reduce the risk of breast cancer. This struck Fernandez as odd — most likely a manipulation of legitimate research on the benefits of Vitamin D. So he looked into the matter a bit further.

While most students are afraid of contracting the swine flu, they forget the No. 1 killer of all teens: driving. Last week was National Teen Driver Safety Week, and Will Fernandez observed it by taking a look at the risks of driving. He came away with a new appreciation of what he and his peers should be concerned about when they get behind the wheel.

Halloween has caught Maritza Mestre by surprise this year. "This has never happened to me," she writes. "Usually I have put tons of thought into costumes and my plans for the night." So what happened? After a little thought, she realized it all had to do with the tunnel vision specific to senior year: college.

"Freakonomics," in case you happen to be unaware, is a medium-length infusion of quirky, "un-normal" microeconomics topics and more-than-merely-readable nonfiction writing. The sequel, "SuperFreakonomics," has been out for almost a week, and somehow Diana Liu hasn't gotten her hands on a copy yet. She'd better start trying.

Six years ago, the day before Katy Metcalf turned 10, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith died. "Elliott was my hero," she writes. "I wanted to be him when I grew up … not a rock star, but a something better. I can't even describe it, but his death had a profound effect on my life. Not that day, maybe not that year. But the more I've matured, the more I appreciate his music, and the more I miss him."

What do you as Uni students think can or should be done about this problem? Do teachers and parents have the obligation to step in when they see bullying happening? Will there ever be effective state or federal legislation? Kelly Mover sees hope in the programs offered by San Francisco-based No Bully.

As Nikita Dutta says, the sheer goofiness is half the fun of fortune cookies! And, let's not forget they come with a handy set of your lucky numbers and a brief lesson in Chinese on the back. Oh yeah, and there's the actual cookie, too.

When Nancy Tang went to Shanghai a year ago, she was the very model of an overachieving student. But she returned to Uni a different person: "I had devoted so much energy to my perfect grades and extensive résumé, and yet they really didn't set me apart. I had shaped myself into the image of all other typical overachievers."

Chicago's fate has been decided. Rio de Janeiro was awarded the XXXI Olympiad on Friday over three competitors, including the Windy City. Chris Yoder ponders what an Olympic Games in Chicago would have been like, and instead of asking what's ahead, he's left to wonder: "What if?"

When Mohammad Jaber reads news stories from corporate-funded media such as CNN, he sees many biases regarding the Middle East, especially Palestine, resulting in distorted information and the omission of the Palestinian perspective on the conflict with Israel.

Forty years ago, a group of young people from all over the country arrived in White Lake, N.Y., to attend one of the biggest concerts of the summer. It would turn out to be one of the most iconic events in modern music history, an explosion of creativity and expression. Three days with the likes of Janis, Jimi, and The Who — Will Fernandez wishes he had been there!

"I've been on the Uni High roller coaster, high and low, and learned things from both ends of the spectrum," writes Elizabeth Allen. "I've hated being here as well as loved it, and Uni's been there, faithful to me all that time, compelling me to confront fears and discipline myself."

Serena Williams made the wrong move Saturday night when she berated a line judge with a tirade that shocked the tennis world. "She double-faulted both in reality and in analogy," writes Chris Yoder. "Yes, Serena, athletes do get frustrated. We all get frustrated. The mark of our maturity as human beings is how we deal with it."

Plenty of food lovers out there cannot understand making food blogs a hobby — with the time spent sampling the entries, they think, food could actually be made. But, as Diana Liu says, when you don't have the luxury of traveling to Europe or Asia in the middle of September or living in New York City, you do the best you can. With technology's help, that best can be simply delicious — a veritable visual feast.