This dates me, but I remember when Members Only jackets were absolutely the must-have piece of clothing in school. I wanted a Members Only jacket so badly, but always frittered my measly kid income away on unhip things like poetry books and art supplies (read: facetiousness). So I asked my parents for one of these jackets for Christmas. Using every persuasive means at my disposal, I tried to maximize my chances of receiving it as a gift. But my parents have no brand-awareness whatsoever. They bought me some department store knockoff jacket. I never dared to wear it until years after the fad had ended. In retrospect, I appreciate that my parents tried.

In this vein, here's a link to ...

I just finished reading SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Perhaps you read their first book Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, which was one of the top-selling nonfiction books of 2005. Both books are outstanding and offer readers a novel perspective on some of our most perplexing social problems. Levitt is a University of Chicago economist and Dubner is a professional writer who team up to bring economic theory and practice to real-life problems.

In their latest effort, they write about one of the huge problems that confronted our country in the early 1900s. At that time people were ...

So I was watching a chunk of the 24-hour broadcast of the movie "A Christmas Story" -- the unwrapping presents montage at the end, in which the two boys pull some unidentifiable clothing items from boxes, glance over at each other, and without missing a beat toss the clothing over their shoulders in disgust. As a kid I was kind of like that with any gift that wasn't a book.

My daughters at least have the same enthusiasm for books as they do toys. The big book gift I gave my 10-year-old daughter this year was a quintet of John Bellairs novels I found at a used bookstore. We got into Bellairs together when ...

In our minds, streamers and confetti and hundreds of balloons are dropping from the ceiling because...

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