Free Republic

Once hot-selling Barack Obama souvenirs are marked down to remainder-table prices at a drugstore near the Kenwood home he owns but has barely visited since becoming president a year ago this week. That's not a reflection of disenchantment with Obama in his old South Side stomping grounds, but rather the sobering realities of time, distance and enormously elevated responsibilities. "He's president of the United States, not mayor of Chicago," said Peter Flemister, a retired attorney at a diner in Hyde Park the other day. "He's got a financial crisis, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care. I'd rather he stay...

What do a gym membership, a bottle of prescription pills and a holiday gift card have in common? Each of them is a thing that is bought and then often goes unused. In their recent paper “Paying Not to Go to the Gym,” the economists Stefano DellaVigna and Ulrike Malmendier showed that people who buy an annual membership to a health club overestimate by more than 70 percent how much they’ll actually use it. Many people, therefore, would be better off buying monthly or daily passes. ...As for gift cards — well, let’s just say there is good reason that...

<p>The space between a computer monitor and the human eye can be a dangerous place.</p> <p>That three feet or so is part of our "intermediate zone" of vision, an area the eye rarely focuses on — as opposed to objects close by or in the distance.</p>