As more of its stores close, Barnes & Noble is viewed with more affection and less animosity as "a corporate bully ... that helped squash small, independent bookstores," reports Julie Bosman in the New York Times (8/31/10). "It's a community gathering space," says Monica Blum, president of New York City's Lincoln Square Business Improvement District. "I think the larger bookstores have worked hard to become those kinds of spaces." Unfortunately, it's not enough for the Barnes & Noble in Lincoln Square, which, "despite being a reliable site for readings and events focused on the performing arts," is closing.

"We recognize that this store has been an important part of the fabric of the Upper West Side community since we opened our doors on October 20, 1995," said Mary Ellen Keating, a Barnes & Noble spokesperson, in a statement. "However, the current lease is at its end of term, and the increased rent that would be required to stay in the location makes it economically impossible for us to extend the lease." Lillian Kelly is among those grieving the loss, but admits she really wasn't much of a customer.

"I love buying my greeting cards here," she says, explaining that she visits the store at least two times each week, mostly to frequent the cafe upstairs. "They're getting business out of me, I suppose," she says. "Even though I'm sitting there reading magazines for free." Roger Hawkins says he likes the store because there aren't as many park benches anymore. He says he mostly buys audiobooks, online. "I'm just killing time," says Jai Cha, who says he visits the store to read books, a chapter at a time. Barnes says its next chapter will be another store somewhere else on the Upper West Side.

"I understand that advertising supports the internet, but I am a little spooked out," says Senator Claire McCaskill in a New York Times piece by Miguel Helft and Tanzina Vega (8/30/10). She adds: "This is creepy." The senator is among several lawmakers considering regulations on "remarketing," or the practice of tracking consumer behavior online to serve up targeted ads. Zappos is among the most enthusiastic proponents of the practice, but it appears that some backlash may be brewing.

If you've ever shopped at Zappos, you may have noticed that items you viewed but didn't purchase show up in ads on sites -- YouTube, Facebook or MySpace -- that you subsequently visit. "It's a pretty clever marketing tool," says Julie Matlin, who found herself being followed around by a pair of shoes she had viewed on Zappos. "But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on." Julie was even more chagrined when she found out she was being followed by ads for a dieting service.

Aaron Magness of Zappos says that's why each ad has a link to an explanation for it along with an opt-out option (which few apparently take advantage of). However, Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School says that simply telling people what's going on isn't enough. "When you begin to give people a sense of how this is happening, they don't like it," he says. And Alan Pearlstein of Cross Pixel Media, suggests it's overkill and thinks the approach could be more subtle by featuring general coupons versus specific items, for example. "What is the benefit of freaking customers out?" he says.

Archie may be 68 years old but his creators see nothing but potential in him among today's teens, reports George Gene Gustines in the New York Times (8/15/10). "I think there's been periods when you can tell that Archie comics had been written by men in their 50s," says Mark Evanier, a comic book historian. That period ended last year, when a new administration took over and began introducing storylines hinting at bigamy and characters who are out of the closet. This created buzz, and the buzz created sales.

At its peak, in the 1940s, a single Archie comicbook would sell more than a million copies. At its nadir, the 2000s, it "averaged around 2,455 copies." But the bigamy storyline (in which Archie imagines being married to both Veronica and Betty) sold 60,000, and now the comic averages about 5,000 copies per issue. Part of the success is owed to a different format -- a larger, "magazine-size publication that is part comic book, part 'Teen Beat.'" The approach played well with retailers, including CVS, Walmart, Target, Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble.

"I hate to denigrate comic book stores," says Michael Uslan, also a comic book historian. "They are wonderful, but for a kid to buy an Archie comic or for a parent to buy an Archie comic for a kid, they are not going to go to a walk-up in a bad part of town." The Archie empire is currently run by Jon Goldwater and Nancy Silberkleit, whose father and father-in-law, respectively, founded Archie comics. They envision everything from Archie apps to apparel to Broadway musicals to using Archie to promote literacy. "We're at the beginning of the beginning," says Jon. "Publishing will always be part of it, but we must morph into a multimedia company."

Despite considerable research to the contrary, "Generation Y's collective personality, if such a thing exists, is not likely to be much different from other generations'," reports Benedict Carey in the New York Times (8/3/10). Much of the current research on those born after 1970 says Gen Y, or the Millennials, are "low on greatness and high on traits like entitlement and narcissism." One recent study reports that the Millennials are "more likely than previous generations to see themselves as 'an important person.'"

But some psychologists are now challenging such characterizations, in some cases attacking the way past research was conducted or interpreted. Some say that the samples are skewed because they typically include only college students. Annie Murphy Paul, author of The Cult of Personality Testing, says the tests are inherently flawed: "We should keep in mind that personality tests are themselves cultural documents, idiosyncratic products of particular individuals that say more about their creators than the people who take them," she says.

A pair of university professors, M. Brent Donnellan and Kali H. Trzesniewski, meanwhile say that narcissism peaks in young adulthood generally, and isn't specific to Millennials. However, "a widely used questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory," finds that scores related to self-importance have "gone up significantly, at least in some college samples." Dr. Jean M. Twenge, author of Generation Me, says the most dramatic increases are among women. And then there's the question of whether the increase is necessarily good or bad, because self-importance makes some people pompous, but others purposeful.

Certain city cafes are getting rid of the comfy chairs and tables in hopes of getting rid of some of their customers, suggests Oliver Strand in the New York Times (8/25/10). Among them is the aptly named Cafe Grumpy, whose latest location features "a counter in the back and a chest-high table in the front." If you want to linger, there's a bench outside. The idea is to discourage people from parking themselves with their laptops -- a practice that Grumpy had already banned at one of its other locations.

"I appreciate the idea of when you go someplace and it feels like a home away from home, but I don't think it should be a home office away from home," says Grumpy co-owner Caroline Bell. Some customers aren't happy about this. "I don't find it relaxing," says Kate Sebbah. "This is a time to sit down, relax, compose my thoughts." But others -- espresso drinkers especially -- like the stand-up approach. "I spent a semester in Rome when I was in college and coffee there is: you come in, you pay, you get it, you drink it, you slam it and you're out the door," says Matthew Schnepf.

Christian Geckeler, of manseekingcoffee dot-com, says less furniture is conducive to more conversation. "It's really lovely," he says. "You have a couple of bar stools and the baristas are right there, so the conversation just naturally happens." Mark Connell of the Bluebird Coffee Shop agrees: "A coffee shop should be a place to meet your friends and hold conversations ... instead of sticking your head in a laptop," he says. Starbucks in SoHo (image) meanwhile is hedging its bets with "a few stools, in addition to the expected tables and chairs."

The nostalgia some Arkansans have for big, heavy, oblong watermelons isn't shared by folks elsewhere around the country, reports Kim Severson in the New York Times (8/18/10). "When I was growing up, the guys were always talking big melons," says Lloyd Bright, who lives in Hope, Arkansas (which, in itself, may explain the comment). He also holds the record for having grown the world's largest watermelon, weighing in at 268 pounds and 8 ounces (image). The trend, however, is toward smaller, rounder watermelons -- without seeds, of course (only about 20 percent of melons sold in the US today have seeds).

Purists think that these "personal watermelons" lack the personality, character and flavor of old-fashioned melons. But for farmers and consumers, the smaller melons make more sense. "You can handle them better and stack them better," says Ernest Brown, a farmer. In addition, the big watermelons might yield just 40,000 pounds per acre, while the personal size might yield up to 80,000 pounds. Others note that the growing process for traditional watermelons is "chemical heavy."

It is also wasteful, as it involves "culling plenty of healthy, unripe fruit to let the vine turn its attention to the most promising watermelon." And as far as consumers are concerned, the smaller melons are more practical, as well: "Most people, particularly urban people, would rather have a small one," says Dr. Terry Kirkpatrick of the University of Arkansas. "With the big ones, you fill up all your Tupperware containers and you're still not done." Terry still prefers the old-fashioned varieties, though: "I grew up in the country, and the ability to spit seeds is something that is an art," he says. "You just have to spit seeds once in a while."

Growing numbers of parents are looking for ways to teach their babies to learn a second or third language, reports Jenny Anderson in the New York Times (8/19/10). Some are hiring foreign-language babysitters (-: while others are investing in products like Spanish in a Basket :-). In some cases, it's because it's easier to learn foreign languages at a younger age. In others, it's because the parents have some kind of connection to other languages. It's also because they think it will make their children smarter, although there's some debate over that.

"Once you are trilingual, your brain can break down new languages that make it so much easier to learn your fourth, fifth and sixth languages," says Simona D'Souza, whose three kids speak German, Spanish and English. Research does indeed show "that learning a second language makes it easier to learn additional languages." But psychologist Ellen Bialystok says that doesn't necessarily mean being multilingual makes you smarter. "There are documented cognitive developments," she says, "but whatever smarter means, it isn't true."

Ellen's own research finds that multilingual kids "tend to have smaller vocabularies in English than their monolingual counterparts," and that they "have to work harder to access the right word in the right language which can slow them down" -- if only by milliseconds. But research also shows that "bilingual children do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways," and some believe this flexibility can be helpful in science and math. "We view it as a gift we are giving him," says Nir Liberboim, who "hired a Peruvian nanny to speak only Spanish" with his 18-month-old son.

"The perfect bike is one where every part is exactly where it belongs," says Max Schaaf, a builder of skater-inspired motorcycles, reports Austin Considine in the New York Times (7/18/10). Max runs 4Q Conditioning, a custom-bike shop in Oakland, California, and is "widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in skateboarding and custom bike building." The prevailing aesthetic is "minimalism: Every visible part seems to have an equally visible function; the pieces are as gorgeous and meditative as they are spare and athletic."

In other words, they are not "chrome cruisers with stretched-out front ends and high-rise handlebars ... These are sleek stripped-down machines, recalling a style, popular after World War II, in which owners chopped away excess to make their bikes leaner and faster ... Typical design features of the genre include custom handlebars, fenderless front wheels, suspensions shorn of all extraneous brackets and no-frills seating for just one person."

One thing these skater-bikes have in common with other choppers is a disdain for unmodified bikes. "Stock Harleys are boring," says Lee Bender, a skater turned biker. "It's kind of like going to Walmart and buying a skateboard," he says. Harley embraces these skaters, though, and "is using star skateboarders to promote a new variation of its Sportster model." The skaters themselves recognize "an overlap of skater and biker subcultures." As Max Schaaf puts it: "We're just wired a certain way ... For some reason the death and danger are just a part of us."

It's a store with no hours, no retailers and no customers, reports Colin Moynihan in the New York Times (8/16/10). It's called the Brooklyn Free Store, and as the name suggests, everything is free. Open for just six weeks, it is located on a dirt lot in a white tent under a blue tarp behind a chain link fence with a purple sign that says: Take what you want. Share what you think others may enjoy (not limited to material items)."

Naturally, there are no doors or locks at Brooklyn Free. Its organizers say the store is "intended to demonstrate the feasibility of recycling and to offer an alternative to mainstream capitalism." Items range from canned green beans to brown wingtips, "along with a used toaster oven, a flashlight and a galvanized metal bucket." It's not all junk though: Some participants have "dropped off a digital camera, an electric stove and a TiVo with a recording capacity of 40 hours."

An earlier iteration of the same concept previously operated out of a Williamsburg storefront "from 1999 to 2005." The concept is based on "the original Diggers, a group of agrarian utopians in 17th-century England." Forty years ago, modern Diggers also ran storefronts in San Francisco and New York. "New York is world renowned for having the best garbage," says Myles Emery, an organizer. "There could be free stores everywhere." This one is located on 232 Walworth St. between Dekalb and Willoughby Avenues in Bed-Stuy.

Americans watch about 200 billion hours of television each year, writes Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus, reviewed by Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times (8/7/10). Clay's issue with this isn't so much what we're watching; it's how much we're watching. His argument is that if we turned those hours -- this "cognitive surplus" -- into something more productive, like online collaboration, the world would be a better place, and life would be both more useful and fun.

To make his point, Clay worked with an IBM researcher to add up the amount of time people have spent on Wikipedia, the "collectively edited online encyclopedia." It turns out that Wikipedia "is the product of about 100 million hours of human thought ... In other words, in the amount of time we spend watching TV, we could create 2,000 Wikipedia-sized projects -- and that's just in America, and in just one year."

Clay further argues that this isn't so far-fetched, given that young people, especially, are switching their television time for "computers, mobile phones and other internet-enabled devices." In some cases, they are doing so to pursue collaborative projects, sometimes with a charitable element. But, as Farhad points out, not all online activity is "as valuable as Wikipedia," and suggests that having a "cognitive surplus" doesn't guarantee that "we'll spend it well."