A great Christmas gift...

Amazon has a great deal on the the earphones I use, the Etymotic Research ER6 Isolator Earphones. They're discounted from $148 to $78, about half price:

The ER6s are a superb set of isolating earphones and I recommend them highly. You can plug them into your MP3 player and listen to Scripture, sermons, podcasts, music or whatever. And while listening, you won't hear any of the environmental noise surrounding you because these earphones don't let any of it through your ear canal. Think about it--on long international flights, in airports, on buses or subways, in coffee shops--you can silence the crying baby or cell phone blabbermouth...

For myself, I plug the ER6s straight into my MacBook Pro and don't bother carrying an MP3 player. My laptop is always with me.

Here's a good review of the ER6s on the excellent headphone review site, Headroom. But notice Headroom's discounted price is only $128, fifty dollars more than Amazon's.

Anyhow, if you travel a lot--particularly internationally--I can't recommend the ER6s highly enough. They're much less expensive than other isolater earphones, their sound is superb, and they last forever. And for myself, I have yet to find an airline armrest sound-out connector that won't take the ER6 plug, so you can pass on the trashy earphones airlines provide.