The alternative, of course, is that depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection — increased body temperature sends white blood cells into overdrive — depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction. Maybe Darwin was right. We suffer — we suffer terribly — but we don’t suffer in vain.”

Read more at The New York Times

But when it came to actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, the school floundered. Students disobeyed teachers’ instructions, and class discussions veered away from the lesson plans. In one class Lemov observed, the teacher spent several minutes debating a student about why he didn’t have a pencil. Another divided her students into two groups to practice multiplication together, only to watch them turn to the more interesting work of chatting. A single quiet student soldiered on with the problems. As Lemov drove from Syracuse back to his home in Albany, he tried to figure out what he could do to help. He knew how to advise schools to adopt a better curriculum or raise standards or develop better communication channels between teachers and principals. But he realized that he had no clue how to advise schools about their main event: how to teach.”

Read more at The New York Times

Read more at the New York Times

Telling the brain to perform an act where it puts the body to sleep but also build in a mechanism to check up on that act, which causes it to be in its “awake” state, is not only ironic but also the funniest joke that the universe could pull on us. It’s ingenious. But, it sure is mean when we’re laying awake at night.

What is the answer to sleep then? To not think about it? That’s probably part of the equation. How do you get to that point is the next question.

It is an artifact of the 1990s, intended as a light-touch policy to nurture innovation in an emerging industry. And its central concept is “notice and choice,” in which Web sites post notices of their privacy policies and users can then make choices about sites they frequent and the levels of privacy they prefer.

But policy and privacy experts agree that the relentless rise of Internet data harvesting has overrun the old approach of using lengthy written notices to safeguard privacy.”

Read more at the NYTimes

In an op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof, the act of giving is equated to food or sex in their ability to provide human pleasure. It is a post that introduces the premise of a new book titled, “The Happiness Hypothesis“, and it’s one that I can agree with.

Throughout time, people have given to help those in need. They still do, as is seen in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. People also give to feel good about themselves. It’s a euphoric feeling that is not only one-sided, but has benefits for the receiving end.

Kristof ties this to a humanistic need to be social and to contribute to society. It’s an old idea, but it’s always a good read.

Update – 02/13/2010

I’m in the process of reading The Happiness Hypothesis. Will post a review soon after completing it.

Gmail – ‘Where I enter my cloud in the sky and hop about for e-mail, chat, suggested news, and online documents. I don’t know why I don’t use iGoogle. Yes, I do. It’s the look and feel of iGoogle. Of course, I can change it, but the default Gmail settings- with a slight modification by moving my chat contact list to the right-hand side and enabling docs and calendar- is all I need. It’s simple and it works.

The New York Times – I find the front page of the New York Times to be very effective in getting me the latest news and the most popular as read by other visitors. Whether it’s educational, international, technological, political, etc. I can always find news that’s important to me. Their op-ed section also make for good reading with Friedman, Krugman, Kristof, and Dowd.

ESPN – I love sports. ESPN delivers.

VGChartz – I love video games… and numbers. VGChartz is where I go for the latest sales numbers. Sometimes, I go there for news, but I prefer IGN for video game news, even though it didn’t make it in my top 6. The news at VGChartz is sufficient.

GoNintendo – Even though I don’t play much of Nintendo-branded games, nowadays, I’m still interested in what they have in store for their key franchises. I think a lot of their third-party games on the Wii are fun and go unnoticed by the general consumer. This is where I go for my Nintendo fix.

Reddit – Recently, I’ve been annoyed with the Reddit submissions that pop up on the homepage, but I keep coming back. Visiting the site is more entertainment than intellectual but, every now and again, you can find a gem that is worth reading. I hear that subscribing to sub-reddits is better than visiting the homepage.

Those are the top 6 websites that I visit daily. Here are others that I get to once a week or, at least, once a month.

• The Economist
• Hulu
• YouTube
• IGN
• Forbes
• BusinessWeek
• Idealist
• The Chronicle

What’s your top 6?

The number one rule I use has always been to never click on a solicited link, even if it is in an e-mail supposedly sent from your bank. The best thing to do is to open a new browser, or tab, and type in the website address of your bank. Log in from there and do any updating you were requested to do.

Fraudulent e-emails and websites are becoming more and more sophisticated, and can easily mimic the look and feel of your bank. That’s why I say to pass on the link and type in the website address, yourself.

Now, that’s how you can protect yourself. But what about banks? What are they doing? According to the New York Times, many online banking and financial websites are implementing more security measures such as “two-factor authentication”, and are offering zero liability in the event that your account is compromised. This second authentication can come in the form of a code sent as a text message to your phone that you have to enter onto the website when logging in. It’s another step, but it’s added security.

Granted, this isn’t for everyone, and it’s still in the early stages. But, it’s an effort toward securing your financial accounts.

When I was in Vietnam, one of my co-workers was researching a Vietnamese anti-spam solution that consulted and updated a central database that would act as a repository and filter for incoming e-mail. In theory, this would also thwart phishing scams. If this were to be executed, each e-mail provider would have to provide their own database and filtering solution (which is what the spam filters are), or, there could be a central database that many e-mail providers could use to share knowledge about which e-mails and e-mail addresses are fraudulent. Thus, reducing the number of fraudulent e-mails sent to a user’s inbox and reducing the number of victims to phishing scams.

Resources:

• NY Times: Don’t take this bait (but you’re safe if you do)

Eventually, after reading these three articles, I want to write something about them. For now, the number of tabs I have open now is unsettling. Here goes “minus three”.

Mullenweg: 10 Blogs to Make You Think
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/11/wordpress.blog.mullenweg/index.html

The Theory of Supermarkets
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/10/magazine/the-theory-of-supermarkets.html

How-To: The Non-Expert: IKEA
The Morning News
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_ikea.php