More e-mails from mom, fewer from Nigeria as spam declines

Morning radar: Three things we're talking about this morning

Have you been receiving fewer e-mails from Nigerian princes and more from your mom? Security software firm Symantec reports that spam messages are on the decline. The volume in November was down more than 56 per cent from August figures.

The company attributes the drop to a few major arrests made this year of people operating major spam distribution rings. Still, don't ever expect spam to be gone for good. The report also predicted an uptick in smarter spamming. The penis enlargement messages are a thing of the past, now those who want to send you junk mail are drafting communiques centered around hot topics. This past year, earthquakes, the World Cup and BP oil spill were referenced in emails to encourage unsuspecting users to open them.

When was the last time you went to sleep in a room without a clock, alarm or cell phone? If the thought of doing so on a weeknight makes you panic, here's an inspiring case to prove it can be done: Andrea James, a contributor to the popular site BoingBoing, says she's lived without any of those devices in her bedroom for almost eight years and gets much better sleep because of it. She's never overslept, either. The secret? It may sound stupidly simple, but it's just about going to bed earlier and having faith that your body will complete its sleep cycle and wake you up when it's supposed to.

A girl toy or a boy toy? Rose Welch, an Oklahoma mom, has been trying to raise her kids in a world with fewer gender stereotypes and McDonald's isn't helping her. After growing frustrated with the way employees always asked whether she needed "a girl toy or a boy toy" to go with the Happy Meals she ordered (and that sometimes employees would just see her daughter in the car and hand over a girl toy without asking first), Ms. Welch wrote a blog post on the subject and tweeted a link to McDonald's, The Consumerist reports. The responses she received were less than satisfying: She was told that in the future she should tell employees which toys she wants and that employees didn't offer a choice between different toys because they change so often.