Why My Chinese New Year Performance Needs Improvement: As Chinese New Year comes up on February 10, NBC4 News Producer Daisy Lin wonders how she’s going to carry on the tradition after her parents’ generation is gone. “By now I should be the one giving out red envelopes to my kids,” she writes, “but I don’t have any children, so I continue in perennial adolescence.”

What It’s Like To Be Hacked By China: Recently, Chinese intelligence hacked into the mail accounts of every employee at The New York Times. William Gerrity, who ran a company in Shanghai, knows how they feel.  He went through the same thing—and got blackmailed. He writes, “I wonder how many of those individuals are having to revisit, as I did, their belief that they have nothing to hide.”

Open the Gates of Troy: During much of the 1992 riots, USC kept its gates open, but today USC is closing them. Keith Thorell was a student then, and he’s disappointed by the new fortress-like move. “That doesn’t seem like the USC I know,” he writes.

Building Awesome Dogs, Gaming JDate, and Seeing the Future: One golden retriever from the 1970s was very busy. By 2010, over 95,000 registered descendants could be traced back to him.  This is the sort of thing Zócalo reads about so you don’t have to. Check out the The Six-Point Inspection.

Second-Generation Girl Scout: Born in Vietnam, Wendy Dao Nussbaum felt very different from everyone else in 1970s America. The Girl Scouts made her feel that she belonged. Happy Girl Scout Cookie Season!

Next week …

On Monday, New York Times Phoenix Bureau Chief Fernanda Santos visits Zócalo to discuss the rebuilding of neighborhoods after the foreclosure crisis.

On Tuesday, former New Yorker editor Jeffrey Frank and Tim Naftali, recent director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, visit Zócalo to discuss why Richard Nixon continues to vex and intrigue us.