It's not a book, but George Orwell's essay on Politics and the English Language should be required reading for anyone working on usability. So often the focus is on the graphics, the number of clicks of a mouse, etc, but the language used and how that fits the audience's understanding is overlooked. An example: in the early days of web design, I was presented with a page with a link to "FAQs". This was for the general public. I asked all my colleagues what FAQ meant and no-one knew. "It's the industry standard term" I was told. When we changed the link to read "Frequently Asked Questions" the number of phone calls to our enquiries department fell. You have to go where the audience is, not just where you want them to be.

Surely, If I must read a bit of spam, by definition it isn't spam. Or am I missing something?

Doesn't "how much is too much" depend more on what sort of data you are talking about than the systems used to record and analyse it? Aircraft risk analysts would surely argue that they need all the data they can get to help prevent every instance of catastrophic failure. Biologists on the other hand are used to working with extraordinarily fuzzy data and still drawing valid conclusions

I hope you mean you don't volunteer because that's what *they* say rather than that's what you are. Online and offline risks to children are manageable through carefully thought out and followed procedures rather than legislation alone, but at present it's not even clear what is legislation and what's someone's view of common sense rules.

I see where you are coming from ledow and sympathise from a user's viewpoint, but the answer to your question is that I care about the law and so does my company. I run a large UK children's club as part of a larger charity, and not surprisingly, many of the kids are not only on Facebook (shock!) but also prefer to communicate via Facebook rather than by something as 20th Century as email. Other people in my organisation are still not only scared by all the usual scary internet things, but also keep saying that even our own message boards *must* remain exclusively for adults for legal reasons. I dispute that and would like to have ways of backing up my view that not only do we need to communicate in ways that children are themselves using, but that the any rules on social media are under the control of the people who make the rules up, not the lawmakers.

So far as I know, in the UK, there is nothing legal to prevent children of any age taking part in social media. (If I am wrong, please correct me). The European Data Protection Act is often quoted, but is not age specific, it just says that the expected target audience should understand what they are signing up to, and most agencies reckon that understanding comes at around the age of 12, which, coincidentally, is the same age at which they can be legally culpable of violent crimes. So if a bunch of savvy 11 year olds want to communicate among themselves via Facebook entirely within the UK, without asking for parental consent (or even with it) are they breaking anyone's laws? Just because Facebook tries to work within California's rules, does that mean that UK use by young children is a problem - not counting the whole appropriateness/stalker issue?

In 1969, Ken Loach's film, Kes, sparked a craze for kestrels as pets in Britain. The RSPB (The UK's largest wild bird conservation charity) were really worried that so many kestrels were being taken illegally from nests, especially at a time when the species was in trouble thanks ot the DDT poisoning scandal of the time. The RSPB was concerned that Hedwig may spark a similar craze in the UK, but it simply hasn't happened. Whether that is because there are very few owls around (and no snowy owls breeding in the UK), or the result of 40 years more environmental education is debatable. However, as India has comprehensively trashed its biodiversity in the recent years (eg 99 per cent decline in vulture populations in the last 10 years), perhaps Harry Bloody Potter is as convenient a scapegoat as any other.

Same thing: barn swallow and red-rumped swallow nest in Europe the summer and winter in southern Africa. So it's not what the bird was but when it was that determines whether it is European or African, not that I am clever enough to claim any uncertainty involvement between birds and LHC.

Merino wool underpants have many of the same properties but are far too warm for long-distance cycling. Perhaps these new-fangled shreddies will be the answer. They won't stop the cyclist's distinctive aroma, but could be an answer to some of the bacterial problems that are neatly summed up in the phrases saddle sores and bum itch.