Web sites

Shelter

http://www.shelter.org.uk/

The concept of a home page takes on more serious overtones when it's associated with , the charity for the homeless that came into being 30 years ago, after the BBC broadcast the drama-documentary Cathy Come Home. The site "aims to provide up-to-date information about the work of , an outline of the key housing issues that face the UK today, a platform for our editorially independent housing magazine Roof and an opportunity for you to make a difference". All those aims fall into place here. As might you if you take up one of the fundraising options on offer - a chance to go parachuting for free if you get sponsorship to do it.

Mars And Venus

http://www.marsvenus.com/index.htm

Forget live video links to Mars and Pathfinder - even the mirror sites are hideously clogged. Take a terrestrial detour instead to the home of Dr John Gray's best-selling Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and some pointers towards ending the battle of the sexes or at least reaching a truce and beginning to overcome gender differences when it comes to communication styles, emotional needs and ways of behaving. Besides a shopping mall, there are chat facilities and an online Q&A session that gives you the chance to air your own peccadilloes as well as find out about those of others.

Web Pages That Suck

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

If you are fed up with Web pages that offend every aesthetic sensibility that the human race has spent millennia evolving, try e-mailing this address to your least favourite sites with a request that their designer checks it out. Better still, nominate them for deconstruction by HTML coding instructor Vincent Flanders. His critique of the worst excesses of Web design is satisfyingly thorough, but it's not just destructive criticism on offer. Refreshingly, the stress is on learning to recognise that an alleged "cool feature" may be a hideous mistake and should be avoided rather than imitated. Likely to be even more of an issue as horrid little Java applets multiply and get brought to life by our browsers.

Getting Fatter

http://www.anndeweesallen.com/ dal_gly1.htm

Good news from the Glycemic Research Institute: "It is the contention of this research body that pasta is not a food that increases the risk of obesity." Dr Ann de Wees Allen points out that since nutritionists became obsessed with low-fat regimes the average American has put on four pounds. What's needed, apparently, is an understanding of the glycaemic index of foods - their ability quickly to produce high blood sugar that is easily stored as fat. A year or so ago, along these lines, Philip Lipetz's The Good Calorie Diet was in vogue - the scientific rationale behind it is confirmed here. There are links to research findings as well as lists of everyday foods and how they measure up. Vital information for diabetics as well as those looking to lose weight without having to bother with portion control and calorie-counting.

The Cousteau Society

http://acin.edi.fr/cousteau/cstius.htm

Many an eco-warrior owes his or her inspiration to the French inventor and underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whose ship Calypso, with her band of divers, introduced them to The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau from 1968 onwards. Cousteau died last month, but his work is carrying on under the auspices of the Cousteau Society, which he founded in 1973 to enhance awareness and understanding of the environment. Available on the site is detailed information about various ongoing research projects and the progress being made to build and equip a replacement for the original Calypso, which sank last year after an accident in Singapore. Not only politically correct, but on browsers that play midi files, you get welcomed by a theme tune that carries you back by anything up to 30 years.

Andy Oldfield