I occasionally click into the spam label of my email - sometimes to check whether something I'm waiting for has shown up there (it happens), and sometimes just to see what's there. The last time I checked was while preparing this column, primarily to see whether perhaps I've still been getting Nigerian scam letters which, at least over the past month, I haven't. Interestingly, however, in the slightly over 400 items that were there I found quite a number of items that also succeed in getting into my inbox. In other words, sometimes gmail directs at least three or four specific items to spam, and sometimes it lets those same three or four items pass (and I then simply move them to the trash). I don't know why this happens, but apparently it's a daunting enough task that if Google were to explain to me that building a totally effective spam filter really is rocket science I'd believe them. On that last check I found only four or five items that I wouldn't have minded had they made it to the inbox, and only one that definitely should have been directed to it. Considering that it wasn't anything earth shattering that's a very passable average.