Summer Reading, Government Style

Via Wonkette comes an amusing Flickr set of publications produced by government agencies. As a bonus, many of them are actually linked from their cover pages, so you can thrill to the bike-safety adventures of Sprocket Man, get Customs' guidance on distinguishing bolts from screws, or read the heartwarming "story of human conservation" that was the Japanese internment. I'm not sure whether to be heartened or horrified to discover that one of these documents (not available in full online), Gobbledygook Has Gotta Go, appears to be the ur-text of a full fledged "Plain Language" movement within the federal government, whose goal is to persuade federal employees to actualy use their native language when attempting to communicate with the general public.