This board has an obsession with bashing people who research. I know that cheating on an intelligence test is one thing, but isn't the flow of information from the internet (while 90% bull ) actually a good thing?
For instance, I recently found 3 or 4 essays by Thoreau that I'm reading without going to a public library to find them. I've read John Donne's Meditation XVII without cracking a book, and the Decameron. A television show makes a reference I don't understand, I can't research what it means? John Masefield's Sea Fever, for instance, was a recent search.
www.m-w.com is a lifesaver for proofreading. I've been able to interpret a single phrase into gaelic, a tool I have only used once, and am not currently storing on a bookshelf somewhere. That's just in the past month or so.
What's so bad about Google? Do I learn more holding a book in my hand that staring at a computer screen?