Itching the Scrath

So do you scratch an itch or itch a scratch? Maybe you scratch scratches and itch itches?

This was a question posed to me by a friend of mine. I will defer to the dictionary.

When I was teaching school, anytime my students asked me what a word meant (or I asked them and they didn't know) we got on the computer and looked on the internet. I wanted them to not only learn that they can find this information on their own, but also where to find it. By the end of the 1st six weeks, they knew exactly where on the internet to go.

I think the power of the internet is really neat. It isn't necessarily the power of the internet as it is the access to so much information. Take for example the USS Grunion (SS 216). This information is taken from an article in the Science Daily. The Grunion was reported lost on 16 August 1942 after she failed to return to Dutch Harbor. She had not had contact since 30 July. 60 years later, the submarine had never been found nor the disappearance of the Grunion explained. That is when the sons of the commanding officer of the Grunion, Lt Cmdr Abele, began a search. I will quote directly from the article.

"After discovering information on the internet in 2002 that helped pinpoint USS Grunion's possible location, the sons of Grunion's commanding officer, Bruce, Brad, and John Abele, began working on a plan to find the submarine. In August 2006, a team of side scan sonar experts hired by the brothers located a target near Kiska almost a mile below the ocean's surface. A second expedition in August 2007 using a high definition camera on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) yielded video footage and high resolution photos of the wreckage of a U.S. fleet submarine."

Did you notice where they found some probable spots? "After discovering information on the internet in 2002 that helped pinpoint USS Grunion's possible location," The internet! You can find submarines 60 years after they sank on the internet!

They then compared to wreckage to another submarine of the same class and confirmed it was the Grunion.

The internet is extremely powerful because of the access of information. However, this comes at a consequence. As my high school english teachers use to always say, anyone can put whatever they want on the internet. True they are! I can write anything I want in this blog and post it on the net. Google webcrawlers would then scan my blog, and people searching on the internet can find whatever I write. There are no editors, no teachers, no one confirming my writings before it is published.

Because of that, it is the responsibility of the reader to evaluate the authenticity of the website. The reader must determine if the online news source is a legitamate news source. The reader must decide if the website providing the information has alternative motives they are trying to promote. Before the internet, this background check was often done by the editor of a book or a news editor at the tv station or newspaper. In absence of an editor, the reader must always be mindful of ethics when reading and reporting information from the internet.

Information from around the world can be collected in seconds. Want information on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution? In 0.15 seconds, google found about 185,000 results. Want to know how many people are killed annually by kangaroos? In 0.19 seconds, google found 206,000 results. The answer is 100, by the way. So much information is out there!

So do you scratch or itch scratches or itches? My students would know how to find out. Do you?