I can't believe how easy it is to find stuff out these days.

Back in the "good old days," before the Internet, if I had a need for some obscure, esoteric tidbit of information, it was a struggle.

If I wanted to know the origin of the Donald Trump "Apprentice" admonishment, "You're fired," I had to go to the library or at least call the library reference desk.

Now, I simply type "you're fired," in the "exact phrase" line of a Google search and "origin" in the "must contain the word" line.

This takes me - in precisely 0.65 seconds - to answerbag.com, which happily tells me: "The verb sense of 'sack, dismiss' is first recorded 1885 in American English, probably from a play on the two meanings of discharge - 'to dismiss from a position,' and 'to fire a gun.'"

There you have it.

Plus there is a really cool dictionary and thesaurus online. That's really handy in this business. (Yes, we really do use those things here.)

Politics, economics, international relations - it's all there. In quantities hitherto unknown to the people of this profession.

But there's a problem.

You must be careful because there is outdated, misleading and just plain wrong stuff out there.

And it doesn't even help to practice the old multi-source trick because lots of the stuff originates from the same place and then gets repeated on dozens of Web sites regardless of its relative accuracy or lack thereof.

If you're careful, I think you can detect the stuff that's bogus or overbaked, but it does take a bit of perseverance.

The Web site snopes.com is a wonderful place to go to debunk urban legends or to see if something you heard is true.

I tend to trust that site.

This all came to mind this week because somebody faxed me a letter about a "rare opportunity" to view Mars this month and next.

The thing said "Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. ... Mars has not come this close to earth in the last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again."

There was lots more in the release, including the fact that at the end of August, the two planets - Earth and Mars - will be the closest.

Yeah, you know all of that was true - in 2003.

That phenomenon occurred two years ago in August. Apparently, somebody Googled up a cached Web site with this information and failed to notice that it was two years old.

So they e-mailed it to somebody, who e-mailed it to somebody, who e-mailed it to somebody, who faxed it to the newspaper.

(Actually, this year, Mars gets closest to the Earth in October but not as close as it was two years ago.)

This was the second time somebody sent this to us and I have heard a bit of a buzz about it by word of mouth.

But rest assured, there will be no bright Mars this August.

So while the Internet certainly is a highly useful tool, it also can be highly misleading and confusing.

Use requires care and diligence, especially if you plan to publish anything you find on it. [[In-content Ad]]