The Brabazon has been scrapped.

Irony, irony. Using Google to research a piece about books, I come across this story about Prof Brabazon, who wants her students only to read the printed word, and forget the net.

So Ms Brabazon rails against the present and wants people to use yesterday's technology.

At least she is aptly named. The Bristol Brabazon was a wonderful piece of British engineering. Airliner prototype. Wonderfully luxurious. Eight engines. Only one problem. They were attached to propellers. And there was this thing called the jet engine...

The Bristol Brabazon was scrapped. The Brighton Brabazon should be too.

PS. I'm reading a good book at present. I found it by reading reviews. I found the reviews by searching Google. Obliquely. Using terms unconnected with the title of the book.

Oblique connections, lateral thinking heteroglossia good. Monologic linear narrative bad.

Google. Last time I got the info i needed in the first 5 hits.

1999 IIRC.......

My Two Cents.

A couple of thoughts on reading these messages:

@ Robert Long

>There's almost no information on the Web so it's not a big deal.

>Seriously. People who think the web is a research tool are the ones

>who are out of touch.

I must be out of touch then. I'm studying Computer Science at the mo, so by the

reckoning of some here it's a "proper" degree. I have found information on the 'Net, and used it for projects which have scored quite well.

@ Risky

>This is another reason why employers will increasingly value (and pay for)

> hard science degrees where wikipedia can't really help much.

I was studying Computer Systems Architecture recently, and wished to find out more about chip architecture, so I started with Wikipedia using the phrase CPU.

This rather quickly lead me to information about pipelines, a method used for speeding up throughput. Having not read much about this yet I pasted the header for the page into Google on a new tab.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Instruction+pipeline&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a

This is the page it sent me to.

The fifth entry on this page is for "stanford.edu" Yep, Stanford University.

O.K. so the first two hits went back to Wikipedia, the third to a management

strategies company, but hits four and five were universities.

My point is that Wikipedia is not the destination when researching, but it can

be quite handy as a first step to find other connected areas for further study.

@ Keith T

>Or was she put off when she was looking for info on Paris -- I got to page

>four on Google before finding anything about Greek mythology.

Understandable. But if you were looking for Greek mythology in a library

would you check the book list for anything that mentioned Paris and go to

every book in order until you found the information you sought?

I would pass on anything in the travel section, or foreign languages etc.

and add the term "Greek mythology" to my initial search. The same thing

works in Google.

Albeit the first link is one for Wikipedia, but all five of the top links are

pertinent.

Both Google and Wikipedia are useful, but not the end point of my research.

Jim.