Research

Half the ‘fun’ of writing is researching your subject matter. Some have a black book of specialist contacts, others immerse themselves in worlds in order to write about them. Other, more lazy writers (er-hum) mostly Google. Whilst amazing and cheering me by how easily you can now find out almost anything, there’s something soulless about entering some text and letting a search engine do the work folk of old used to spend days in libraries doing.

This page, then, will contain snippets I need to know but somehow can’t bear to Google. Please me if you know any of the answers.

• Is the word google an accepted verb in any dictionary yet, as in ‘to google something’?
• Does the chemical make-up of a tear vary at all if it’s produced from either joy or sadness?
• Is it really true that there are more people alive today than all those to have existed in history put together (obviously excluding the former group)?
• Dogs apparently see in monochrome; which animals see in colour, which in black and white?
• Are humans the only animals to commit suicide? (Yes, I know lemmings don’t really).