Quite true, Lisa. So many words just seem to cause instant panic attacks. We know that to cry "Fire!" in a packed auditorium can be a very serious thing. So it is with many things that people are crying nowadays.

I guess the answer is that we try to maintain a happy mid-level - not become jaundiced and believe nothing, but learn to do some quick verification.

Dear Carl -

I suppose that is a very important lesson in all of this - that maybe we have gotten to the point that anything we read on the web - no matter what its source - needs to be verified and validated before it is thought to be true.

Along these lines, I do make healthy use of Snopes.com. My mother is always forwarding me nonsense to 'warn me' or whatever. Like putting onions by my bed to soak up night germs. There have been many political ones she gets sucked into in the past. She is an easy mark.

I have since introduced her to verifying with Snopes.

And I love Dave Barry too! I think i've read every one of his books. I laugh until I cry. I actually am not allowed to read them when sleeping next to Dan, since my laughing out loud wakes him up.

Dear Jilly -

I have to admit I have a minor issue with Snopes and never visit their site.

A few years ago we had an editor with BellaOnline who copied a few articles from Snopes. Snopes wrote me about this. When I asked the editor about it, she claimed she had a photography memory and had somehow written every article - thinking it was her own - from start to finish so it was exactly (with punctuation) a duplicate of the Snopes site. We immediately took those articles down and apologized to Snopes.

Snopes then sent me a bill for hundreds of dollars per article for having them on our site for a few weeks. We are a charity site, we really don't have funds lying around to handle this sort of a request. I explained that the articles were already down, that the editor was on the way out the door, and that we were very sorry. But that we couldn't afford hundreds of dollars per article for the editor's not following our rules.

I think they then went after that editor, and they did stop asking me for money, but the experience left me feeling uncomfortable about using their site again.

Wow. Thanks for sharing that, Lisa. So sorry about that editor tarnishing BellaOnline.

I remember that. It is a little odd how so many people believe everything on the internet is fair game.

That is pretty aggressive of Snopes, but they do probably have to deal with this constantly. They are a pretty useful site in what they provide.

I am sorry they had to harass you like they did.

And one can see why Lisa is watchful of people posting material to which they have no rights.