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Evaluating web sites



Evaluating whether a web site is "good" or not is pretty much the same as
evaluating whether a book is good or not. There's a lot of good material
on the web, just as in a library, and a lot that's pretty worthless, just
as in a library. You have to be careful!

Clever hoaxes can be difficult to detect. I remember being asked to judge
a science fair in which one of the exhibits that was supposedly a strong
contender for an award was about the invention of the flush toilet by a Sir
Thomas Crapper. Well, that was a lot of crap! Many people seem to know
and believe this hoax because they have encountered Wallace Reyburn's book,
Flushed with Pride, a hoax book which is a seemingly authentic,
carefully-researched biography of Thomas Crapper (the name of a real
19th-century plumber of no real importance). (Reyburn's book about the
invention of the brassiere by Otto Titzling fooled fewer people.) If
anyone tries to defend the Crapper thesis I refer them to The Metamorphosis
of Ajax by Sir John Harington, a court poet to Queen Elizabeth I, which is
a very funny and complete description, with amusing diagrams (e.g., the
water tank with fish swimming in it), of the flush toilet he had in his
mansion, written centuries before.