Google makes thinking, conversation and research a different activity these days. Any phrase, question or subject can be put into Google (www.google.com ) and the result is likely to expand or clarify the thinking, talking or research. True, there are often results in the hundreds of thousands or millions, enough so that there is no chance that thinkers or talkers have earthly time enough to examine them all. But very often, there is no need to look at more than 1 or 10 or 100 of the resulting links. Any of the links that are examined can be followed so that a search can take unexpected directions in just a few clicks.

Two other tools for preliminary expansion or clarification from Google are Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) and Google Blog (http://blogsearch.google.com/ ) Scholar (a.k.a "skoogle" returns more academic information and journal articles sources but they may be difficult to open or access) and Blog search search more than 40 million blogs, online journals/diaries/commentaries. Both can suggest ideas and additional sources that don't come to mind immediately.