Fact-checking: trivial or life-altering?

If there's one thing I've been cursed with after spending four years learning journalism at Arkansas State, it's the need to research and look things up.

Sometimes I get online, using the extremely reliable tools known as Google and Wikipedia, and kill time looking up trivial things that won't impact how I live the rest of my life.

Sometimes the facts go beyond trivial. Did you know that rubber bands are still manufactured using natural rubber instead of synthetic rubber, due to the superior elasticity? Or that the letter A can be traced to a pictogram of an ox head?

Most people know the children's rhyme, "Jack and Jill." I'm sure very few of you know the second verse, which reads, "Up Jack got and home did trot, as fast as he could caper. And went to bed and covered his head in vinegar and brown paper."

Sometimes I look these facts up just for fun. Then there are times when someone in the newsroom will ask a question out loud. Maybe something along the lines of what actor was in a specific movie, how far a town is from here or what time a game comes on. And instead of shrugging my shoulders, I immediately go to work looking for the answer, stopping everything I'm doing just to solve someone else's curiosity.

I take it very seriously, being able to look up facts. Earlier on Friday, a co-worker asked how to put a ~ above an "o" in a word she was typing in Adobe InCopy. I immediately went about looking it up, but was beaten to the punch by someone else.

Most people would just shrug their shoulders and go on about their business. Me? I spent the next 10 minutes ashamed of myself, wondering how I could get beat like that.

I mean, I was the kid who could find Bible verses quicker than the other kids at fifth grade church camp (Mom if you are reading, yes, that week still reigns supreme as the WORST church camp ever). When it comes to researching things, I like to think I am the best and fastest around.

It might be a struggle, but I'll live.

Actually, I'd be lying if I said that the desire to check my facts hasn't paid off. The first example was a few months ago, when my grandmother made the remark that she was scared of Barack Obama getting elected president.

"I don't know what I'd do if we had a Muslim in office."

A Muslim? I'd heard that one before, months ago. At first it struck me as odd. I'd never taken the time to get to know Barack Obama, could he be a Muslim?

Without my years at ASU, I probably would have believed it, and gone on about my business. But I immediately looked it up, and found that the Illinois senator was indeed a Christian man.

Armed with this knowledge eight months later at my grandmother's house, I calmly went into their computer room, printed off the research and presented it to my grandmother.

My granny was taken aback at the lies she'd been fed for months, and immediately retracted her statements on Obama's false Islamic beliefs.

That said, she still despises Obama and will not vote for him. But at least it's for "legitimate" reasons, not false Internet rumors.

The other time when a deep desire to research the facts came up was in the beginning of 2008. Growing tired of sports talk on my Sirius Satellite Radio, I decided to check out the other offerings that the service had. I ended up stumbling across The Catholic Channel and caught part of Lino Rulli's "The Catholic Guy." It was a very humorous show, but as a Baptist, I had to stop and ask myself, "Is all of this Catholic stuff even Biblical?"

I'd always thought Catholics were a bunch of nutty people with whacked-out beliefs. But there was something about that channel that inspired me to take a second look. True to form, I started researching the Catholic church's beliefs and dug a little deeper into my Bible.

And the facts I discovered about the church were far from the misunderstandings I had grown up with. The Church doesn't worship Mary: we just hold her in extremely high regard. Catholics don't "pray people into heaven," as some people mistakenly believe the case is with purgatory. Rather, they pray for those souls in purgatory, that they, in simple terms, may "get out a little quicker."

I could go on, but the Opinion page won't hold that many words. Nevertheless, I don't think my faith would have been rejuvenated seven months ago if it weren't for the desire to do my research. Without that desire, I'd still be on the outside looking into the one true Apostolic church, instead of being on the inside thanking God for second chances.

Next time you hear something, or get curious about something, don't just take someone's word for it: do your own research and form your own opinions from the knowledge you've gained.

It might be trivial, like the rubber band example. Or, in the case of my faith, it might just save your life.

Dustin Faber is an avid Boston Celtics and Red Sox fan, a page designer and podcast anchor for The Log Cabin Democrat. You can reach him by phone at 505-1260, or by e-mail at dustin.faber@thecabin.net.