Snark Hunting on the Web
Author Lewis Carrol, best known for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and
Through The Looking Glass lives on in cyberspace in more ways than one.
It seems the word snark,(taken from The Hunting of the Snark, a poem by Carrol),
with it's easy to remember spelling, and the fact that it isn't a word in the English language,
makes hunting for snark a good way to test a search engine.
It also seems almost predestined that the snark would end up in computer folk lore.
You see, Carrol wrote many mathematical books, (under his given name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson),
and after making up a story and promising a child he'd write it down, he decided to have his stories published,
under the name Lewis Carrol to keep his math and children's book work seperate.
In the preface of the poem, Carrol hints at his books about math
and the possibility of the author being brought up on a
charge of writing nonsense, then humorously defends himself
claiming arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated (in the poem).
Was he mad?
Was he a genius?
We beleive it was the latter... that he purposely left puzzles in his work,
wonders, unanswered questions... things to search for.
Let the snark hunt begin!
(Sources:
BBC,
Literature.org,
Pacificnet.net)
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Copyright ©2003 RMH, all rights reserved.
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