Today’s Phrase That Improbably Has Up To This Point Turned Up Nothing On Google
Posted on December 8, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 42 Comments
“Defense Against Snark Arts”.
Come on, Harry Potter fans. It was right there in front of you this whole time.
I cast the Disappointus Majorus spell upon the lot of you!
I am so ashamed. I was brought up to do better.
*casts Pedanticus Furiosa* That’s because it’s “Defense Against *the* Snark Arts”
THERE IS NO DEFENSE!
EVEN SO
My first reading yielded “snark ants”, which can really spoil a picnic.
I know for sure I’ve heard the phrase “The Snark Arts” before, though possibly from Buffy fans rather than Potter fans. Not sure why it’s not on the googs.
Also “Defence Against the Snark Arts,” because, y’know, British spellings and all.
Well, now it turns up your site. I hope you’re happy with what you’ve wrought.
I am ashamed. I will now go sit in a corner and think about what I didn’t do.
Pangolin: Oh, I am.
Aresto (conversational) Momentum!
Ooooooooh, John, you had better batten down the hatches over there.
Uh, “Defense against the snark arts” gets about 70 google hits.
Earliest I found was from 2003:
http://www.theperfectworld.us/thread.php?id=191&postNum=590
The “the” makes a difference…
“Defence Against the Snark Arts” turns up “Owlbus Humblebore and the Labyrinth of Doom” (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3939124/12/Owlbus-Humblebore-and-the-Labyrinth-of-Doom)
Ten points from Gryffindor.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Defense+against+the+snark+arts%22 #didnotdotheresearch
Make up you mind. Will you be teaching, The Snark Arts, or will you be teaching, Defense Against The Snark Arts? Isn’t Defense Against Snark, just More Snark, perhaps the witty rejoinder?
Aaaand, I cannot brain either: *your
I was going to add my research, but it seems the Ravenclaws have all already posted. Carry on.
I’m saying nothing; according to Pottermore I’m in Slytherin, and loyalty to our proud traditions requires me to stay out of this…
Hell, I’d assumed it had already been done to death. Semi-related: I’m recording an album of music that shall be called “The Desolation of Smug.”
Oh man, you cast a spell like that, you gotta roll against wisdom with a -4 penalty. if you fail, lose ten points of stun as the joke falls completely flat like a punch in the gut.
Known as a Googlenope.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301290.html
According to Pottermore I’m Hufflepuff. So I offer hugs all round.
If it’s a Boojum, there is no defense.
How have I not discovered Pottermore before now ??? My friends assure me I have the appropriate combination of arcane trivia knowledge and pedantry to be a Ravenclaw…
I was about to Google it when I realized THAT’S WHAT YOU WANT US TO DO! MMMWWWAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAHHHAAA!!!
Our Glorious Leader Kim Jong-Un is very displeased that you have disclosed his top secret missile launch code! We will re-target our missiles as soon as we find Iowa on our inflatable globe. I must now go and blow up the world…globe.
As a practitioner of the Snark Arts I object most strongly to the very idea of a defence against them. A class in teaching their use, however, I very much favour; it’s so dull to attempt to duel against unarmed opponents. One starts off thinking they *are* armed, and then one is enlightened otherwise, and it becomes bullying from that point.
‘Look at this list,’ said Harry. ‘Thimbles, forks, a railway-share and soap… do they even sell thimbles in Diagon Alley?’
‘I know, isn’t it thrilling,’ replied Hermione. ‘Using normal, everyday objects to defeat your enemies! Thingumbobomancy is a very complicated and pointless discipline. I can’t wait to start.’
Ron looked at her darkly. ‘Yeah, sure, that’s what it is. And not that this Professor Boojum is just another in a long line of sodding nutters.’
Also, Google didn’t turn up any results for “Defence against Snack Ants” either, which is what I thought it said in the first place.
Rowena Ravenclaw once stated “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure”. You, sir, are no Ravenclaw. :)
Thank you for my dose of Pointless Laughter today.
Which might be a good name for a band.
Which House do you imagine that you are in, btw?
I tried it on DuckDuckGo. Somehow the top two results for “Defense against the snark arts” are still finding the phrase “Defence against the Dark Arts”…and this post is number 3.
“When Spells are diffused from one person to another, it can be modeled the same way as experts model advertising with word of mouth communication,” said Feynman.
“We consider now scenarios where λ /∈ [λi(q), λs(q)] and the initial set of adopters grows linearly with the total population n,” explained Olga. “More precisely, consider now a firm advertising to a group of consumers, who share product information among themselves: potential buyers are not aware of the existence of the product and the firm undertakes costly informative advertising. The firm chooses the fraction of individuals who receive advertisements. Individuals are located in a social network modeled by a random network G(n, d) with given vertex degrees as in previous section.
However contrary to most work on viral marketing, we assume that the advertiser has limited knowledge about the network: the firm only knows the proportions of individuals having different degrees in the social network. One possibility for the firm is to sample individuals randomly and to decide the costly advertising for this individual based on her degree (i.e. her number of neighbors). The action of the firm is then encoded in a vector α = (αd), where αd represents the fraction of individuals with degree d which are directly targeted by the firm.”
“These individuals will constitute the seed and we call them the early adopters. Note that the case αd = α for all d corresponds to a case where the firm samples individuals uniformly. This might be one possibility if it is unable to observe their degrees. In order to optimize its strategy, the firm needs to compute the expected payoff of its marketing strategy as a function of α. Our results allows to estimate this function in terms of α and the degree distribution in the social
network.”
“From the viewpoint of consumers making the decision?” I said.
“We assume that a buyer might buy either if she receives advertisement from the firm or if she receives information via word of mouth communication,” said Olga. “More precisely, we consider the following general model for the diffusion of information: a buyer obtains information as soon as one of her neighbors buys the product but she decides to buy the product when Bi(k, π) > K(s) where s is her number of neighbors and k the number of neighbors having the product, Bi(k, π) is a Binomial random variable with parameters k and π ∈ [0, 1] and K(s) is a general random variable. In words, π is the probability that a particular neighbor does influence the possible buyer. This possible buyer does actually buy when the number of influential neighbors having bought the product exceeds a threshold K(s). Thus, the thresholds K(s) represent the different propensity of nodes to buy the new product when their neighbors do.
The fact that these are possibly randomly selected is intended to model our lack of knowledge of their values and a possibly heterogeneous population. Note that for K(s) = 0 and π ∈ [0, 1], our model of diffusion is exactly a contact process with probability of contagion between neighbors.”
“Contagion,” said Feynman, “also in the sense of the Law of Contagion in MagicoPhysics, due to entanglement.”
Well it wouldn’t show up on a Google search if it was lurking on the Snark Web, now would it?
Hey, your pun, I just re-purposed it!
Expecto patronize!
When I was young I discovered (amidst stressful circumstances, which is how most such discoveries take place) that I had a knack. Later on I cultivated the knack and the knack took on shape and definition and came to a point. My knack is still with me and has, if anything, increased; which is why I can state without demur that, for a Defense against the Snark Arts to be possible, one must have a thorough grounding in the Snark Arts first.
Thank you for your time.
John Scalzi’s patronous is a cat. Probably with bacon taped to it.
MemePoint: The point in time where a meme came into existence. “The memepoint for Scalzi’s ‘Defense Against Snark Arts’ ([a] Phrase That Improbably Has Up To This Point Turned Up Nothing On Google) was 2014-12-08T14:46:02+00:00.”
Never tape bacon to a cat. That is what staples are for.
But what if I don’t want to defend against Snark Arts? I like them.