Googleflump

[desperance]

Things have come to a pretty pass, when you seek a quotation in Google and all it offers you is the self-same source you found it.

To be specific, I'm rereading "The Lost World" (the Conan Doyle original, thank you, not some nasty Crichton rip-off) for makework purposes, and he quotes:

"On that conical bullet his one chance hangs,
'Tis the weak one's advantage fair"

- and ascribes it to "Gordon", without further elucidation. So I googled the quotation, and all it offers me is texts of "The Lost World". Which are not useful.

So I dunno. He can't mean Byron, surely? He'd say Byron, if that was who he meant. Adam Lindsay Gordon? I dunno. Nothing's helping. Snarl.

Comments

[timill]

I'd have thought "Gordon" then would be 'Chinese' Gordon, but that seems an unlikely context...

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/ThePoemsofALAdamLindsayGordon/chap4.html

it's there

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

Specifically "Fytte V Lex Talionis "

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Genius! It was Adam Lindsay Gordon! Did you know this already, or do you have better fu than mine...?

Thank you!

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

Just better at google searches I guesss - I only searched for "conical bullet" and I think it was the first result.

::grin::


Been a while since I read "The Lost World"

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Humph. This isn't fair. If I search for "conical bullet", all I get is lots of pages about, y'know, conical bullets...

I think you has a different google from me.

And, yes. It's been a while for me too - but the book was iconic for me way back, and it's remarkable how much is intimately familiar. There are lines in here I've been quoting for, oh, thirty-five years? And I probably couldn't have told you the source, they're that embedded. ("Great heavens, man, don't bite! Cut - and cut with reverence!")

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

perhaps I searched for conical bullet and gordon? To be honest I'm not sure - I got the result so fast I don't remember - but then I do seem to have a way with google and searches. Things just seem to turn up for me if they exist - on computers anyway - not so much in real life...

[readwrite.livejournal.com]

I think you has a different google from me.


This is entirely possible depending on how you have your preferences set on Google.

I have to search out quotes ancient and modern all the time for work. There is a bit of an art to it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. Can I, y'know, borrow you sometime...?

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

I'm sure something could be arranged ;-)

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Indeed, doing a search on my google for "conical bullet gordon" has the poem at places 1 and 3 in the search listing, and your request at number 2!

[mountainlaurel.livejournal.com]

Another wonderful place to locate quotations is Bartleby.com. It has original works you can read on your laptop and can also aid you in finding the source of the quotations, or has done so for me.