Tatars

This morning we sent a fax to Tatarstan, Russia. This, of course, led to the question: Where is Tatarstan? And is it where Tartars come from?

I inquired of the Oracle (Wikipedia) and discovered that Tatarstan is a semi-independent republic smack dab in the middle of Russia, with a Turkic language, right where the Russian and Greek and Arabic and Chinese and Mongol and Slavic Uralic languages all meet. The Tatars call themselves Tatars, more or less, but you'll get variations like Dada, Tatan, and Tataerzu. "Tartar" is an odd variation which Westerners invented, connecting the Mongol hordes to the Greek Tartarus. They object to being called Tartars these days.

The Kazan Tatars have the literary and common dialect, due to the pleasant circumstance that most of the other Tatars can understand them. (I gather it's somewhat like the distinction between classical versus regional Arabic.) They officially write with the Cyrillic script, but will often use the Latin or Arabic characters (partly, no doubt, due to the heavy Muslim influence). But the ethnic Tatars are a sprawling people-group.

In other news, the good doctor has gotten disinfectant-happy and wanders past my desk at intervals, squirting away. I attribute this to the presence of a new incubator, which reveals to us exactly what grows on my desk. Or would tell us what it was, if we had the machinery to analyze it. But it's definitely there.

Amelia just demonstrated to me that you can use tea-steam to show your fingerprint on a plastic spoon. This is really cool.

Also the rubber-band wars are hot and heavy. I retreated into the waiting room, and today Nikita declared a cease-fire. Unlike when the UN does that, we actually listened to her.