I agree—melodramatic songs can be endlessly amusing.

Cover those buttcracks with blood!

I'm a fan of the etymology of the word "umpire."

I guess it just sounds weird to me in English, because that -stani ending is so non-Turkic. In Turkic languages you can just use the word "Kazakhstan" as the adjective/use the equivalent of English's "of Kazakhstan."

Traditional singing competitions became a particularly important means of propaganda and of mobilizing the populations behind the continually decreed economic drives.

Referring to Kazakh bards in the 1950s, one scholar wrote, "There is hardly a Kazakh aqyn who has not, at one time or another, composed a song in commemoration of the first Soviet leader."
Lenin fit in well in the traditional songs of mourning, in which the loss of a leader was often mourned as that of a savior and…

While during this time, the collection of Turkic folklore also gained importance within the Turkish state, unsurprisingly, the Soviet approach to the collection of such folklore differed, given the differing ideological aims behind doing so.

In the beginning, however, this plan was met with resistance among some of the more radical Bolsheviks. In Central Asia, the urge to overcome "cultural backwardness" was particularly sharp, and some native Central Asian Bolsheviks were prepared to reject all tradition, doubting that traditional art could have a place…

The Soviets felt they had to promote nationalism in Central Asia not only because of a Marxist imperative dictating that a "backwards" people could not achieve communism without first passing through bourgeois stages like nationalism. Ideologically, the Soviet Union was positioning itself as anti-colonialist,…

'S just "Uzbek."

slowly, drunkenly punches you in the shoulder

The English chemist who came up with the word called it "aluminum." It was someone talking about this chemist's work in a journal who changed it to "aluminium," to be more pretentious with the fancy-sounding suffix.

You may be an undigested bit of beef… a crumb of cheese…

So, pre-Army Steve was all wee and asthmatic. I bet he smoked asthma cigarettes, a thing doctors and pharmacists would recommend back then.

Or even if he did!

Say, anyone else amused that Mary seems to have a physical type? I thought David looked a lot more like John than Molly's fiance looks like Sherlock.

Yeah, I really like Abbington as Mary. She seems delightful.

I also like when they commit to Sherlock having trouble around people in a more realistic, human way.

Freeman and Cumberbatch both have great comic timing, and it's great seeing them combine that with the chemistry they have with each other.

I suppose it could be different in the UK, but my laptop lets me open up numerous things at once that I can size and arrange to my convenience. I like to call them "windows," and I think there could be money in it.