Monday, January 20, 2003

 
"Hording" Knowledge

And "Knowledge," as said by Harvey Mudd, "should be free to all!"(not from Harvey Mudd College, where tuition, one assumes ain't free, but the old, original, cheesey Star Trek series.) Writers' block and congenital laziness may prevent this site from becoming its intended brilliant real-time mirroring of NRO, but might as well clear out, with slight modifications, some non-dead tree deadwood inflicted on their staff in the form of unsolicited emails: Doubtless hordes of Readers noted K-Lo's misspelling, "hoardes" on the Jan. 11 Corner, and probably more than a few got a nerdy snicker(like me)'cuz it immediately followed the Derbster's "Deathless Prose" mention of "Urdu." In his book "SAVAGES AND CIVILIZATION" Jack Weatherford(should check out Google to learn whether his long-awaited book on Genghis Khan is out yet)writes, "The Tatars lived in camps called *orda*, and the large groups or camps came to be called *horda*. In another form the word became *Urdu*, used to describe the Muslim people and their language in the Indian subcontinent. In English this became *horde*..."
K-Lo's mistake wasn't a "real lulu" and I(am having the amateurs' struggle with avoiding first person pronouns)and shouldn't be too much of a "lula" about it, but the above gives some clue to the sort of content and prose style likely to be found by any souls stumbling upon this site.
"Tatar," btw., may be a spiffy conflation of "ta-ta" a Chinese word for northern nomads and "Tartarus," from the Latin, according to Webster's, or from the Greek, according to Weatherford, for Hell or Infernal Region. But wait!- There's more! From Harold Lamb's "Genghis Khan," "The origin of the word is Chinese--*T'a T'a, or T'a tzi, the Far People, though the Tatars on their own account may have adopted the name of an early chieftan Tatur." Arrrrgggh! Getting *way* too geeky. no time to proofread-read-gotta go.
Ta-Ta For Now,
NROMIRROR@aol.com