Russian Law Blog

I came across this blog the other day and bookmarked it. The entry on the emergence of precedence in the Russian legal system was interesting. If you have a strong stomach, scroll down to the Dec. 11 entry on the backlash against Constitutional Court judges who complain about the meddling executive branch...

Winchester

What's a Winchester?

If you're from Texas, you'll think of a rifle. If you're from Russia, you'll think of a computer hard drive. I live in both places and it never occurred to me to wonder if the two were somehow connected.

The story I recently heard in Russia is that the same Winchester rifle folks also made hard drives back in the day. Stranger things have happened, but this particular business diversification never took place. A wee bit of fact checking revealed that the Winchester hard drive was actually released by IBM in the 70s and got its nickname because it was intended to have two 30 MB spindles, which reminded someone on the project of the Winchester 30-30 rifle.

In Russian, винчестер (vinchester) is a generic term for any hard drive and is often cut back to винт (vint), which happens to be the word for "screw" (as in the screw that propels a submarine).

Компот

Here's another French word I love in Russian - компот (kom-POTE).

Компот is a fruit drink that Russians put up for the winter in big 3-liter jars like the one you see here on my windowsill. Unlike the French or English compote it takes its name from, Russian kompot does not involve simmering the fruit for a long time. Here's how you do it:

Put your washed berries or sliced fruit in a sterilized 3-liter jar. Fill the jar to the top with boiling water. Let it sit a few minutes. Pour the hot water back into a pot, using a strainer to keep the fruit in the jar. Add a cup of sugar to the water and let it boil thoroughly. Pour the sweetened water back in the jar and close the jar the best way you know how. It takes a month or two for the full flavor of the fruit to leach into the drink, but once it does it's heavenly! Some of my favorites are red current (pictured here), quince and peach. Serve the kompot in a glass pitcher and make sure some of the fruit gets into each glass.