Another travel day for me today and tomorrow, but there are several short news items worthy of note:
• William F. Buckley Jr once remarked to the effect that liberalism is the impulse to reach in and turn down your shower. Well:
This Eco-Warrior Shower Curtain Forces You to Get Out of the Shower After 4 Minutes
London-based artist Elisabeth Buecher, the designer of the inflatable curtains, explains the reasoning behind the design: “I looked at the environmental issue of excessive water consumption. I designed a series of water-saving shower curtains which inflate after four minutes spent under the water, taking over the space and discouraging long water-wasting showers.” With this fun, but impactful design, she hopes to bring a broader awareness to the public about issues of water consumption.
Shall we call her Frau Buecher perhaps? (Insert horse whinny here.)
Here’s what this contraption looks like—but how long until metal spikes are made mandatory by the burnabout bureaucrats in Brussels?
• I’ve written previously that French President Emmanuel Macron might be more interesting and possibly sound than we first thought—certainly he’s better than Frau Merkel. (Insert horse whinny here.) While we await a verdict on this, here’s one small sign of creeping sanity in France:
For decades, France has been fighting a fruitless battle to ban English loan words from the mother tongue. Now the country has turned its obsession with language purity to vegan products.
The parliament approved a ban last week on borrowing terminology from animal products to market foods not made of animals, like “vegetarian sausage” — apparently because they confuse shoppers into thinking that soy milk, for instance, is really milk milk.
“It is important to combat false claims,” tweeted National Assembly member Jean Baptiste-Moreau, who proposed the ban, in French. “Our products must be designated correctly: the terms of #cheese or #steak will be reserved for products of animal origin.”
Viva la France!
Gotta run. They’re boarding my flight.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.