franchise: plans are in the works to release more variations on the theme of Ghostbusters
While I have no reservations that Tim Burton’s filmmaking vision could not fail to limn an interesting version of the story, but I do wonder about the overall trend of meddling with the classics.
Some things are still royalty generators without repackaging them as a novelty to a new generation—as lore that was good enough to repeat was passed along from parents to offspring before Hollywood and pollsters, and I wonder why—in of all Disney’s extensive library, they are choosing to bootstrap Dumbo. This one, clocking in at just over an hour and one of the shortest features that the studio made, always struck me as vaguely off-putting what with the cruelty and the way people picked on Jumbo Junior, the later day controversy levied against the crows (the characters were both called “Jim Crow” in the script) as a racist depiction. Happily, I was relieved to learn that I had misremembered Mother Elephant’s rampage and incarceration—not being put down like Bambi’s mom, and make what you will about the way they discover Dumbo’s amazing power after an all-night bender and a visit from the Pink Elephants.
Just scant days after the French government legislated an expiry date for consumer electronics in order to combat designed obsolescence, when there’s no longer factory-support, Germany is attempting to take the measure a step further (DE/EN) by directing retail outlets to accept shoppers’ trade-ins—not for cash but as a more important civic-duty.
Larger electronic stores are required to accept customers’ smaller items, like old toasters, electric-toothbrushes and cell phones, in order to dispose of them properly and ensure valuable components are harvested and recycled—plus their bigger items like dishwashers and refrigerators, when buying a new one. This mandate extends to on-line shops as well. It’s perhaps easier to schlep one’s outmoded gadgets on the next shopping-outing rather than venture out to the special trash sort yard or feel guilty about stuffing it into the regular trash or kipping it off on the roadside, and though possibly a logistics horror for the sellers, to harness all the gold in circulation in everyone’s last phone and computer is a pretty nice prospect all around. Maybe, between the two laws, people will consume less just to toss away as the industry creates more items to endure and that can be upgraded rather than turned in. What do you think? Will this scheme be good for the environment as well as for business? I can imagine salvage really taking off.
Via the resplendent rodeo of interesting things the Browser, here is a really fascinating list of English word pairs that are false cognates, seemingly related or organic extensions of the meaning, but are far from it, by Arika Okrent, who often writes for Mental Floss.
All of the entries are pretty surprising, and among my favourites was how shame-faced began as shamefast (like steadfast) as in being shamed into staying in one’s place and how something as innocuous, mildly irritating and apparently straightforward like the term hang-nail, obviously referring to the bits of skin dangling off one’s cuticle, actually has a more complicated etymology, reaching back to the Germanic root ang (as in anger) for something vexing and nightmarish. Though probably going out of my element, however, I do have to take exception with one anecdote: while indeed the phrase has nothing to do with Scotland or the Scots, I believe that to get off scot-free refers to medieval times tax-avoidance, when a subject managed to withhold some otherwise taxable asset (sceot) from his liege.
another brick in the wand: a German teen cover version of the Pink Floyd classic
family-friendly: prudishness protects the bottom-line
mรคrchen: photographer Kilian Schรถnberger treks across Europe capturing vistas that evoke Grimms’ fairy tales
l'arboricoltura: vertical forest in Turin
beizjagd: Lufthansa to join growing list of air-carriers that allow falcons
Though probably better known in most circles as a subcamp of the concentration camp Buchenwald and for the recent outcry by some when it was proposed that refugees be housed in the former officers’ barracks on that profane ground, Trรถglitz (DE) in Saxon Anhalt is now garnering attention once more, because its mayor stepped down, having retreated to factions in village that violently oppose the mayor’s decision to offer shelter to sixty Syrian refugees—or his lack of leadership in blocking the move.
Whilst defending his community, saying that most are inviting and caring individuals, a few hooligans massed on the mayor’s private residence in such a terrorising and unrelenting manner, which local authorities had not the purview or power to stop, the mayor maintains Trรถglitz is not a bastion for xenophobia, but fearing for the safety of his family, relinquished the office. Though on the macro-scale, the PEGIDA marches have largely been subdued in the bigger cities by counter-rallies that far out-number those standing with the movement, sparse policy dialogue has come out of the contentious issue. Now it seems that activists can focus in on the smallest subdivisions and the very local sense, these messages still are resounding ones. Public officials of course don’t sacrifice their right to privacy or the security of their families once they take office—and nor can freedom of expression or assembly be curtailed depending on the target, but it does represent something chilling, I think, for homegrown democracy that might so readily cow to the bullying of a few, creating enclaves where no refugees are welcome. What do you think?
