peril
Japanese authorities and the U.S. military on Saturday were racing to find ways to deliver new backup generators or batteries to a nuclear power reactor whose cooling facilities have been crippled by a loss of power as a result of the earthquake. The reactor, owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co., is currently drawing on battery power that may last only a few hours. Without electricity, the reactor will be unable to pump water to cool its hot reactor core, possibly leading to a meltdown or some other release of radioactive material.
via The Washington Post.
this is a review
I ask the hotel concierge at Le Meurice to book a table for lunch. “L’Ami Louis,” he says, with a pitiful sadness. “It’s always L’Ami Louis for les Anglais.”
What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing. It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.
At the end of the dining room is the tiny kitchen and an even tinier bar, where the waiters lurk like extras for a Gallic version of The Sopranos. The staff are an essential part of Louis’s mystique. Paunchy, combative, surly men, bulging out of their white jackets with the meaty malevolence of gouty buffalo. They may well be related by blood—theirs or other people’s.
via Vanity Fair.