Preparing for a dark and cold winter

The country that prides itself to be largely independent of fossil fuel for its electricity is forced to import power from neighboring countries. One third of France’s nuclear reactors are out of order, partly because of industrial actions (aka strikes) earlier this year. Hydraulic power stations run 20% below their capacity because of the limited rainfall. With most French households heating their houses electrically there’s a fair chance that power supplies will be temporarily shut down when electricity is most needed: on a cold winter’s day. [Source]

Tired of the rat race? Relax like a hamster!

For only 99 euros a night (£88), punters in Nantes can cage themselves in a specially-designed hotel. Visitors can run in a giant wheel and eat seeds before climbing a ladder for a kip in a hamster bed filled with hay. Yann Falquerho, co-owner of the Hamster Hotel, said his pet project would appeal to the young at heart. “Often, the adults who come here have wanted or did have hamsters when they were small,” he said. [Source]

Eight hundred passengers in one plane. What could possibly go wrong?

Prepare for sardine tourism. French company Air Austral has just ordered two Airbus double-decker A380s and plans to carry a record-breaking 800 passengers between Paris and the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The company’s president is upbeat: “We are convinced that airplanes with good-priced tickets will help explode traffic figures.” As long as that’s the only thing that explodes things should be fine — but without me! [Source]

Best LibDub ever?

LibDubs are musical video recordings whereby amateurs perform and mime to a known tune. The challenge is to have as many people involved as possible, and the trick is to film the entire sequence without a single cut. In this LibDub, no less than 287 students of the ESSCA graduate school of management re-enact a scene from the 1978 movie Grease. The cameraman/woman did an excellent job during the nearly full four minutes!