cook, entrepot, too many cooks

Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The broken pieces may be from spent fuel rods in the spent-fuel pools, rather than from the reactors themselves. Hydrogen explosions have flung them out of the reactor building.

“They’re running bulldozers around to bury the stuff so it doesn’t cook people going by,” he said.

entrepot
(AHN-truh-po)

noun: A place, such as a warehouse, port, or trading center, to which goods are brought for distribution to other parts of the world.

Etymology
From French entrepôt (warehouse), from entreposer (to store), from entre (among) + poser (to place). Earliest documented use: 1721.

Usage
"Jerusalem is a city that has never made anything but history. It is not an entrepot, a manufactory, a place of finance, or a crossroads." — Barnaby Rogerson; Holy City, Murky History; The Independent (London, UK); Jan 21, 2011.


TOO MANY COOKS
Who is to blame for the condition of the California public education system, once one of the best in the country, asks The Economist. Local and state officials can plausibly blame state voters. Citizens passed Proposition 13, which cut schools' main revenue source: property taxes. To restore lost services, voters then passed Proposition 98, which dictated that schools each year receive the same funds as last year, adjusted for increase in students and personal income per capita. The state legislature then had to find money to comply with Proposition 98, though Proposition 13 and other initiatives had sapped major revenue streams. So the legislature put yet another measure on the ballot, Proposition 111, with the intent to make Proposition 98 more flexible. John Mockler, an expert in California education since the 1960s, said Proposition 111 finally made the overall structure for education funding incomprehensible. He compares the resulting package of legislation to the general theory of relativity, quantum physics, and the federal tax code in complexity, and reckons he is currently one of ten people alive who understand California school finance. This information is from the PEN NewsBlast.

cook
(kʊk)

v., cooked, cook·ing, cooks. v.tr.

1. To prepare (food) for eating by applying heat.
2. To prepare or treat by heating: slowly cooked the medicinal mixture.
3. Slang. To alter or falsify so as to make a more favorable impression; doctor: disreputable accountants who were paid to cook the firm's books.

v.intr.

1. To prepare food for eating by applying heat.
2. To undergo application of heat especially for the purpose of later ingestion.
3. Slang. To happen, develop, or take place: What's cooking in town?
4. Slang. To proceed or perform very well: The band really got cooking after midnight.

n.
A person who prepares food for eating.

phrasal verb:

cook up Informal.

1. To fabricate; concoct: cook up an excuse.

idiom:

cook (one's) goose Slang.

1. To ruin one's chances: The speeding ticket cooked his goose with his father. Her goose was cooked when she was caught cheating on the test.

[Middle English coken, from coke, cook, from Old English cōc, from Vulgar Latin *cōcus, from Latin cocus, coquus, from coquere, to cook.]