STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Here's A Real Picture Of The New Batmobile And It Looks Sick

Here it is. The real thing. Batman’s next ride. We saw blurry images of what looked like the new Batmobile earlier today but it wasn’t official until now. Zack Snyder, director of Batman v. Superman, just tweeted out this official image of the upcoming Batmobile and it’s crazy.

This angle makes the new Batmobile look a a lot like a tank that stretches an entire block wide. It’s like a cross between a military turret and a metal alien spaceship on wheels. Can you picture Batman in this thing?

Snyder, who was obviously responding to the fake leak of the Batmobile by putting out this official picture, also linked to the photographer, Clay Enos, who shot this picture, who said “iPhone photograph is great but some things deserve more.” Yep, the new Batmobile definitely deserves more.

[Maplepie]

Looks like a Metagross.

Last pokemon game i played. Still definitely not too old for that stuff!

[MIKA27]

US Military Working On Turning Soldiers Into The Wolverine

Not only the US military wants to make an Iron Man suit, they also want to give the soldiers the same self-healing powers of the Wolverine, the Marvel superhero that can accelerate the healing of injuries and chronic diseases. DARPA calls the project ElectRx. Their description is fascinating.

ElectRx (pronounced “electrics”) aims to develop new, high-precision, minimally invasive technologies for modulating nerve circuits to restore and maintain human health. ElectRx technologies are also expected to help accelerate scientific research aimed at achieving a more complete understanding of the structure and function of specific neural circuits and their role in health and disease. Potential targets include recently identified circuits involved in regulating immune system function, providing new hope for treating a range of inflammatory diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic inflammatory response syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. ElectRx is also expected to improve peripheral nerve stimulation treatments for brain and mental health disorders, such as epilepsy, traumatic brain injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression.

According to DARPA, these devices will accelerate the patient’s recovery from injuries by modulating nerve signaling and constantly monitoring the patient response to the treatment. DARPA program manager Doug Weber says that “the technology DARPA plans to develop through the ElectRx program could fundamentally change the manner in which doctors diagnose, monitor and treat injury and illness.

Instead of relying only on medication — we envision a closed-loop system that would work in concept like a tiny, intelligent pacemaker. It would continually assess conditions and provide stimulus patterns tailored to help maintain healthy organ function, helping patients get healthy and stay healthy using their body’s own systems.

As the official science blog for the US Department of Defence says, the concept is not new. There are devices that use neuromodulation to treat some diseases like chronic inflammatory diseases, but they produce side effects because their imprecision, they are too big for use on the field, and they require surgical implantation. DARPA says that their ElectRx “seeks to create ultraminiaturized devices, approximately the same size as individual nerve fibres, which would require only minimally invasive insertion procedures such as injectable delivery through a needle.”

Of course, don’t expect these devices to magically close a bullet injury just yet. For now, they are aiming at accelerating healing and solving chronic diseases. But it’s certainly a step to get to the Star Trek-level stuff that everyone on Earth would like medicine to be.

[MIKA27]

Why China's Building A Military Base In The Middle Of The Ocean

After flying a surveillance plane over the South China Sea last February, the Philippine government saw how China was constructing islands in order to bolster its claim to the territory. (See above.) It even suspected that China might plan to build a military air strip to protect them. Looks like they were right.

The BBC just published a rich feature on China’s island factory in the middle of the world’s third busiest waterway. Among other unsettling details, the report confirms the Philippines’ fears: “China seems to be preparing to build an air base with a concrete runway long enough for fighter jets to take off and land.” Here’s what it’s supposed to look like when it’s done:

It’s not a total revelation, however. Plans drawn up by a state-owned contractor for a purported Chinese military base to be built near the Spratly archipelago in the middle of the South China Sea showed up online earlier this summer. Until now, however, not many Western journalists have been able to get near enough to the disputed area to verify that this was a real project and not some zany pipedream.

The country built the islands so that it can lay claim to the exclusive economic zone that surrounds them for 200 nautical miles, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas. This would mean China could control much of the South China Sea, a vital waterway for region. It doesn’t hurt that there’s supposed to be massive deposits of oil and natural gas beneath the Spratly Islands. The air base is meant to defend all of that.

Renderings of various areas on the island from the CSSC.

Of course, just because China looks like it’s building a base does not mean that it’s going to start landing fighter jets there in the near future. It’s possible that the new construction is just saber rattling. There are already a handful of islands built in the South China Sea, so it’s actually not that crazy that China would want to defend them, either — especially given its belligerent history with other countries laying claim to the waterway, like the Philippines.

Chinese construction of a new island as seen from a Philippine military surveillance plane in 2013.

Why now? Well, China’s clearly flexing its muscles in the region and the United States are taking notice. Building a military base in the middle of the ocean is just another method for accomplishing the same goal.

[MIKA27]

These Beautiful Mountain Views From Inside A Tent Make Me So Jealous

Ukrainian-based photographer and mountain enthusiast Oleg

Grigoryev took a picture of the view from his tent every morning of his trip to the Fann Mountains, Tajikistan. The resulting photographic reportage is beautiful — and it makes me terribly jealous.

These photos were taken in August, 2014 at the Fann Mountains, Tajikistan.I love to travel, especially to the mountains. I bring emotions back from there, which I’m trying to express in my photos.

I started travelling and photographing in 2007. Usually, I travel to the wilderness, where there is no hotel or hostel. So when I go to the mountain, I take my tent with me and sleep in it.

[MIKA27]

This Giant Russian Ship Is Toting Two Submarines

America’s isn’t the only military to rely on heavy-lift transport vessels, the unusual class of utility ship that helped ferry the crippled USS Cole home for repairs. Russia has just released a series of photos documenting the slow return trip to the Zvezdochka shipyard for a pair of its Akula II-class submarines, the Bratsk and the Samara.

The question is, why are we seeing them at all?

Submarines are an essential component to Russia’s naval capabilities. As Nikolay Cherkashin of stoletie.ru explains. Subs provide Russia with an invaluable means of sneaking relatively unhindered through these obstacles without having to launch from the far North and so it’s little wonder why they have been so notoriously secretive about the submarine fleet since the end of World War II.

This is why it’s rather surprising that the Kremlin is not only publishing photos of two of its more recent subs (the Bratsk was commissioned in 1989, the Samara in 1995) but also revealing that they are in line for full modernization overhauls. It could simply be more saber-rattling by the Kremlin, it could indicate a quiet efforts to strengthen its navy by a renewed and emboldened Russia.

[MIKA27]

A Lightweight Cork Sofa Means You'll Never Hire A Mover Again

Beds can be dismantled, legs can come off dining tables, and shelves can be emptied, but that large sofa in your living room? That’s not getting any smaller or lighter for moving day. And all it takes is one time moving a nightmarishly heavy sofa bed yourself to long for Lucie Koldova’s alternative made from cork.

It doesn’t fold out to accommodate guests, that’s true. But even a toddler could move this Corques sofa from one apartment to the next. And since it’s made from a single large block of condensed cork, it won’t crumble like the corkboard on your wall. In fact, it’s actually far more durable than most woods, absorbing and hiding all those nicks and bumps from daily use. Now here’s to hoping it doesn’t cost as much as a small car. [ Lucie Koldova ]

[MIKA27]

Say What You Want About It, But This Aeroplane Still Looks Like It's From The Future

Sure, it has had lots of problems. Yes, it is expensive as hell. But you can’t deny that the F-35 is one handsome bastard. It still feels from the future in these pictures that Lockheed Martin just sent me.

[MIKA27]

A Ballistic Sleeping Bag That Promises Protection From A Tornado

They seem like a smart idea, but how many people do you really know with a safe room in their house? Probably none, because they’re expensive, and that includes those living in areas where storms can generate deadly tornados. So a Missouri-based inventor has come up with a cheaper way to stay safe during a twister — an oversized sleeping bag made from the same material as bulletproof vests.

Weighing just 5kg when rolled up, the Tuuli Armour Tornado Shield can be stored almost anywhere, even in the trunk of your car, and is easy to deploy in less than a minute. It’s about as large as a queen-sized bed when unfurled, which means it’s large enough to accommodate two adults and a child inside, and the material is able to resist being punctured by shrapnel travelling faster than 320km/h.

The Tornado Shield won’t protect its occupants from broken bones or other injuries from larger materials, but it will protect them from the constant barrage of tiny debris like broken glass and splinters that can be just as dangerous. And, unlike building an underground safe room, the Tuuli Armour will sell for about $US400 (or just $US320 for early donators) if its Indiegogo campaign is able to raise the $US105,000 needed to put it into production.

It isn’t an absolute guarantee that you’ll be safe during a terrible storm, but it seems like a smart and affordable way to help improve your family’s chances of walking away from a disaster with minimal harm. [Indiegogo ]

[MIKA27]

Google Street View Now Lets You Explore Ancient Egypt

Remember the funny backpack full of cameras that Google uses to map stunning Street View imagery of mountains and canyons? Well, Google just took it to Egypt.

Starting today, you will be able to explore the Pyramids of Giza, the necropolis of Saqqara, and the ancient city of Abu Mena on Street View right from your desk. Google mapped a 360-degree view using itsTrekker camera system to capture the breathtaking images.

I’ll keeping my eyes peeled for Imhotep.

[Duxnutz]

Say What You Want About It, But This Aeroplane Still Looks Like It's From The Future

Blasphemous! The last truly sexy fighter was the F-14 Tomcat.

[MIKA27]

Living Simply in a Dumpster

One professor left his home for a 36-square-foot open-air box, and he is happier for it. How much does a person really need?

Tucked behind the women’s residence halls in a back corner of Huston-Tillotson University’s campus in Austin, Texas, sits a green dumpster. Were it not for the sliding pitched roof and weather station perched on top, a reasonable person might dismiss the box as “just another dumpster”—providing this person did not encounter the dean of the University College Jeff Wilson living inside.

Professor Wilson went to the dumpster not just because he wished to live deliberately, and not just to teach his students about the environmental impacts of day-to-day life, and not just to gradually transform the dumpster into “the most thoughtfully-designed, tiniest home ever constructed.” Wilson’s reasons are a tapestry of these things.

Until this summer, the green dumpster was even less descript than it is now. There was no sliding roof; Wilson kept the rain out with a tarp. He slept on cardboard mats on the floor. It was essentially, as he called it, “dumpster camping.” The goal was to establish a baseline experience of the dumpster without any accoutrements, before adding them incrementally.

Not long ago, Wilson was nesting in a 2,500 square foot house. After going through a divorce (“nothing related to the dumpster,” he told me, unsolicited), he spun into the archetypal downsizing of a newly minted bachelor. He moved into a 500-square-foot apartment. Then he began selling clothes and furniture on Facebook for almost nothing. Now he says almost everything he owns is in his 36-square-foot dumpster, which is sanctioned and supported by the university as part of an ongoing sustainability-focused experiment called The Dumpster Project. “We could end up with a house under $10,000 that could be placed anywhere in the world,” Wilson said at the launch, “[fueled by] sunlight and surface water, and people could have a pretty good life.”

Wilson, known around town as Professor Dumpster, recounted in anotherrecent interview that he now owns four pairs of pants, four shirts, three pairs of shoes, three hats, and, in keeping with his hipsteresque aesthetic, “eight or nine” bow ties. (That's an exceptional bow-tie-to-shirt ownership ratio.) He keeps all of this in cubbies under a recently installed false floor, along with some camping cooking equipment.

Customization of the space really began in July. Wilson asked Twitter what was the first thing he needed, and the response was almost unanimous: air conditioning. In the Austin heat, the dumpster was getting up to 130 degrees during the day. On some nights it did not fall below the high 80s. So on his six-month anniversary of living in a human-sized convection oven, Wilson procured a modest air conditioner.

“We didn’t want to make it too easy,” Wilson said. “I wanted to see how elastic my sleeping habits would be relative to temperature and humidity. I found that I could actually get to sleep pretty well as long as I went to bed at about 11:00 p.m.”

With the weather station now strapped to the top, Wilson tracks his personal climate in real time. Pulling up data on his computer from inside his centrally cooled office as we spoke, he announced that the dumpster was currently 104 degrees. During the spring, when Austin was a little cooler, he was able to pass some daytime hours in the dumpster. With the arrival of summer, that became unbearable. “But some interesting things happened because of that,” he explained. He spent a lot more time out in the community, just walking around. “I almost feel like East Austin is my home and backyard,“ he said. He is constantly thinking about what sorts of things a person really needs in a house, and what can be more communal.

“What if everybody had to go to some sort of laundromat?” Wilson posited. “How would that shift how we have to, or get to, interact with others? I know I have met a much wider circle of people just from going to laundromats and wandering around outside of the dumpster when I would’ve been in there if I had a large flat screen and a La-Z Boy.”

Phase two, currently in progress

Perks like insulation will come, allowing the small air conditioner to keep pace with the Texas sun. The second phase of The Dumpster Project, which Wilson and collaborators call the “average American dumpster studio,“ will incorporate more amenities including a bed, a lamp, and a classic home-evoking pitched roof that will slide back and forth to allow ventilation, weather stripping, and locks (making this possibly the only dumpster in the world with interior locks). Eventually, the dumpster will have a dome to catch rainwater and provide shade, as well as a (tiny) sink and kitchen.

“Actually,” he said as we spoke by phone, “it is starting to rain right now, and my roof’s open on the dumpster.”

“Oh my god.”

“Can I call you right back? It’s a downpour. I’ll be back in about a minute.”

He called me back a minute later, sounding less distressed than one might expect from a person whose home had been drenched. The disposition that might make a person amenable to dumpster life is not one easily troubled by a little rain. His dumpster-home once looked like this:

The interior of the dumpster on Wilson’s first night there; emptying the rain tarp; the view through a newly installed window; storage space in the dumpster floor

He’s also welcoming of anyone who wants to stop by the dumpster and talk sustainability any time. In addition to teaching courses in environmental change, global health and welfare, and environmental science at the college, Wilson describes The Dumpster Project primarily as an educational initiative that just happened to dovetail with his current life-downsizing. On some nights, Wilson will stay with a friend, and students from the ecology-focused campus group Green Is the New Black will get a night to stay in the dumpster.

“What does home look like in a world of 10 billion people?” the project’s site implores, referring to the projected 40 percent increase in the human population by the end of the century. “How do we equip current and future generations with the tools they need for sustainable living practices?”

Unfortunately the site does not answer those questions in concrete terms. But with only 39 percent of Americans identifying as “believers” in global warming, just raising questions and promoting consciousness of sustainability might be a lofty enough aspiration.

Wilson’s most anticipated upcoming boon is a toilet. “I’m not as concerned about the shower,” he said, “but getting to the toilet sometimes requires kind of a midnight run.” Currently, he uses facilities at the university’s gym. A toilet and shower will soon connect to the dumpster externally. “You don’t really want to have a composting toilet inside of a closed-up 36 square feet,” he explained.

In four months Wilson will enter the third phase of the project, the “uber dumpster home.” That will involve installing solar panels and unplugging from the energy grid, as well as completing aesthetic work that will essentially remove any semblance of dumpsterdom. “We kind of want to do the outside in a modern Dwell look,“ he said, including windows and reused lumber siding. “We want it basically to be such that if you were blindfolded and placed inside it, you’d just think you were in a very tiny house.”

Phase three, beginning this winter

Wilson already goes around to local elementary and middle schools recounting his experience in the context of talking about using less space, less energy, and less water, and creating less waste. There is a K–12 curriculum built around the dumpster experiment, and eventually the finished dumpster will be transported to these schools for display.

For Professor Dumpster, the undertaking is at once grand and diminutive, selfless and introspective, silly and gravely important, even dark. “We bring everything into the home these days,” Wilson said. “You don’t really need to leave the home for anything, even grocery shopping, anymore. What’s interesting about this is it’s really testing the limits of what you need in a home.”

“The big hypothesis we’re trying to test here is, can you have a pretty darn good life on much, much less?” He paused. “This is obviously an outlier experiment. But so far, I have, I’d say. A better life than I had before.”

[MIKA27]

Blasphemous! The last truly sexy fighter was the F-14 Tomcat.

I kind of agree, it is a sexy fighter but I also like the F-16 Fighting falcon.

Oh hell, I love them all really!!

[MIKA27]

Rape Culture in the Alaskan Wilderness

In the tight-knit communities of the far north, there are no roads, no police officers—and higher rates of sexual assault than anywhere else in the United States.

One night a few years ago, when Geneva was 13, a man she’d grown up with stumbled into the room she shared with her two sisters in Tanana, Alaska, a tiny village northwest of Fairbanks, and climbed on top of her. He was stumbling drunk and aggressive.

“He tried getting into my clothes,” she recalls. “He tried putting his hands under my shorts and inside my shirt.” She struggled and pushed, but he was years her senior and made of muscle; he pulled her on top of him. She kept pushing and yanking until she suddenly shot backwards and tumbled off the bed. “He was so blacked out, he was like still asleep; his eyes were closed,” she says. “I was watching his face, but his face didn’t move at all. His breathing was normal, but his hands…” She pauses, and the word hangs thickly in the air. “His hands felt like he was awake.”

Afterward, she ran into the living room and burst into tears, stuffing her face into a pillow so her parents wouldn’t hear. She didn’t tell them, then; she was scared and ashamed. “I guess I just felt like I was dirty. I guess that’s what victims feel like. They feel dirty and just want to clean everything off.”

The following summer, Geneva was fast asleep at her family’s fish camp downriver, while a group of adults drank and caroused in the next room. She awoke to someone tugging down her pants, reaching between her legs; she struggled and kicked, and he lumbered out of the room.

In fact, Geneva says, she’s been grabbed, chased, followed, and molested so much in her short life that she’s now made it a habit to lock the bedroom door at night and shove a chair under the knob so no one can come in; she’ll wait up, trembling, until everyone at a party is passed out cold before she can comfortably fall asleep. She’s learned to avoid being alone with friends’ dads, or with grandpas at village potlatches, or with boys at basketball games, who’ve repeatedly groped her breasts and buttocks. “It’s just random, like, you’ll think everything’s all normal and then you’ll feel something on your backside,” she says. “You just freeze.”

Geneva is a tall basketball player with bright eyes, rectangular black-framed glasses, and a wide, eager smile. She has no trouble listing accomplishments and affinities: She’s ambidextrous by choice, grew up doing all the rugged outdoor chores men do, raves gleefully over beloved local foods like fried moose heart and walrus in seal oil.

But for years, she felt scared, hypersensitive, and depressed. She never told her parents about the incident; she was too afraid of what would happen, and anyway, when she told one of her sisters, the only response she received was a dry laugh. “It happened to all of us,” her sister had said. “Just leave it alone.”

Growing up in Tanana, a town of 254, the prevalence of this kind of thing was common knowledge, but rarely discussed. Everyone knew the local elder who’d molested and raped his daughters and granddaughters for decades until he was arrested for touching another family’s girls; after four years in jail and another half dozen or so at a cabin downriver, he was back on the village tribal council. One of Geneva’s great aunts was molested and raped by an uncle for years; dozens of years later, the aunt’s grown daughter told her that the same uncle had molested her, too. Sometimes people pressed charges; most of the time, though, nothing happened. “These perverts travel from village to village, from potlatches to dances,” Geneva says. “And then they get drunk and you don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Then, last year, Geneva joined the Tanana 4-H club, a newly minted outlet for local youth of all ages to gather and play games and craft things like blueberry jam and beaver hats. It’s run by Cynthia Erickson, owner of Tanana’s general store and native of Ruby, a village 100 miles downriver. Erickson says she started the program because of suicide: Three years ago, there were six in Tanana. At first, she just wanted to give Tanana’s kids a place to do things with their hands, to go on field trips, to feel supported. But what began as a diversion quickly became a safe place for kids to share all kinds of traumas they were witnessing and experiencing: sexual and domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse, death after brutal death. The discussions they’d have were rarely prearranged, Erickson says. Instead, the kids would launch the conversation by saying, “Did you hear what happened?”

Last fall, the group was asked to give a presentation at a statewide conference held by the First Alaskans Institute in Fairbanks. Instead of explaining how they’d come up with their anti-suicide pledge, the kids decided to share the reasons they’d needed one in the first place.

Geneva spoke about her own abuse and described in detail what has been horrifyingly typical for the people around her: A local woman who was gang raped until she could “barely walk.” A young boy who was sexually assaulted by an older man and later killed himself. Tribal elders who commanded respect, but whose behavior didn’t. “I’m still young and I’m already sick of it,” she said. “It’s happening in his house, in her house, even in your own bed.”

The presentation was met with a standing ovation, and it took the kids nearly two hours to make it from the stage to the back of the conference center, thanks to all the members of the audience who stopped to hug them, weep, pile up cash donations on a scarf on the stage, and tell them how proud they were. In some cases, audience members felt inspired to come out about their own abuse. One grandmother told Erickson she’d been raped and abused for so many years, and she’d held it in for so long, that that was the reason that she’d been so harsh to her children. After the presentation, she called her children and apologized to them.

The impact that Geneva and her peers made at the conference seemed to launch a new era of transparency in Alaska about domestic and sexual violence; the media splash that followed drew a groundswell of support both for the 4-H youth and for recent state efforts to both document and prevent these crimes. But a few months later, when Erickson asked the kids if they thought their presentation had made a difference in Tanana, they all shrugged and made “zero” signs with their hands. Their stories had rocked the small community, too, but the fresh feeling “didn’t really stick,” Geneva admits. “It went back like the old way.”

In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both.

But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface. Since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.”

The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched. Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and victim advocates note the state’s surfeit of risk factors, from an abundance of male-dominated industries, like oil drilling and the military, to the state’s vast geography, with many communities that have no roads and little law enforcement. “There are so many factors that tip the scale for Alaska,” says Linda Chamberlain, executive director of the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project. Not the least among them: the lack strong law enforcement presence, or support services of any kind, in remote towns like Tanana. “It’s easier for perpetrators to isolate their victims and not get caught. And for people not to get help.”

Some believe that this fact both attracts and encourages criminals. The suspect for a recent rape in southwest hub community of Dillingham, for instance, was a white man who’d just arrived from somewhere in the Lower 48 to take a job at the Wells Fargo in town. “Because it happens in rural Alaska,” one victim advocate cautions, “doesn’t mean it’s only rural Alaskans who are a part of it.”

It happens at alarming rates in urban Alaska, too. In 2010, Anchorage and Fairbanks had the highest rape rates of all cities in the U.S. Some bars in Anchorage and Fairbanks are known for a prevalence of date rape drugs; others, in Fairbanks, are known for shunning members of the military after too many brutally violent nights. (The U.S. armed forces have their own issues with sexual assault: Investigations across the United States reveal victimhood percentages almost as high as Alaska’s; in late 2013, the Alaska National Guard also launched an investigation of widespread sexual assault allegations within its ranks). John Vandervalk, a sex crime detective in the Anchorage Police Department, claims that the city’s numbers are high partly because of attrition from villages where there are few or no services to address these kinds of crimes. But while rates of victimization are much higher among Alaska Natives—a survey from 2006 that analyzed law enforcement data in Anchorage found Alaska Native women 9.7 times more likely than other Alaskan women to be victims of sexual assault—anyone who works in Alaska’s cities consistently confirms, like Vandervalk, that “this is not an Alaska Native problem. It’s a problem that affects all demographics.”

Lawmakers aren’t blind to the issue. In 2009, Alaska governor Sean Parnell launched Alaska Men Choose Respect, a statewide prevention initiative that combines pervasive public service announcements and annual rallies with a slew of other incentives, including increased sentencing for sex offenses and mini-grants for violence prevention projects.

But some argue that focusing on a centralized criminal justice system and government-led initiatives can only go so far. In a state where hundreds of roadless communities are scattered across hundreds of thousands of miles, and where the storied rates of violence against women can hit 100 percent in some villages, silence is the norm, and violence is almost expected. (Says detective Vandervalk, “You’ll get a Native girl who says, ‘My mom always tells me to wear two pairs of jeans at night to slow him down.’”)

It’s only in recent years that some Alaskans have begun to speak publicly about this problem. In many places, silence still endures. But Cynthia Erickson hopes that the “old way” will eventually fade, and that speech, above all else, will empower victims, shame perpetrators, and interrupt the cycle of trauma where it starts: in childhood. “This story of Tanana is absolutely no different than every single one of these villages,” she says. “This is our world. And this is the fight we’re fighting—for the children. I don’t have time for adults.”

Tanana is nestled at the intersection of the Tanana and Yukon Rivers, about 130 miles northwest of Fairbanks, and is one of 165 Alaskan villages off the road system. In good weather, three nine-seater plane flights a day land at Tanana’s airport, a slim snowfield with a few blinking lights. In January, temperatures can plunge to 60 or 70 degrees below zero, and the life-giving river is frozen solid. The sky gradually pales around 11 a.m. and darkens again by 3 p.m. in a splash of peach and hot pink. Beat-up trucks hibernate under feet of snow in people’s yards. To get around, most residents drive open-air snow machines, staving off the wind chill with the wide earflaps of homemade marten-fur hats (or, in one instance I observed, strips of cardboard and duct tape).

The regular flights are packed with freight, so things like toilet paper and Doritos don’t usually have a problem making it in to the Ericksons’ general store, though sometimes weather can keep staple items off the shelves for weeks. The day I arrived, it had “warmed up,” as locals like to say, to five degrees below zero. Five o’clock in the evening marks the start of rush hour, and half the town had stopped in the store to pick up tomato sauce, frozen dinners, Gatorade, candy. They asked each other about the day’s work, commented on the weather, and gruffly dropped their items one by one on the counter, cheeks red from the cold. A petite teenaged girl with long dark hair and spindly legs waltzed through the pinging entryway wearing only basketball shorts and zebra slippers. (This far north, cold is relative: The previous few days, at 40 below, with powdered-sugar snow so dry and cold it squeaked underfoot, Alaskans had called it “chilly.”)

I first met Erickson and her husband, Dale, at a high school basketball game in Fairbanks, followed by steak salads at Denny’s—or, as it’s known: “the northernmost Denny’s in the world.” In the middle of the game, packed onto narrow bleachers, Erickson launched directly into the litany of abuses she’d witnessed and heard of in Tanana, and precisely what she thinks of those who see violence and do nothing. An older woman a few rungs above us tapped her on the shoulder, and as she turned, her face lit up, recognizing an old friend; they spoke eagerly for most of the rest of the game. On our way out, Erickson ran into a young woman. She put her hand on her shoulder and exclaimed at the teenager’s beauty and adulthood, demanding updates. Dale Erickson hung back patiently, until he saw his window: “Quick! Let’s get her out of here before she runs into someone else she knows.”

Erickson has a cap of frosted curls, high cheekbones, and gem-like blue eyes. She exudes a fiercely protective maternal energy and has no qualms about the public way she’s been going about shifting things in Tanana. “I’m sleeping pretty damn good at night,” she says. If no one will report abuse to the authorities—or if the authorities don’t act fast enough—she often leaves anonymous, vaguely threatening notes for people she believes are beating their wives or molesting their relatives. “I just started voicing my opinion in the last couple of years. I don’t give a **** anymore,” she said. “I really don’t.”

After the 4-H presentation, she told kids to be on guard for backlash. Most of the kids hadn’t told their families about the content of their speeches beforehand, and then, thanks to the media blitz that followed, the state of Alaska got an earful. For many families, the sudden publicity felt threatening. Geneva’s parents, in particular, resented that she hadn’t come to them first; her father called her a few hours afterward and left a dismissive voicemail message. “She’s overreacting,” he said. “She just got touched by a couple of drunk people.” When he did reach Erickson, he told her he felt betrayed: Why hadn’t his daughter told him? Why had she waited so long to talk about it, and why to the entire state?

The Alaska Federation of Natives asked the Tanana 4-H group to repeat their presentation a few days later, at a second, larger conference. Geneva’s father demanded that she change her speech for the second round, offering less detail, and less of her personal experience, because people would be jumping to conclusions, wondering who she meant when she said “it’s happening in his house, in her house, even in your own bed.” He feared her words could implicate him.

A Tanana teacher told me he’d known the presentation was going to “stir the pot” before it happened, and that it probably was still “ruffling feathers”; some residents avoided the general store for weeks, sending family members to do the shopping instead, and some still avoid speaking to Erickson. While most adults were outwardly supportive of the kids’ courage, a lack of outright retaliation didn’t necessarily indicate a truce. For Erickson, evasion can cut as deep. “You can be a bully without saying a word.”

One woman, who briefly described her own experience with sexual abuse—and her daughters’, and her sisters’, and her friends’—as a matter of course, shook her head and looked away, hands folded, at the mention of Cynthia Erickson. To her, all the publicity following the 4-H group's speeches was an embarrassment; you kept private things private. “You say Cynthia Erickson and my guard goes up,” she said.

While few victims deny that sexual assault and domestic violence should be punishable crimes, the public shaming of an elder or father or brother is a big deal in a village where everyone is related—either by blood, or by a lifelong relationship just as binding. “Everybody knows who’s doing what,” Erickson told me. “It’s common river knowledge. Who’s the molester. Who’s the abuser.” But families struggle to protect one another and their lives going forward, knowing that anyone they offend will be at the post office the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Winters are long, brutal, and dark, and in a tight-knit, tiny community, connected to most of its income, medical care, and law enforcement only by airplane, conflicts often simmer in silence. Flights aren’t cheap; when tensions build, there’s no place to go.

For that reason, family members often blame the victims, or the friends of victims, who attempt to report a crime, out of fear of losing material support, or a vital link in a precarious web of familial structure. When a young man from Tanana was accused of sexually abusing several village children a few years ago, some of his relatives verbally attacked the woman who turned him in, saying, “Shame on you. He had his whole life in front of him and you’re going to ruin it.” Even the raffle the 4-H group organized to help fund the trip to Fairbanks for the conference sold very few tickets, one Tanana resident claims, “because it was dealing with hard issues.”

Often, when state troopers—the only police force available for a quarter of Alaska’s villages—are called in for a brutal assault case, they’ll get on the next available flight, but when they arrive on the scene, no one will talk. Lieutenant Andrew Merrill, a state trooper who lived and worked in Bush Alaska for a dozen years, notes that in many cases, a perpetrator is also “the one that chops wood, hauls the water, hunts the caribou so there’s food in the house. So, it’s like, ‘Yeah, he punched me, and yeah, I want this to stop, but I also need to survive.’”

It took one woman 30 years to begin speaking about the time she was gang raped in Tanana. She claims that the main perpetrator apologized to her the summer after it happened, and that she “was in no place to accept that. I had a gun and was going to kill him.” But she did nothing. She feared for her children, her family’s reputation, her affiliation with the local church. “It was so shameful to me that I didn’t dare tell anyone but the doctor,” she says. “I told the doctor and I got an abortion. I thought if I told the cops, then everybody would know. What would people think? So I just suffered with it.”

A friend of Cynthia Erickson’s who grew up with her in Ruby, a town of 172, endured brutal beatings by her husband for several decades before she uprooted her life and moved with her children to Fairbanks. She wasn’t able to go back to Ruby to visit for many years because “she ‘broke up the family,’” says Erickson. “I’m like, ‘broke up the family’? He beat the **** out of her! But she was looked down on for a long time.”

Geneva, too, has no intention of sending someone who she grew up with to jail—someone she’d trusted, and who she says she now hates, but still, on some level, loves. After the Tanana 4-H group gave its second presentation, the Office of Children’s Services was ready, this time, to whisk her offstage. Geneva told investigators what the man had done and they urged her to press charges. “But my first thought was, ‘I can’t do that,’” she says. Geneva felt she’d already done enough damage by making a public presentation and mentioning the molestation, even in vague terms; her family began shunning the accused and she felt she’d already, to some degree, destroyed his life. She looked up at the state trooper and said, “You do realize that I grew up with him?” He handed her his card; as soon as they left the room, she tore it up and threw it in the trash.

The word for “trooper,” according to Lieutenant Andrew Merrill, translates in nearly every Native language in Western Alaska as “‘he who comes and takes away.’ That’s what we’re seen as,” he says, citing both the structure of rural Alaskan law enforcement, and the perception of it: “You call us, we fly in, we do an investigation, we put somebody in handcuffs and we fly away.”

Merrill is now Deputy Director for C Detachment, a state division that’s four-fifths the size of Texas, spanning hundreds of thousands of miles between Anchorage and Alaska’s western coast. It employs roughly 30 troopers.

Because the area they patrol is so large, and staffing so slim, the amount of time it takes for state troopers to arrive on the scene is anywhere from several hours to several days. And since effectively prosecuting a sexual assault often requires a forensic examination to collect DNA evidence—an exam that typically can only be conducted in full in urban hubs—by the time a victim gets one, if she gets one at all, the 72-hour collection window may have passed.

“In a worst-case scenario,” Merrill says, “we have people collect their own undergarments, use their cell phones to take pictures of the room, talk to a local health aide about collecting urine in a cup.” Troopers will go forward with the investigation, regardless, if the victim wants to press charges, but it’s often tougher for district attorneys to build a case. That, and the high numbers of victims who recant their testimony—or refuse to give it in the first place—are a large part of the reason more than half of the reports that reach state troopers never make it to the DA’s office.

While the state has made a concerted effort to improve training in sexual assault and domestic violence investigations, Merrill points out that young, inexperienced troopers who’ve been “chasing broken tail lights” in Anchorage often struggle when sent into Bush Alaska and are tasked with pursuing far more serious crimes. To provide more boots on the ground, governor Parnell’s administration has more than doubled the number of Village Public Safety Officers, or first responders, since 2008, with the official goal, says Choose Respect coordinator Katie TePas, of providing some form of local law enforcement for every community that wants one. (VPSOs weren’t allowed to carry firearms until this summer, when a new bill passed the state legislature. The bill also and set aside limited funds for firearms training.)

But the jobs are difficult to fill. Officers from outside a village or its surrounding communities can present all kinds of challenges, from housing shortages to high rates of attrition, but hiring from within often forces a cop to choose between his job and his family. “We have VPSOs who quit because they don’t want to their uncles, their brothers and sisters,” says Merrill, adding that recently, one VPSO was tasked with arresting her own son.

For now, at least 75 of Alaska’s communities have no local police or Village Public Safety Officers, according to an October 2013 report by the Indian Law & Order Commission. The group devoted 60 pages of its nationwide survey to Alaska, calling the state’s centralized law enforcement system “unconscionable,” and citing, in particular, the rates of domestic and sexual violence.

But to rely solely on criminal law, says Ginger Baim, former executive director of SAFE, a shelter in Dillingham, is “like going to the emergency room and saying, ‘What have you done to stop accidents?’” The manifestations of sexual and domestic violence in Alaska “are all symptoms of the problem,” she says. “They’re not the problem.”

When Americans and Russians began showing up in Alaska, they brought with them—as settlers did in the rest of the U.S.—an explosion of disease. In the late 1830s, small pox wiped out a third of the Native population in southern and western Alaska. In 1900, a flu and measles epidemic did the same—or worse, by some estimates. Some villages were decimated; in others, there weren’t enough left alive to bury the dead.

Then, shortly after the second pandemic, many Native Alaskan children were shipped off to boarding schools—some as young as 6 years old—and many were beaten, sexually abused, and urged to forget their languages and cultures. In a few villages, multimillion-dollar lawsuits were filedagainst Catholic priests and church workers for molesting almost an entire generation of Alaska Native children. (The suits were settled in 2007 and 2011.)

Public health nurse Paula Ciniero has worked in 10 villages in the Fort Yukon subregion of the Interior, a vast swathe of land north of Fairbanks, for the past decade. She focuses on various public health needs such as immunizations and tuberculosis testing at local clinics, but she says roughly three quarters of her time these days involves sexual or intimate partner violence. “People get mad at me when I say it’s become tradition, but it has,” she says. “We’re talking about third-generation violence. That’s tradition.”

This is further exacerbated by the fact that traumatic experiences can lead to alcohol and drug abuse, and alcohol and drug abuse can lead to further traumatization. “It’s like a circle, you can’t take just one; they’re all linked together,” says Cynthia Erickson. “You’re born, you’re molested—kick another domino down.”

Detective Vandervalk, in Anchorage, notes that the average blood alcohol level for a victim at the time of a rape exam is .21—two and a half times the legal limit. “And that’s average. We routinely deal with people in the high threes, fours, fives—both on the suspect’s side of the house, and on the victim’s.” No one’s blaming the victims, he insists, but still: “If you make yourself vulnerable by drinking too much and passing out, something bad is going to happen to you sooner or later.“

Ginger Baim, the former SAFE director, claims that almost all sexual assaults that have taken place in Bristol Bay region for the past 25 years are not only facilitated by alcohol, but happen when a victim is passed out cold. Her own assault, when she was a teenager, happened that way—and the man who raped her may also have been affected by fetal alcohol syndrome. “His mother drank every single day she carried him,” she says. “He was born pickled.”

Experts and locals often link Alaska’s high rates of suicide with sexual assault, too. Many men were abused as young boys—something that’s also, slowly, surfacing. “It’s putting a Band-Aid on the hurt,” says Erickson. “That’s why there’s so much alcohol and drugs. That’s why there’s so much rape. They don’t feel good, they black out, and alcohol and drugs cover the pain. That’s why we’re so dysfunctional. Nobody’s dealing with it.”

Tanana’s counseling center is a low-slung ranch-style house painted sea green. It lies steps from the village medical clinic, which is right next to the school. Inside, the center is warm and comfortable, with two soft brown couches and several armchairs. Someone’s always offering tea or coffee, and one morning, at an AA meeting, there was a pot of moose soup: hunks of shredded meat and carrots suspended in a thick broth.

In the winter, when night falls early, the town’s health director, Theresa Marks, hosts a weekly sewing group here. A handful of women drink tea and chat over the dark-season projects they’re working on: beaver and marten fur mittens and slippers, crocheted scarves, and elaborate “sun-catchers” crafted with multicolored hollow beads so tiny they have to be picked up with a needle. If women and their families aren’t trapping animals, they can purchase them wholesale in town or nearby: polar bear, wolverine, moose. One woman boasts that she snagged an entire moose hide for $100. They dish the latest gossip and share jokes of the day, cackling over the reliable antics of 2-year-olds or the “badass granny” bumper stickers on an older woman’s snow machine.

One woman told me that, historically, the kind of sexual abuse and assault so many people were experiencing was huklani, or bad luck, so no one spoke openly. “It was taboo,” she said, “Like, bad, you don’t talk like that, you don’t say that.” When she tried to say something to her grandmother, once, she was hushed. “You learn not to talk when you’re a kid.” But over the last few years, women’s groups and regional meetings have increasingly turned into spontaneous talking circles.

Sabrenia Jervsjo, Cynthia Erickson’s cousin, works as a rural advocate for the Interior Alaska Center for Nonviolent Living, and she says her job is to encourage just that: Each time she turns up in another village, more people come, and more people talk—more adults, including more men. Public health nurse Paula Ciniero is part of a grant-funded collaborative team that travels statewide, leading workshops on identifying and healing from domestic violence and sexual assault. “We get so much positive feedback,” she says, “Women say to me, ‘Now I know why my parents don’t talk. Now I know why my parents have said what they’ve said.’ It’s like the light bulb goes on.”

While Erickson claims with a weary laugh that her general store has served as an unofficial talking circle for 28 years, health aides from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium did organize an official healing workshop in Tanana shortly after the 4-H presentations. And many Tanana residents appreciate the idea, at least, of speaking out. One woman, also a survivor, organized a welcome home pizza lunch immediately after the talks; the adults who attended that day stood and read the kids’ own words back to them, and said, “We hear you.”

Erickson gets emails and phone calls every day now, and is constantly fielding requests to bring the 4-H kids to other conferences and gatherings. When visiting Allakaket, population 109, about a hundred miles to the north, a woman dashed across the town hall, cornered her, and begged, almost in tears, “Please, could your kids please come talk to my kids?”

In March, Erickson took a few of the 4-H kids to the Cama-i Dance Festival in Bethel, a southwest hub community halfway across the state, scrounging together the funds through donations of airline miles. The girls who attended gave a short speech, showed the video from their first presentation, and met dozens of other kids who had identical stories to theirs.

The week before, Erickson had won the Doyon Corporation’s 2014 Daaga’ Community Service Award, and when she got it, she wept—from embarrassment. “My parents, my grandparents, they didn’t get awards. They were just called good people.” She looked at the certificate, and said it was a nice frame; she’d rather put a family picture in it. “I’m not gonna sugar coat ****, we’ve been doing that too long,” she told me. It’s taken decades to create all this violence, she said, and the kids’ “zero” signs reflect real feeling. Patterns continue, and when it comes to talking circles and workshops and counseling sessions, “the people who really need to be at that aren’t at it.”

Geneva says her parents stopped drinking after the presentations—a huge shift, although she claims it was for physical health reasons. She also believes there are fewer people stumbling around the streets of Tanana intoxicated, and fewer parties in the middle of town on weekdays. “I feel like the adults know that the kids are watching them now,” she says. “Kids are little, but they still have smart minds, and know what’s going on at all times.”

Geneva used to be painfully shy, but since joining 4-H, she has become more outgoing; She recently became captain of the basketball team, and this spring, she won a medal, ranking her among the tournament’s top five players. She wants to be a state trooper, a teacher, or a chef, and plans to go to college in Fairbanks.

But becoming a celebrity, thanks to the presentations, required some adjustment. So many people began dashing up to her at basketball games, telling her how brave she is—it was gratifying, but also a little unsettling. At a recent tournament in Huslia, a village 130 miles to the northwest, a local woman brought her elderly mother up to Geneva, saying, “Mommy, remember? She was one of the 4-H kids from Tanana.”

Every time Geneva is pegged as a hero, she’s reminded of the story she told to the world, a story that on most days she’d rather forget. “They come up to me and say they’re so proud of me, and I should keep doing what I’m doing,” she says. “But I always have second thoughts.”

A few months ago, Geneva received an email from a national 4-H director, in Washington, D.C., asking her to put in an application to be a Healthy Living Youth Ambassador, one of five teens who’d work alongside 4-H staffers to build and promote wellness programs. Though she says she’s not sure she’ll apply, she appreciates the offer; it means the world is listening, whether or not she’s the one who will keep talking. “I want kids to know that they don’t have to follow the path of our parents,” she says. When it comes to this, there are no second thoughts. “I don’t want us to be the victims anymore.”

[MIKA27]

This Brave Soul Dives Into The Center Of An Exploding Volcano

When you ask people what they did on holiday, you'll hear all the usual replies, sight-seeing, shopping, relaxing and eating.

But in the case of intrepid explorer George Kourounis, he decided to shun all of those conventional cliches, by spending his holiday diving into the very center of an exploding volcano.

Best of all, he even lived to tell the tale.

He descending 400 meters down the side of the Marum carter, which is located archipelago of the South Pacific’s Vanuatu. It was a journey equally as perilous and dangerous as it sounds.

Getting to Marum was kind of like a reverse climbing of Everest.

The volcano fought back at us, we had to deal with terrible weather, tremendous heat from the lava, loose rock face, acid rain so strong that it could have come from a car battery.

But he bravely overcame the odds to capture some of the most intense and formidable volcano footage you're ever likely to see.

If you've ever wondered what hell on earth looks like, this is it.

[MIKA27]

Juggling Battles? Yes They Exist And Yes They're Awesome

This is just too funny to watch.

I had never heard of juggling competitions, let alone, juggling battles. And the amount of people in the audience! You can really find anything on YouTube.

Norway recently hosted a 'Three Club Combat' event, the premise is pretty simple, two jugglers go head to head each armed with 3 clubs each.

The idea is to keep juggling, whilst disrupting your opponent enough to cause them to drop their clubs.

It's strangely compelling to watch and just like any sport played at an elite level, you have to admire the skill involved.

This particular clip was filmed during an intensely competitive final between Iver, the top seed, vs Jochen, the current number 1 player. Both were undefeated going into the match; Iver with 9 wins in a row and Jochen with 15.

Who will win the biggest bout of all?

Watch and find out!

[MIKA27]

Can This Spider Kill You Over a Bunch of Bananas?

Abby Woodgate of Essex, England, recently noticed what looked like mold on a bunch of bananas her grocer had just delivered. She poked it with a toothpick and some tiny eggs rolled out of what turned out to be a fuzzy cocoon. Fortunately, she stopped there and called Tesco, which sent over a pest control expert who identified the eggs as offspring of the Brazilian wandering spider, named by the Guinness Book of World Records in 2010 as the world’s most deadly spider.

Before you peel your next banana, consider what Miss Woodgate found. The twelve species of Brazilian wandering spider make up the genus Phoneutria, which is Greek for “murderess,” with the Phoneutria fera being the most venomous. Venomous as in injecting the neurotoxin PhTx3 in sufficient quantities to cause a progression of intense pain, inflammation, loss of muscle control, breathing problems, paralysis and asphyxiation.

If the venom doesn’t kill you, the looks can certainly be paralyzing. These spiders have a leg span of up to 5.9 inches (15 cm) and their furry bodies can reach 1.89 (48 mm) in length. They’re called “wandering” because they’d rather walk around looking for victims at night than spin webs.

Fortunately, Miss Woodgate only found the eggs of a Brazilian wandering spider. Or did she?

Eggs from a deadly Brazilian wandering spider eggs or something else?

Richard Vetter, a retired professor of entomology at the University of California, Riverside, says the eggs are very difficult to identify without their mother around. He doubts that Essex exterminators could accurately identify them. Not only that, the world-record-holding Phoneutria fera lives in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, nowhere near the Brazilian banana fields. In fact, Brazil exports very few bananas.

Vetter blames the media (doesn’t everybody?) for pointing the finger at the poor Phoneutria fera to sensationalize the story and cause banana fans to split (you knew it was coming eventually, didn’t you?). The eggs were probably from another species of large but harmless spiders.

If you find anything crawling around in your fruit bin or eggs on your banana (insert your own joke here), call the store and consider the Paleo diet.

[MIKA27]

One Of The Most Amazing Nuclear Explosions Ever Recorded On Film

As things get hotter between Russia and NATO, Putin is waving his nuclear d**k around. Russia plans to conduct massive nuclear war manoeuvres. Yesterday, it successfully tested its new Bulava (“Mace”) submarine launched nuclear missile, hitting its target with complete accuracy with its dummy warheads.

The Red Fleet’s Commander-in-Chief Admiral Viktor Chirkov said that it blasted off from the White Sea, hitting its objective in the Russian Federation’s far east minutes later. The Bulava can travel for 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) to rain nuclear death in the form of six to ten warheads.

Let’s pause a bit, look at this video, and reflect on this.

You are looking at an “aerial oblique shot of a Redwing H-Bomb detonation on a barge at Bikini atoll.”Operation Redwing was a
“United States series of 17 nuclear test detonations from May to July 1956. They were conducted at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. The entire operation followed Project 56 and preceded Project 57. The primary intention was to test new, second-generation thermonuclear devices [...] Redwing demonstrated the first US airdrop of a deliverable hydrogen bomb — test Cherokee.”

Redwing was also a response to a new Soviet atomic development: RDS-6, the first hydrogen bomb in history tested many years before, on August 12, 1953. It was all part of the arms race of the 50s, which most people thought was over only a few months ago.

Apparently it wasn’t. So are these new missiles and tests going start a new arms race? It’s too soon to tell. As a result of the warhead reduction bilateral treaties, the United States hasn’t been renewing its missile arsenal with new vehicles, choosing to incrementally modernize its arsenal of Minuteman III (ICBM) and Trident II (SLBM, like the Bulava.) Those missiles are decades old. It appears that Russia has been working in new armament all this time. The Bulava was just deployed in Russian submarines in 2013 and it seems they are now in cruisers too.

It’s not hard to imagine the war hawks returning to the White House in the next election and pushing for a modernization of the nuclear arsenal. And from there, it’s logical to think about the START treaties going to hell. It feels we are getting closer to a precipice.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping for Putin to get killed by bears, sharks, or piranhas. Any of those will be fine, thanks.

[MIKA27]

Extremely Rare Case Of Woman With No Cerebellum Puzzles Doctors

A 24-year-old Chinese woman recently went to the hospital complaining of dizziness and nausea. She was most likely not prepared for the cause of the discomfort. The otherwise healthy grown woman does not have a cerebellum. Amazing — it’s the ninth case in medical history.

That’s right. The cerebellum is a fairly sizable part of the brain — the name literally means “little brain” — and is important for motor control and some cognitive functions. A brain scan of the woman with the missing cortex is on the left. A normal brain is pictured to the right.

However, the fact that she lived without this vital region just goes to show you how adaptable the human brain is as an organ. The woman reported having some problems with motor control. She also didn’t speak until age six or walk until age seven. But you can’t really blame her. She was missing a big part of her brain!

This is about as rare as rare medical conditions get. The Chinese woman is one of only nine people in history known to have survived without a cerebellum. As such, the prognosis for her is unclear, though there is some research that indicates people with this condition die young. It’s already a miracle she’s survived this long though.

[MIKA27]

How To Make Sure No One's Secretly Stealing Your Home Wi-Fi

Wireless Network Watcher is a free, simple program for Windows XP and above that can take a quick look at the computers and devices connected to your home network. Fire it up and make sure there’s no one on your Wi-Fi network who shouldn’t be there. If you do find a squatter, a password change on your router should be enough to thwart them.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the application from the Nirsoft site, you’re ready to go — there are no setup screens to wade through or configure. Launch the program executable to see all of the devices currently connected up to your router, which will itself appear at the top of the list.

Some detective work may be required to work out what’s what. The IP and MAC addresses are the identifiers used by your network hardware to recognise each device, but they won’t be much use to you right off the bat. Of more interest are the Device Name, Device Information, and User Text fields that should give you some idea about which laptops, tablets and mobile phones are connected.

If these three fields offer nothing of value, look at the Network Adaptor Company column — this may or may not show the manufacturer of the device in question (it should list the manufacturer of the device’s network adaptor, but that doesn’t always match up). If you need more clues, turn the devices you know about off and on, running a scan each time — the First Detected On, Detection Count and Active columns should help you identify each one.

Wireless Network Watcher can’t kick devices off for you, so you’ll need to delve into your router’s dashboard to make changes if you see something suspicious. Setting a new password is a good start if you want to ban unwelcome guests, and many routers will also let you add devices one by one rather than opening the network to any piece of kit that comes along with the correct credentials. Blocking devices by MAC address, again from the router, is also an option.

If you’re passworded-up chances are there aren’t any interlopers on your local network, but it never hurts to check. And of course, if you want to get to know which of your neighbours are keen to mooch you could always turn off that password for a little and see who turns up to the party.

[MIKA27]

At Last, Mars Curiosity Finally Reaches Its Destination

This is it. Curiosity has reached its prime destination. After a brilliant conception, an amazing landing, and two years of continuous travel, the rover is now at the base of Aeolis Mons — aka Mount Sharp — a mountain that rises 5.5km at the center of Gale Crater. This is where the real fun begins.

Mount Sharp was chosen by NASA because it’s unique geological features will give us an extensive look into the history of the Red Planet. It’s also a place that may show traces of extinct biological life.

Curiosity’s trek up the mountain will begin with an examination of the mountain’s lower slopes. The rover is starting this process at an entry point near an outcrop called Pahrump Hills, rather than continuing on to the previously-planned, further entry point known as Murray Buttes. Both entry points lay along a boundary where the southern base layer of the mountain meets crater-floor deposits washed down from the crater’s northern rim.

NASA changed Curiosity’s planned course after understanding the area better, according to Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger at CalTech in Pasadena, California:

It has been a long but historic journey to this Martian mountain. The nature of the terrain at Pahrump Hills and just beyond it is a better place than Murray Buttes to learn about the significance of this contact. The exposures at the contact are better due to greater topographic relief.

This is it: Amargosa Valley, “the slopes leading up to Mount Sharp on Mars. The rover is headed toward the Pahrump Hills outcrop, seen above the scale bar. This area represents a boundary between the plains of Gale Crater, named Aeolis Palus, and the layered slopes of Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons. Curiosity has recently crossed into this terrain and now is on the Mount Sharp side of the transition zone.”

Every time I read about this mission, I sit for a while thinking about Curiosity alone in Mars. I close my eyes and picture it moving slowly, its cameras looking around while the Martian breeze caresses its chassis. I can imagine the slow mechanical noises, the wind, and cracking sound of the sand and rocks under its wheels. I really wish I were there.

Godspeed, buddy. Your journey is not over yet.

[MIKA27]

Scientists Reveal How Earth Would Look Like In 200 Million Years

Geologists have been able to figure out the evolution of Earth’s continents and predict how they would look in 200 million years. All continents will join together in a supercontinent called Pangaea Ultima. So in the future, it would be possible to walk from one corner of the world to the other — if we’re still around.

[MIKA27]

John Travolta's House Is A Functional Airport With Two Runways For His Private Planes

John Travolta is a certified private pilot who owns five aircraft, so it’s only fitting that the 60-year-old actor’s Florida home has two runways that lead directly to his front door.

“We designed the house for the jets and to have at our access the world at a moment’s notice and we succeeded at that,” a bearded Travolta said during an interview Thursday on Australia’s “Today.” “

For the last 11 years, we’ve been able to globe trot for Qantas and movies … I’ve been really able to operate out of this house for business and personal reasons.”

Travolta has been a Qantas “Ambassador-at-Large” since 2002 and keeps his personal Qantas Boeing 707 in the yard of his Florida home, which is just a 10 minute flight from Orlando.

Travolta also keeps a challenger jet parked in his backyard.

“Now I’ve made a profession out of flying in addition to acting, and at my age I’m glad I did because it’s something to do when you’re not working,” Travolta told “Today.”

But the actor also flies his own planes for work, this afternoon taking the Challenger to the Toronto Film Festival to promote his new movie “The Forger.”

Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, previously gave a tour of their unique, aviation-inspired home to Architectural Digest.

“It was always John’s dream to have planes in his front yard — to practically be able to pull up to the house — so that when you wanted to go to dinner, all you’d have to do was step out the door, get on the plane and whisk off,” Kelly told the magazine of why they purchased the estate.

Travolta added: “You can be the ultimate eccentric, like I am, and bring in a 707, but you can also bring in any corporate jet or airliner.”

Although the property came equipped with a 7,500-foot runway, Travolta extended the taxiway to reach the house.

Check out a few of Architectural Digest’s pictures below:

More Architectural Digest photos here.

Check out an awesome aerial shot of the home here.

Travolta’s property, located in the Jumbolair Aviation Estates in Ocala, Florida, is situated on Greystone Airport. The actor was reportedly the first resident of the 550-acre community that caters to people who want fly-in, fly-out access.

The aviation community allows homeowners to land their planes, including Travolta’s Boeing 707 airliner, and taxi up to their homes.

There is a private control center:

And bed and breakfast where pilots and prospective homeowners can stay overnight:

Watch Travolta’s full interview about his airport-home with Australia’s “Today” below:

http://youtu.be/D9ex4j5ISec

Travolta waves from the cockpit of an Airbus A380 in 2005 in Brisbane, Australia.

The Qantas Airlines Global Goodwill Ambassador poses near two Qantas planes during a press conference in 2006 at San Francisco International Airport. Travolta was on hand to welcome the first direct Qantas flight from Sydney, Australia.

[MIKA27]

For London's Cabbies, Job Entails World's Hardest Geography Test

Satellite navigation and GPS can't match the street smarts demanded by "The Knowledge" test.

LONDON—Steve Scotland had better reason than most for thinking he knew London like the back of his hand. Not only was he a native Londoner, born and bred, but he'd spent years working as a chauffeur in the city, driving his passengers wherever they wanted to go, finding the shortcuts, negotiating the city's traffic-clogged streets swiftly, accurately, and with a minimum of fuss.

So he quietly fancied his chances of passing "The Knowledge" test—the demanding test of London's back streets and landmarks that confronts anyone who wishes to join the elite ranks of London's cabdrivers.

"It was something I always wanted to do," Scotland says.

In pursuit of this dream he went to the Public Carriage Office, which regulates taxis in London, and signed on for The Knowledge. After paying his fees and taking a map test and some written exams, he got hold of a motor scooter and set off to familiarize himself with his city in a whole new way.

Although "Knowledge Schools" exist to offer advice and help would-be cabbies prep for the series of examinations you have to pass along the way, the intensive learning of the city's streets and landmarks, the thousands of miles of exploration by scooter or on foot, is very much a do-it-yourself affair, all of it on your own time and at your own pace.

Robert Lordan sports the hard-won prize: the coveted green badge of a London cabbie.

Nearly five years later, and with more than 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) clocked on the scooter, Scotland is still at it—although now, at least, it's with an end in sight. A good enough score on his next test, or "appearance," in a fortnight's time, and he'll have done it—cracked The Knowledge and earned himself the coveted green-and-white badge of a London cabbie.

"I had no idea how tough this would be," he says. "I really thought I knew the city well, but what I knew, or thought I knew, was nothing compared with what it takes to do The Knowledge." The five years he has spent on the quest is fairly typical. The Knowledge does not come easy.

Ultimate Brainteaser

Forget Mensa and armchair brainteasers. The Knowledge of London is a real-time, street-level test of memorization skills so intense that it physically alters the brains of those who pass it.

To qualify for that elusive green badge, you need to learn by heart all 320 sample runs that are listed in the Blue Book, the would-be cabbie's bible. You will also have to commit to memory the 25,000 streets, roads, avenues, courts, lanes, crescents, places, mews, yards, hills, and alleys that lie within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross.

Add to that the locations of another 20,000 landmarks and points of interest—pubs, clubs, museums, parks, monuments, railway stations, tube stations, hospitals, schools, police stations, government buildings, embassies, cemeteries, churches, guild halls, theaters, cinemas—any place, in other words, a fare-paying passenger might conceivably ask to be taken or an examiner might challenge you to find.

You'll need to know your way around so well that, when asked, you can calculate the most direct legal route between any two addresses anywhere in the entire 113-square-mile (293-square-kilometer) metropolitan area within seconds, without looking at a map, and be able to rattle off the precise sequence of streets, junctions, roundabouts, and left- and right-hand turns necessary to complete such a journey.

And you'll have to be able to do this consistently, not just once or twice, but in a potentially endless series of one-on-one oral exams, called "appearances," taken at regular intervals until the examiners are satisfied that you do indeed possess The Knowledge.

Who Needs Sat Nav? (Melbourne Taxi drivers! )

Even in this time of GPS and Google Maps, satellite navigation, or Sat Nav, is no match for a cabbie with The Knowledge. In May, London's Guardian newspaper pitted a cabbie against a Sat-Nav-equipped driver from Uber, the new "taxi" company that's taking the world's cities by storm by allowing passengers to book cars via their smartphones. The Uber driver did the run from the newspaper's office in King's Cross to Big Ben, in Westminster, in 22 minutes; the cabbie did it in 18, by taking a slightly longer route he knew to be quicker.

Such victories are points of pride these days within the ranks of London's cabbies, who have launched legal challenges against the upstart Uber. They claim that Uber drivers are acting as de facto taxis by using smartphones like taximeters to calculate fares. Only licensed taxi drivers—who possess The Knowledge—are allowed to work London's streets as taxis, metering their fares and being hailed from the curb.

A temporary ruling by London's transport authority last month found in favor of Uber on the grounds that the smartphone app that calculates Uber's fares was not connected to the vehicle in the manner of a traditional taximeter and was therefore not a taximeter within the meaning of the law. A British court will make a final determination on the matter next month.

Proponents of Uber say Sat Nav technology makes The Knowledge obsolete. Not surprisingly, London's cabbies disagree. They're quick to point out that Sat Navs have a knack for getting things wrong, do not always pick the best or quickest route, and that having thousands of cabs idling curbside while their drivers punch in addresses for their Sat Navs will further clog London's streets, where average speeds have already dropped below nine miles an hour.

It's not simply a matter of speed, either, cabbies say. A driver who relies on Sat Nav doesn't know the city. "I like to put it this way," says 18-year veteran David Styles, who writes a blog about life behind the wheel: "When gentlemen have enjoyed supper at their club with their old regimental chums, they need a taxi to take them to the station. As they can generally afford to live in East Sussex, their station, Victoria, is only six minutes from Pall Mall. Depending on which entrance they want, they ask for The Shakespeare, Old Gatwick, or Hole in the Wall. Show me a Sat Nav which not only has that database but can be programmed in seconds, and I'll buy shares in it myself."

He continues: "And actors don't want to arrive at the front of the theater. They want the stage door. And yes, we have to learn those too."

Hail one of London's iconic "black" cabs (which nowadays can come in any color) from anywhere you please within the greater London area, tell the driver where you want to go—it doesn't matter whether it's the Tower of London or some obscure pub in an outer suburb—and by the time you've climbed in the back seat and closed the door, he'll have already calculated the most direct, swiftest route, without ever looking at a map.

What if you're not quite sure where you want to go? Say you're visiting London, you've reserved tickets to see The 39 Steps, and you're picking them up at the box office, but you can't recall the name of the theater. Just name the play, and your cabbie will take you—in this case, straight to the Criterion on Piccadilly Circus.

Students study maps at London's Knowledge Point School, one of many that have sprung up to help the 6,000 or so people who are candidates at any one time.

The "Nervous Wreck"

London cabbies don't just happen to know these things: For more than 150 years they've been required to be the consummate experts on their city. The whip-cracking drivers of those Victorian hansom cabs Sherlock Holmes was forever hailing all had to bone up for the world's toughest geography test, just as the roughly 25,000 drivers of London's cabs must today.

The final series of tests, known as the "required standard," or "req" for short, is known among cabbies as the Nervous Wreck. Here's where the last-minutes jitters creep in.

Indeed, Steve Scotland would have had his badge a few weeks ago, at his last appearance, had he not miscued a turn and dropped his hypothetical passenger off on the wrong side of the street. "Just nerves," he recalls. "All I had to do was pick up at the cab rank at Sainsbury's [supermarket] on Liverpool Street and drop off at the emergency entrance at the Moorfields Eye Hospital. That's a run I can do in my sleep."

But he bobbled when it counted. As a result, instead of spending this Sunday afternoon sitting home watching the World Cup, as he'd been looking forward to, he's once more astride his scooter, still a "Knowledge Boy," puttering along Great Swan Alley, just off Copthall Avenue, in London's financial district, brushing up ahead of his next—and hopefully final—appearance.

"A new restaurant has opened up around here, and I want to get it fixed in my mind—just in case," he says. "You just never know what the examiners are going to ask you."

"Knowledge Boy" Stuart Moore makes a "pointing run" on his scooter—tracking down the locations of some of the thousands of points of interest he'll need to know by heart if he's to earn his green badge. Scooters are the preferred Knowledge vehicles because they're cheap to run and highly maneuverable.

Knowledge Boys (and Girls)

Cabbie apprentices such as Scotland are Knowledge Boys. There are Knowledge Girls too, but fewer than 2 percent of cabbies are women.

Cabbies come from all walks of life—students, tradesmen, lawyers, teachers. David Styles was a typesetter for one of London's oldest printing companies. Most grew up in or around London, but people from elsewhere in Britain, and even a few foreigners, have successfully completed The Knowledge.

"I was studying biology," says 24-year-old Osman Jamal Zai, who left school six months ago and began studying The Knowledge. "This just seemed like a better idea, and I have to say I'm loving it."

By all accounts, being a London cabbie pays well. Although the cabbies themselves are cagey about what they earn, it's widely accepted that incomes of $100,000 (U.S.) a year aren't unusual, with some operators—those working extremely long hours—believed to be making that figure in pounds sterling (roughly $170,000 U.S.).

Aside from the money, the draw for many is the ability to set their own hours and achieve an enviable work-life balance. And unlike many cities—Paris, for instance, which imposes strict limits on the numbers of cabs—London is wide open. Anyone of good character can get a cabdriver's license, as long as he or she passes The Knowledge.

The nearly five years Scotland has spent on that quest isn't unusual. "It took me four years, 11 months, and 13 days," Styles says.

While a fortunate few—those who can afford to pursue the training full-time—can complete it in as little as two years, most have to fit The Knowledge in around work and family commitments.

"I'm guessing it'll take me around five years," says 53-year-old David Greenhalgh, an IT specialist who's spent the past two years juggling street explorations and his day job.

A massive salamander—replica of early jewelry from the Cheapside Hoard—on the rotunda outside the Museum of London makes a fanciful backdrop for Knowledge boy David Greenhalgh as he does a pointing run for livery halls.

In Pursuit of Worshipfuls

This weekend, Greenhalgh is taking advantage of the relative lack of bustle to learn the tangled arteries in the neighborhoods between Cannon Street Station, London Wall, and St. Paul's Cathedral. He's on foot, with a rucksack slung over his shoulder, and a guide to London's 110 livery companies—just some of the thousands of points of interest whose locations he will need to know by heart.

In the past couple of hours, he's tracked down the Worshipful Company of Mercers, the oldest of London's liveries, founded in 1394, as well as the grandiose building housing the Worshipful Company of Vintners (on Upper Thames Street) and the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, in a secluded square off Ave Maria Lane.

On such a fine, warm summery Sunday afternoon as this, a quixotic nosing about for London's old livery halls seems like the pleasantest kind of tourism—sightseeing with a purpose.

"It's not always like this," Greenhalgh laughs, as he pauses to photograph the ornate portal to the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, whose 17th-century headquarters is hidden away down a picturesque cobbled lane not far from Blackfriars Station. "You have to get to know the dodgy neighborhoods too."

The Winnowing

Only about one in five of those who attempt The Knowledge ever make the grade. "You can never actually fail," Styles says. "There's only quitting. You're allowed to keep trying as long as you like." The overwhelming majority drop out in frustration after a year or so.

Tools of the trade: Maps, pens, magnifying glass, pins, and cotton thread for linking points and finding the shortest routes are some of the study aids for those doing The Knowledge.

To put the success rate into perspective, the percentage of people who successfully complete The Knowledge is roughly the same as that of candidates who make it through the training to become a U.S. Navy SEAL.

"There are no shortcuts," says 79-year-old cabbie Alf Townsend, who did The Knowledge in 1962 and still drives his cab a few hours a day to mingle with old friends and keep his hand in.

"You can't do it by sitting at home, memorizing maps and street names, and hope to pass that way. You have to get out on the streets, putting in the miles, seeing and experiencing everything firsthand. There's no other way."

Royal Roots

It was King Charles I who, in 1636, launched London's taxi service—the world's oldest—by granting royal permission for 50 hackney carriages to "ply their trade."

A few years later, in 1654, Oliver Cromwell put in place the framework of regulations under which the hackneys operated, but it was a stern Victorian police commissioner, Sir Richard Mayne, who dreamed up The Knowledge in the early 1850s.

Dismayed by the number of complaints from visitors at the Great Exhibition of 1851 that London cabbies didn't seem to know where they were going, Mayne made it a requirement that anyone seeking a cabbie's license be an expert on the city. And so The Knowledge was born.

Although the city has changed past all recognition since the 19th century, when a series of sample cab runs were formulated by the Public Carriage Office to create a framework for studying and testing, the demands of The Knowledge have hardly changed.

A candidate who mastered all the runs and knew them by heart, and who knew all the streets and landmarks in a quarter-mile radius around each start and end point, could be considered to have acquired The Knowledge.

The precise number of runs has varied over the years, but today there are 320, and they're found in the Blue Book (which is pink).

Being "On the Cotton"

"In some ways, people doing The Knowledge today have it easier than we did 50 years ago," Townsend says. "We had to figure out the shortest routes for ourselves, sticking pins in maps at the end points, tying threads between them, then trying to work out the route that stayed closest to the thread. Being 'on the cotton,' it was called. Nowadays you can buy books and apps that have the correct routes already worked out for you."

There are also Knowledge Schools, taught by veteran cabbies, to help candidates learn the runs and prepare for the exams. The examiners are said to be more reasonable now—still austere, but a bit less like Royal Marine drill sergeants and a bit more like Mr. Chips.

There's better gear too, according to Townsend—no small consideration for anyone who has to ride thousands of miles around the streets of soggy old London town on a scooter.

"I nearly froze," he recalls. "All I had was a garbage bin liner over me to keep out the rain, a waterproof fisherman's hat, and a couple of my wife's scarves wrapped around my neck to try to keep me warm. Nowadays they have Gore-Tex and heated gloves."

Some things never change. Manor House Station to Gibson Square is still the very first of the 320 Blue Book runs a would-be cabbie is expected to know.

"I started out very early one Sunday morning," says Robert Lordan, a 33-year-old former schoolteacher who, like Styles, writes a blog on cabbie life. "I remember it was eerily quiet. I felt as though I had the entire city to myself. I was full of excitement, very much looking forward to exploring and learning London."

The traditional first run, he discovered, was gratifyingly easy to learn—a reasonably straightforward journey, 2.9 miles (4.7 kilometers) long, between a nondescript Tube station on the Piccadilly Line and a quiet square in fashionable Islington.

"I'd prepared considerably beforehand, poring over the map, and being a beginner, I drove it several times to make sure I was familiar with every turn and junction." Then he moved on to the next run, and the next. "On average, I would spend three to four hours on each," he says.

To master a route for testing purposes, a student has to not only memorize the streets linking the two end points but also be intimately familiar with the back streets and landmarks within a quarter-mile radius around those points.

"An examiner quizzing you on a run is never going to ask you anything straightforward like, 'Take me from Manor House Station to Gibson Square,'" Lordan says. "He'll always pick some address that's just around the corner or a couple streets away."

Initial enthusiasm soon wanes in the face of the mind-boggling complexity of London's labyrinthine streets and the sheer frustration in trying to learn them all.

"There comes a time, about a year into it, when you really begin to doubt what you're doing," Lordan says. "For me, it was the intricate one-way systems and myriad dead ends in parts of North London, especially around Islington. They had me pulling my hair out. I didn't think I was ever going to get those straight."

Eventually though, with persistence, he says, there comes a tipping point, when it all starts to make sense. "It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Suddenly you see it. You spend so much time on the streets and studying the map at home that it etches itself on your brain. An analogy I like to use is that it reminded me of starting secondary school as a child. At first, the building seemed huge with its many rooms, wings, and corridors. But after a while, you get to know the place and navigating it becomes second nature."

Reshaping the Brain's Geography

Starting school is a good analogy for learning The Knowledge. A study by neurologists at University College London found that the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for spatial navigation, of a London cabby is significantly larger than those in the rest of the human population—a result of the intense memorization and route-finding undertaken while doing The Knowledge.

The study involved taking regular brain scans of Knowledge-seekers undergoing their training and comparing them with scans taken of a control group of people who had no interest in becoming cabdrivers.

At first, the hippocampi of all the study subjects were of similar size, and all subjects performed similarly on routine memory and route-finding tests. By the end of the study, though, those who'd passed The Knowledge had larger hippocampi, and the longer they worked as cabbies, the larger their hippocampi became.

"We don't know what is changing in the hippocampi of taxi drivers," says Eleanor Maguire, who led the study. "Whether it's new neurons that are being produced, new connections between neurons, proliferation of other cell types, or all three.

"There's been a lot of research looking at trying to associate different brain areas with certain skills—musicians or linguists, for example," she says. "The key point about London taxi drivers is that they acquire their navigational expertise when they're adults, unlike musicians, who often start when children, and so there's the added factor of the interaction between brain development and skill acquisition."

"Calling Over"

Certainly, the hippocampi of London cabdrivers get a lot of intensive exercise. Every day David Greenhalgh recites at least 30 of the 320 runs he has memorized—every turn, junction, and roundabout.

"I work my way up through the list and then start all over again," he says. Reciting these runs is known as "calling over." Knowledge students often get together to recite them to each other. The call over for Manor House Station to Gibson Square would be:

Leave on left—Green Lanes

Right on Brownswood Road

Left on Blackstock Road

Forward on Highbury Park

Forward on Highbury Grove

Right on St. Paul's Road

Comply Highbury Corner

Leave Upper Street

Right on Barnsbury Street

Left on Milner Square

Forward on Milner Place

Forward to Gibson Square

After the 320 runs are memorized, The Knowledge student begins the long battery of oral tests. The first are called 56-day appearances, given every eight weeks.

"The examiner asks you to do four runs," says Greenhalgh, who's made it through two 56-day appearances thus far. "Each run is worth ten points. If you get a perfect score of 40—something phenomenally rare–you get an A and advance straight to the next level, your 28-day appearances."

Lesser scores are awarded B or C or D grades, and the student returns in 56 days to try again. Grading is strict. Points are deducted for "hesitancy," and making an illegal turn or going the wrong way on a one-way street earns you a big fat zero. To advance to the next level of testing, a candidate needs the equivalent of two B's or four C's.

A grade of D gets you nowhere.

If after seven attempts you've not scored well enough to move on to your 28-day appearances, the slate is wiped clean, and you start the 56-day tests all over again. This setback happens to as many as 80 percent of first-time Knowledge students.

When you get to your 28s, the exams come every four weeks and proceed along exactly the same lines as the 56-day ones, only now the questions are even more demanding.

As before, a rare perfect score of 40 advances you to the next tier, but most muddle through—if they get through at all—with combinations of B's and C's.

As before, a D earns you nothing, and if you fail to advance after your seven appearances—"red-lining," in the vernacular—you go back and start your 28s again. Fail twice, and you go back to your 56-day appearances.

Eventually, if you persist, you reach your 21-day appearances—the final tier. Scoring here is just the same, with the same number of tests, only now the questions and expectations are tougher still.

London cabbie Robert Lordan takes a break at the venerable Victorian cab shelter on Russell Square, one of 13 scattered around the city where cabdrivers can stop for a break, a bacon sandwich, or a cup of tea and a chat with colleagues. The shelters were originally set up in 1875, in the horse-drawn days, to provide cabbies with shelter from London's damp and chill.

Grown Men Crying

"It's a very emotional moment when you realize you've done it and get that handshake from the examiner," says Lordan, who passed four-and-a-half years ago.

"I know I got quite teary. They tell me a lot of guys cry when they get their badge—you've invested so much of yourself, your time and your life, into doing this, to reach the end is just incredible."

Lordan's victory came on December 22. Two nights later, on Christmas Eve, he went out as a London cabbie for the very first time, driving a cab he'd leased. His first fare was a group of South African tourists who congratulated him on his achievement. Following the long-standing first fare tradition, he told them there was no charge. "They insisted on paying me anyway," he says, "and so I donated the money to charity."

Lordan and I are standing beside an old, green Victorian cabman's shelter on Russell Street—one of 13 still in existence around the city where cabbies can get mugs of tea and bacon sandwiches and take a rest. Parked a few feet away is the gleaming, built-in-Coventry black cab he bought eight months earlier, and on which he's already clocked 14,000 miles (22,531 kilometers).

With the ease and fluency of a man who has The Knowledge, and the passion of a true historian, Lordan explains how the shelters were founded by Captain George Armstrong in 1875 to give London's taxi drivers somewhere to keep warm and dry.

Armstrong had "sent his manservant out to hail a cab in a blizzard," Lordan says. "He came back an hour later and said they were all in pubs, and none of them were in any fit state to drive. And so he established these shelters."

Lordan is one of a small percentage of cabbies who have gone on to complete the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers' course to become a licensed tour guide—a sort of post-doc among those who have The Knowledge. He offers tours on London's famous murders, Harry Potter landmarks, and American sites of interest. "Did you know Benjamin Franklin had a house here?" he asks.

"Doing The Knowledge has made me somewhat obsessive," he laughs. "I'm constantly striving to improve my grasp of the city, to learn as much as I can. I love this job. I'm always learning something new. As Samuel Johnson said, a man who's tired of London is tired of life."

Lordan behind the wheel of his new black cab. "The best thing about being a London cabbie is the people you meet," he says. "I meet people from across the globe—ambassadors, celebrities, WWII veterans, politicians, parents taking their newborn baby home, people who've survived genocide in their homeland. Ninety-nine percent of the people I meet in my taxi are wonderful. To meet such a wide array of people every day is truly life affirming."

[MIKA27]

Big solar storm heading toward Earth

This is not your usual weather forecast. Big storms are brewing. Your umbrella won't help, but you might want to keep a flashlight handy.

These storms are coming from the sun. It's raining down a huge amount of radiation. We're safe, but it could affect power grids, radios and satellites.

Experts say the combined energy from two recent solar events will arrive at Earth on Saturday, prompting the Space Weather Prediction Center to issue a strong geomagnetic storm watch.

Wait. What kind of watch? Basically, the sun is a giant ball of gas: 92.1% hydrogen and 7.8% helium. Every now and then, it spits out a giant burst of radiation called a coronal mass ejection.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which observes the sun 24 hours a day, captured this image of a solar flare on June 10.

These ejections are sometimes associated with solar flares, the most explosive events in the solar system. The sun has released two ejections in the past two days, and both are linked to solar flares. NASA says the second flare is an X1.6 class, putting it in the most intense category.

The energy from those two ejections is heading toward Earth.

NASA captured this second flare, which appears as a bright flash on the left side of the sun, June 10.

Space weather experts aren't sure what this solar storm will do.

"This is a pretty strong solar storm, and we just won't know until it gets here" what it will do, said CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.

Earth's atmosphere usually protects us humans, but you might want to keep a flashlight handy. Solar storms can knock out power, interfere with GPS and radio communications -- including those on commercial airliners -- and damage satellites.

"People on the ground really don't have to worry," said Lika Guhathakurta, a program scientist with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. She said solar storms don't affect humans on the ground, although astronauts could be at risk.

And our technology.

This close-up view of a prominence reveals magnetic forces at work as they pull plasma strands this way and that before it gradually breaks away from the sun over a one-day period November 14-15, 2011.

But don't worry too much. NASA can take steps to protect the crew members on the International Space Station, and satellite operators can turn off sensitive sensors on satellites to mitigate the risk to your smartphones and wi-fi connection. There may be temporary glitches, though, Guhathakurta says.

And if there is a major issue, scientists are taking precautions to make sure all the important parties are prepared.

"FEMA has been notified of these events just in case," Thomas Berger, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, said at a Thursday news conference.

On March 13, 1989, a solar storm knocked out power for the entire province of Quebec for 12 hours. Power grids in the United States were affected but didn't have blackouts. NASA says some satellites tumbled out of control for hours during what's known as the Quebec Blackout. The space shuttle Discovery was in orbit at the time and had a mysterious sensor problem that went away after the storm, NASA says.

On the upside, solar storms also create beautiful aurora. Aurora watchers in the northern United States who are outside major metropolitan areas should be watching the skies on Thursday and Friday nights.

People in the southern part of the nation are less likely to get the kind of splendid aurora sights that people in the Northeast and Alaska will see, but it might not hurt for them to take a glance at the sky anyway, just in case.

Although it won't be as intense a view as the one northerners will get, "if you want to take a look on Friday night, why not?" Berger said.