President Barack Obama and his family will travel to Martha's Vineyard for eight days beginning on Aug. 10.

Architect Rick Sundberg, now of Sundberg Kennedy Ly-Au Young Architects, confirmed Monday that the Obamas will stay in a home that he redesigned. The $7.6 million home is located on 9.5 acres in Chilmark, the wealthiest town on the island.

The home was built in 1961 and renovated in 2006, according to Sundberg's website.

It features a private master suite with its own den. An open floor plan includes pond and ocean views from the living room, dining room and kitchen. There's also a small basketball court.

This will be Obama's fourth trip to Martha's Vineyard since he became president. President Bill Clinton also frequently vacationed on the island.

Here are a few photos of the home (thanks to Sundberg for permission to run these):

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In a three-continent event today, BMW officially unveiled the all-electric i3.

Shown off in New York, London, and Beijing, the four-seat compact car marks the start of what the German automaker calls a "new era for individual mobility."

The $41,350 price tag (before a $7,500 federal tax credit) puts the i3 in between the Tesla Model S (starts at $69,900) and offerings like the Chevy Spark EV ($26,685).

That could open up the electric car market to drivers who want to drive a high-end car built by a luxury powerhouse, but hesitate to spend $70,000.

That move into a new niche has generated a lot of interest: BMW says it has already received 90,000 requests for test drives.

Wary of the reputation of compact electric cars as glorified go-karts, BMW promises "sheer driving pleasure" in the i3.

Range will max out at around 186 miles, but if the i3 is as fun to drive as BMW says — and there's no reason to doubt this company's ability to build fun cars — it could be a new kind of EV.

Fun, fast, practical, and pretty close to affordable.

It's hardly a gorgeous car, especially compared to Tesla's Model S, but it has a lot to offer.

An aluminum chassis and lots of carbon fiber keep the i3's weight down to about 2,700 pounds.

Excellent torque — a major benefit of electric cars — will send the i3 from 0 to 62 mph in 7.2 seconds.

There are few more cherished nostrums in American life than the importance of equal opportunities. Unfortunately, one of them is the importance of summer vacation.

It’s a cheap way of doing something nice for teachers, but summer vacation is a disaster for poor children and their parents, creating massive avoidable inequities in life outcomes and seriously undereducating the population.

The country claims to take schooling seriously, but the school calendar says otherwise. There’s no other public service that we would allow to just vanish for months at a time.

To have no Army in February, no buses or subways in March, airports closed down for all of October, or the police vacationing en masse in December would be absurd. Schools, it turns out, matter a lot, too, and having them shut down all summer critically undermines them.

The entire issue tends to vanish from public debate, because the educated, affluent people who run the debate don’t particularly suffer from it. Summer vacation costs money, but prosperous parents are happy to spend it on their kids. And of course there’s the sentimentality factor. I’ll always treasure tender thoughts of my beloved Camp Winnebago and would one day love to have the experience of picking up my kid from the very same camp I attended when I was young.

But these days, Camp Winnebago is charging $11,550 for a full eight-week session. No doubt more affordable options are out there, but the basic reality is that parents’ ability to provide enriching summer activities for their children is going to be sharply constrained by income. Working-class single moms in urban neighborhoods—exactly the kind of parents whose kids tend to have the most problems in school—are put in a nearly impossible situation by summer vacation.

The burden on parents is segmented by income, and the impact on children is as well. A 2011 RAND literature review concluded that the average student “loses” about one month’s worth of schooling during a typical summer vacation, with the impact disproportionately concentrated among low-income students. “While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer,” RAND concluded, “low-income students lose more ground in reading while their higher-income peers may even gain.”

Most distressingly, the impact is cumulative. Poor kids tend to start school behind their middle-class peers, and then they fall further behind each and every summer, giving teachers and principals essentially no chance of closing the gap during the school year. Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Steffel Olson of Johns Hopkins University have research from Baltimore indicating that a majority of the achievement gap between high- and low-socioeconomic-status students can be attributed to differences in summer learning loss.

It’s not clear whether Baltimore’s results apply to the national population, but it’s shocking that impacts of this scale exist anywhere. Even worse, for many poor kids, subsidized school lunches on which they depend for sustenance essentially vanish during the summer months, leaving them both undertaught and underfed.

The contrast between America’s rhetorical obsession with the bad educational outcomes of poor children and its blasé attitude toward summer vacation is striking. Conservatives have spent years pounding the point that a lack of money is not the problem in American public education. While it’s true that there’s much more to quality schools than money, the existence of summer vacation is a huge barrier to equal opportunity, and the barrier to year-round schooling is rather clearly financial. You’d need to install air conditioners, and you’d have to pay utility bills. You’d need to pay teachers and school staff more. But the gains would be obvious. We could save a bunch of money by letting all the criminals out of jail for the summer months or randomly eliminate seventh grade, but that would be ridiculous. The mere fact that summer vacation is a long-standing tradition doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. School is important. It should happen all year ’round.

SEE ALSO: Grad Student Lived On A Boat For 14 Months To Escape Student Loan Debt

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Here's something we just learned... 

In the Smithsonian Magazine's fascinating piece on the origin of popular hangover foods, the author writes that that Eggs Benedict was apparently invented by a hungover Wall Street stockbroker.

From the Smithsonian Mag: 

In 1942, The New Yorker published an article claiming the dish had its roots in a man named Lemuel Benedict, a Wall Street worker known for his eccentric-for-the-time lifestyle choices (like marrying a woman who worked as an opera singer) and heavy partying habits. After one especially raucous night of partying, Lemuel awoke in the morning and went to breakfast at the Waldorf Hotel, where he invented his own breakfast sandwich of two poached eggs, bacon, buttered toast, and a pitcher of hollandaise sauce. Lemuel’s inventive sandwich caught the eye of the Waldorf’s famous maître d’hôtel Oscar, who sampled the sandwich, made some personal alterations (ham was swapped for bacon, an English muffin for the toast), put the sandwich on the menu, and sailed peacefully into history, much to the delight of hungover brunch attendees everywhere.

The other story about the origin of the popular egg dish is that it was invented by Pope Benedict XIII.

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Today is National Chicken Wing Day, which means that restaurants across the country will offer specials on wings.

One of those restaurants is Hooters, which is offering a $12.99 all-you-can-eat wing deal and challenging Americans to consume a million wings.

It seems doable, if ambitious: The chain told The Tampa Bay Times in 2011 that it sells more than 2 million wings on Super Bowl Sunday, about four times what Hooter's sells on a typical day.

The wing mecca also hosted wing-eating contest where professional eater Joey Chestnut devoured 179 Hooters wings in 10 minutes.

The chain offered some tips that that everyone should remember while devouring all-you-can-eat wings:

1. Choose your clothes wisely. "Your bib is your first line of wing sauce defense. Your tee shirt, the second."

2. It's not a bad idea to exercise before, during, and after. "Exercising during the competition can make room for more wings. Exercising after, do we need to explain why?"

3. Remember to breathe through your nose. "Mouth breathers are slow eaters."

4. Choose your beverage carefully. "Milk can help ease the delicious burn of the wing spice."

5. Focus on the wings. "Remember: this is National Chicken Wing Day, not National Sides Day."

6. Perfect your wing-eating technique with practice.

7. Don't give up! "Wing eating is 90% mental. Overcome your brain and nothing will stand in your way — except for that huge pile of wings."

8. And finally: "Most importantly, if you start feeling full and think you need a break, order more wings."

Check out the pictures from the Hooters World Wing-Eating Championship competition below.

16 competitive eaters were pitted against each other for the Hooter's title of 2013 Hooters Worldwide Wing-Eating Champion.

They had 10 minutes to eat as many of Hooters "world famous chicken wings" as they possibly could.

A man named Chestnut from San Jose, California won by devouring 179 chicken wings in total. That averages to almost 18 chicken wings per minute.

SEE ALSO: Learn How To Make Paula Deen's Super-Simple Buffalo Wings

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Part of the joy of Scotch is that it's simple. You put it in a glass with some ice, maybe water, and you're done. Ready to enjoy.

So when Desmond Payne, head distiller at Beefeater Gin, offered to let Business Insider taste test a new gin he was brewed up called 'Burrough's Reserve'; he pulled us in with this quote:

"We don't expect to see this on every bar up and down the street, It's a high end gin. We recommend it for sipping."

Shots fired — Gin without a twist, not dirty, not with tonic. Neat.

The 'Burrough's Reserve' gin (named for Beefeater founder James Burrough) follows the same recipe the distillery has been using since the 1800s except for one thing — after the gin is steeped with 9 botanicals and then distilled, it is placed in a wood cask. Bottles hit American stores this fall.

To get the taste just right, Payne played with the size of the cask (think: the more surface area the gin touches the more the wood seeps into the taste) and the type of wood its made from. It gives the gin a slightly golden brown tint.

Now, it's impossible not to notice that there are distilleries popping up everywhere these days, and there are even other gin distilleries doing the cask thing — St. George Spirits in the San Francisco area has one, so does Few Spirits in Chicago, and Citadelle Reserve to name a few — but no one has been more open about how their casked gin is supposed to be served than Beefeater.

"Rather than just have a high end, high priced in a nice bottle, I wanted to explore the occasions in which people drink gin," said Payne.

It's his polite way of trying to say that he's trying to disrupt the occasions in which you drink gin.

As for the taste after our test? Yes, Burrough's Reserve is unquestionably sippable. Citrusy and light, it's obviously not the same taste as scotch, but that's not the point — it goes down so smoothly you won't be reaching for tonic at all.

If you do dare to try it, there's a chance you might be converted. Very scary.

And here's what it'll look like in U.S. stores:

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A spectacular diamond heist in the French resort of Cannes has been valued at $136 million (103 million euros), prosecutors said Monday, making it one of the world's biggest jewellery thefts.

Authorities had initially estimated the robbery -- which took place in the luxury Carlton Hotel on Sunday in broad daylight -- was worth around 40 million euros.

The brazen robbery saw an armed man walked into the hotel through the main entrance undisturbed by security staff, and steal jewels that were part of an exhibition by a jewellery house owned by Lev Leviev, an Israeli billionaire businessman.

The theft is roughly as big as the world's largest ever haul of jewellery, valued at around 100 millions euros, which took place in Belgium in 2003.

It is also France's biggest diamond heist, eclipsing a 2008 incident when three men stole almost every piece on display at a jewellery exhibition in Paris, a theft valued at 85 million euros.

"It all happened very quickly and without any violence", the prosecutor's office said Sunday about the Cannes robbery.

The office said the robber escaped with a briefcase containing jewels and watches encrusted with diamonds.

Police said they had not been alerted that the exhibition was taking place, which while not a legal requirement would ordinarily be standard procedure for luxury hotels such as the Carlton.

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From in-depth coverage of Art Basel and the Armory Show to features on notable artists and artwork, we've put together a collection of Business Insider's best art features.

Click here to see our art guide >

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Five Acre Farms CEO Dan Horan took his time coming up with a plan to disrupt big agribusiness.

After starting his own organic farm in 1990, he spent nearly 20 years refining his vision, pivoting from an initial plan to own or franchise many small farms to a more efficient plan to partner with farmers and distribute local farm products in supermarkets.

The Yale School of Management graduate, who was a general manager at Gourmet Garage from 1995 to 1999 and the CEO of Papaya King from 1999 to 2010, knows the importance of having a clear idea.

"Simplicity is really important," Horan tells Business Insider. "It's got to be simple, and sometimes to make something simple you have to really, really study everything about it. It might turn out to be complex, but you have to present it simply, particularly when it comes to people: when people buy something, they don't want a lecture."

Horan shared more insights into his philosophy and Five Acre Farms in the following interview.

Business Insider: How'd you come to start this particular business?

Dan Horan: It's a thing I've been thinking about for a long time. I got out of college almost 25 years ago and started an organic vegetable business, and when I went to business school I had this little model in my head of a regional food company. It was actually my application essay. A little more than three years ago, after I finished my last job and we sold the company, I decided to start it up. With some modifications I came up with Five Acre Farms.

BI: How has the current business evolved from your original idea?

DH: The original idea for Five Acre Farms was a little model for how you could make a living on a five acre farm near busy urban centers, almost like a franchise. I thought I could have 1,000 of these things all over the place, and that they would produce vegetables and maybe some eggs that they would sell directly. Then there would be a 15 to 20% surplus that they would give to this central brand called Five Acre Farms that would then have a supermarket presence.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were a lot of moving parts. I was really going to have to have an institute where I was going to train everyone. Was I just trying to focus on a regional strength, or was I trying to reinvent the wheel?

Instead I took the other approach. What's out there now that is not being properly served by the market? Where are the inefficiencies? I saw a lot of supply out there, and I made a list of all of the problems and all of the products in the Northeast because this is where I'm from.

So the idea went from starting new businesses to just starting one business with the existing supply. It was really just simplifying what was probably a much-too-complicated idea.

BI: The business model is to bring more scale and consistency to local food?

DH: I don't know if consistent is actually the right word. The idea is that we find farms using sustainable practices and bring their goods directly to the market under the brand of Five Acre Farms. It's much more about connecting the consumer to the farmer.

As it turns out there's a lot of very high-quality stuff out there that just gets thrown into the commodity market. If you know how to buy properly you can keep it out of the commodity market and make it more accessible to people. The reason why I say that I don't know if consistency is actually [the right word], is that a lot of the farms are slightly different. I think what happens is that you get a really authentic taste rather than one that's necessarily consistent.

But certainly availability, that's a big thing. We want somebody to be able to go into a supermarket 365 days a year and find good, local products. That part of it is fairly new in the Northeast — it shouldn't be but it just is.

BI: You guys sell products that are local and sustainable, but not organic. Do you get any backlash from that?

DH: Not really. I started organic farming in 1990 so I've been around organic food for a long time. You can't out-left me. I understand what organics is, but I also start with the premise that if organic food and conventional food were the same price, no one would buy conventional food.

There's some halo around organics but they've got a pricing problem. About 5% of the food out there is produced organically and that doesn't account for the fact that there are a lot of great farmers out there doing good things that may not follow exactly organic processes.

We haven't really had much tension in that department. If someone really wants to buy organic that's fine, I applaud them. If someone wants to buy conventional, that's fine too. I think the fact of the matter is that the major decision-point here is based on price. That might make some people uncomfortable, but I think the evidence bears that out. It has to be affordable and that has its own definition to each person. We really focus on having high quality, then being able to translate what are very complicated agricultural processes into very simple things that people can understand.

As it turns out, if it's fresher, it usually tastes better, so we usually put a high premium on taste and then worry less about the labels and allow accessibility to information.

If people want to know exactly what our farmers are doing they can learn that and if they don't like that then that's fine. This is not a panacea by any means but certainly transparency is as important as whether its sustainable, conventional, organic or whatever you want to call it.

BI: You've spent time working on a farm, in supermarkets, and in the restaurant business. What lessons did you pick up?

DH: I was in the supermarket business for a few years in the mid ’90s with a place called Gourmet Garage that's now throughout the city. I got exposed to a huge number of products, what people look for and like, how things are merchandised, the importance of packaging, and the importance of just having a consistent delivery process. The logistics of the food business are very important to the success of a product.

In the restaurant business, I was the CEO of Papaya King, and it was a fantastic experience — it's a New York icon. There, you really get a sense of what the public wants and likes and doesn't like, the importance of price, and the importance of having a good crew. I got a real sense of how important location is for store success and just for the range of products that are out there.

At Papaya King, you can have someone get a fresh-squeezed orange juice or papaya drink that's all real and then wash it down with a chili cheese dog. The buyer might be a 65-year-old woman with a pearl necklace. It just defied description, the customer base. It was everyone. It also showed you that if it tastes good, that's what's really important.

BI: What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten?

DH: Simplicity is really important. It's got to be simple, and sometimes to make something simple you have to really, really study everything about it. It might turn out to be complex, but you have to present it simply, particularly when it comes to people: when people buy something, they don't want a lecture.

If they're buying milk, yes there's a small percentage of people who care desperately about the animal and the environment, but at the end of the day, they want their coffee to be ground and their cereal to have milk in it. They want it to taste good and they want it to be available. Simplicity is an incredibly powerful idea which I often muck up as I think a lot of other people do.

BI: As a recent entrant to a huge market, how do you get in front of people?

DH: That's probably our biggest challenge. It is a fully developed, fully mature market. The world was not waiting for us. If we disappeared in the next 10 minutes we would be lamented for about a second and people would go on with their lives. Being noticed is very tough; there are 50,000 items in the supermarket, so how are people going to find you?

To get in front of people, that's expensive. We are a team of 12 now and we're out there sampling and demoing, making sure people can taste it and talking to people about it and trying to spread the word through social media. Marketing is very challenging but keeping it simple and having an always great-tasting product is a big help. Our egg business took almost two years to take off and it really has taken off, whereas the milk business right off the bat was pretty successful, and the apple business has been pretty successful.

But you have to be patient, you can't take for granted that anyone knows about you or even cares. You have to keep at it every day. It seems like a cliché, but until we have real, wide scale, we can't take advantage of a lot of more traditional media outlets. We're probably in 100 places. If we were to put something on the radio, tv, or a billboard, we'd be talking to 99% of the population that couldn't find us, so it's probably not the best way to spend our money.

Picking the way to get in front of people is a constant challenge.

BI: What are your plans for the future?

DH: There are a lot of people in the Northeast and one of our core missions is to keep farmers farming, so we want to grow our customer base — the customer base of both stores and users.

So, more availability and hopefully bringing in new products, but it takes a lot to come out with a new product because you don't just snap your fingers and have something. I have to be consistent with the brand, the price positioning has to be correct, the quality has to be right, there has to be a need for it — there are a lot of logistics that go into it.

Milk is something the public buys three times a week, the public buys eggs probably once or twice a week, apple juice people generally buy once a week, apple sauce, maybe every three weeks, but these are items that people need all the time. They're ubiquitous — you can buy milk almost anywhere, which is pretty amazing, so there's a lot for us to do here.

We're certainly going to come out with new products, but really we're mostly just going store by store expanding throughout the Northeast. We're moving into New Jersey, we're in Westchester, we're moving into Long Island, we're in southern Connecticut, Queens, Brooklyn — there are just so many outlets.

Certainly we think this could be a national idea, but we're going to start here first.

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Nashville-based photographer Tammy Mercure has been photographing life in the southeastern U.S. since 2008.

Her pictures, which show everything from beauty pageants to NASCAR races with 160,000 attendees, give a snapshot of what life is like in the American South.

The series, titled "Cavaliers," has been featured in The Daily Mail and NPR, and garnered Mercure the title of one of Oxford American's 100 New Superstars of Southern Art in the Visual South.

Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri are just a few of the states she has visited to chronicle the culture and spirit of the amazing people who live there.

Mercure's images prove there really is no place on earth quite like the South.

A man with a flaming torch helps a woman light her cigarette in East Dublin, Georgia.

This guy chills on the back of a truck after dirt-biking in Virginia.

A man gets his hair fashionably braided in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

We recently showed you some of the craziest essay prompts from college applications in which students are asked to ponder everything from giant mustard containers to the potential difficulties of being green.

University of Chicago is perhaps the most notorious college to make their applicants really get creative.

Here are a few actual, real essay prompts that students have been given there.

• So where is Waldo, really?
• Find X
• "Have you ever walked through the aisles of a warehouse store like Costco or Sam's Club and wondered who would buy a jar of mustard a foot and a half tall? We've bought it, but it didn't stop us from wondering about other things, like absurd eating contests, impulse buys, excess, unimagined uses for mustard, storage, preservatives, notions of bigness…and dozens of other ideas both silly and serious. Write an essay somehow inspired by super-huge mustard."

We spoke to UChicago admissions officer Garrett Brinker — who graduated from the school in 2010 — about the art of crafting an essay prompt and some tips for aspiring essay writers. Here's what we learned:

There's no model answer.

Essay prompts are crowd-sourced by the admissions office to current UChicago students and young alumni. While Brinker says they tend to receive hundreds of responses, admissions officers usually choose around five different prompts from the submissions.

"We are at liberty to lightly edit the essay prompts in order to give students additional intellectual freedoms or possibly spur their intellectual creativity a bit more, but there’s not necessarily one or two or even ten types of model answers that we’re envisioning throughout this process," Brinker says.

Take your time.

An aspect of your essay that doesn't appear on the page actually might be the most important. Although Brinker says that there are "literally thousands of ways to write a successful essay," an admissions officer may actually read thousands of essays each year.

With this kind of volume, "one quality that stands out is simply time—the amount of time that you spent on your essay," Brinker says. "Because we read so many essays, it does become evident to us when a student has spent a total of only a couple hours on their essay, and when a student has spent a lot more time on that essay."

Havefun.

While this might seem a little cliche, Brinker tells us that having fun while writing your college essay may have a broader benefit than just making the application process a little less stressful. Brinker says that from an admissions officer's perspective, "if students have fun writing them, we will have fun reading them."

Write about yourself.

Even though UChicago sees an exceptional amount of diversity in how applicants answer their prompts, no admissions officer has a favorite "type" of essay, according to Brinker. "Some good essays are funny, others are serious, and still others are sarcastic, witty, and deeply personal, all at the same time. But overall, our favorite essays are ones that are thoughtful and truly tell us something about you as an individual," he says.

SEE ALSO: The Most Ridiculous College Application Questions

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There's something about warm weather that makes us want to hop in the car and drive into the sunset (preferably in a red convertible).

While temperatures reach new heights inland, 'tis the season to explore the coast, and one thing we love about the West Coast during summer: it's balmy and breezy from Mexico to Alaska.

Whether you have a week off or a handful of free weekends on the horizon, we've assembled a hit list of West Coast road trips that rev our engines. All you have to do is drive.

TRIP 1: SAN DIEGO TO ENSENADA

Miles: 100 (1 hour and 45 minutes)

Road trip numero uno embraces Mexico's meandering coastline as it hugs Baja's awe-inspiring sea cliffs. Starting in San Diego, cross the Otay-Mesa border, and make your way to Route 1D toward Ensenada. Road signs are well-marked and the pavement is in excellent condition through a series of three tolls that charge $2.45 a pop (the tolls take US Dollars). If you want to push the pedal to the metal for Ensenada's famous fish tacos, we don't blame you, but consider stopping along the way to check out the sand dunes, beaches, and fishing towns that polkadot the path.

While in Ensenada spend time sunning at Estero Beach, or surfing near a strand of sand at San Miguel. And since you're on the coast, it's only natural to stay oceanside, yet only a handful of Ensenada hotels actually sit beside the sea. Our waterfront favorite is Casa Natalie, a white-washed, all-suite inn that serves up an infinity pool, paired with a margarita on the rocks.

Insider Tip: We recommend getting additional insurance for any vehicle you drive into Mexico. And while we're on the topic, it's best to bring a ride that flies under the radar.

TRIP 2: LA TO JOSHUA TREE

Miles: 133 (2 hours and 15 minutes)

The first feat in your LA escape route is to dodge the City of Angels' notorious traffic—almost as famous as the Hollywood Sign. To do this, be sure to avoid rush hour (4-7 pm, to be safe), or leave at the crack of dawn. Once en-route, roll down the windows and crank U2's Joshua Tree album to gear down for the pace of desert life.

Two hours into the three-hour ride, stop at Cabazon to acclimatize to the dry heat and cool off sipping a famous and locally-sourced date shake from Hadley Fruit Orchards' roadside stand. If you're in the market for lunch, another stop we recommend is Pappy and Harriet's, a kitchy tex-mex eatery in Pioneertown, originally created as a movie set by Hollywood execs in the 1940s to film blockbuster western flicks.

Stomach (and gas tank) refueled, Joshua Tree's isolated landscapes and viewpoint hikes loom. If your goal is to get up close and personal with the National Park, stay six miles away at the Joshua Tree Inn, a motor hotel boasting a cool pool placed in the heart of the desert heat. If you'd rather be closer to the Palm Springs action and day-trip into Joshua Tree, we suggest Hotel Lautner, which recently went under a three and a half year renovation to bring it back to its mid-century glory.

TRIP 3: SAN FRANCISCO TO BIG SUR

Miles: 146 (2 hours, 30 minutes)

From the Bay City to coastal country in T-2.5 hours, this short escape is doable as an overnighter, though we're certain you'll take one look at Big Sur's salt-soaked surroundings and want to extend your trip indefinitely. Because Big Sur is so bold and beautiful, we suggest putting the blinders on to all the potential stops along the way (and there are many).

Following California State Route 1, you'll know you've arrived when you spot the Santa Lucia Mountains plunge into the Pacific Ocean and meadows exploding with wildflowers. A locale where outdoor enthusiasts play and city slickers unwind, this coastal retreat isn't about it restaurants or be-seen neighborhoods, rather it's all about catching the sunset from Pheiffer Beach or hiking to the secluded Partington Cove by way of a treed canyon and a 60-foot tunnel.

Save your money (for gas!) and camp at the Kirk Creek Campground situated on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, or splurge at the Post Ranch Inn, a woodsy-chic retreat sans alarm clocks or TVs.

TRIP 4: PORTLAND TO REDWOOD NATIONAL PARK

Miles 320 (5 hours and 15 minutes)

If we can pull you away from Portland's food scene, near 40 miles of coastline will feed your soul at Redwood National Park. Perfect for a three- or four-day getaway, the fastest inland route will have you hugging a redwood in five hours, however, we suggest inching your way down the US 101 South/Oregon Coast Highway to the Northern, wooded tip of California.

Home to the tallest trees on earth, and some as old as 2,000 years, it's only fitting to trade a king bed and mini bottles of shampoo for a cathedral canopy at one of four on-park campsites—we like theJedediah Smith Campground because it sits in an old-growth redwood grove. If hotel-ing is how you roll, sleep over at the Requa Inn, the most historic bed and breakfast in Redwood National Park.

TRIP 5: SEATTLE TO ALASKA

Miles: 1,119 (26 hours)

The last journey is by far (pun intended) the most epic. But don't let this lengthy road (and sea) trip deter you, Seattle to Ketchikan delivers big on both the journey and destination fronts.

Once you've sipped a half-caf, no-foam, macchiato at the first Starbucks opposite Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market, drive for three hours to Vancouver, Canada, to spend a few nights at the luxuryFairmont Pacific Rim or the Loden boutique hotel, both a block or two from the sea. While in the City of Glass, walk or bike the Stanley Park Seawall, and savor the ocean-to-table cuisine (we love Miku) that's put Vancouver on North America's foodie roadmap.

With 18 hours of driving ahead, push the pedal to the metal past small towns and massive lakes toward Prince George for an overnight rest, before bee-lining to Prince Rupert, where you can catch a ferry along the Alaska Marine Highway System to Ketchikan. Complete with loungers on the top deck for seaworthy nature-spotting, enjoy the five-hour journey as a passenger, instead of the driver.

After advancing borders, states, and provinces, take a break in Southeast Alaska, overlooking downtown Ketchikan at the Cape Fox Lodge. As for hitching a ride home, we suggest organizing a one-way car rental, and riding into the sunset in style aboard a cruise ship that will take you back down to Seattle.

SEE ALSO: 10 Most Secluded Hotels Around The World

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Wang Lin, a spiritual advisor to the Chinese elite, is in hot water after two documentaries on China's state-run CCTV aired Sunday, alleging that he was a "vulgar magician" and that his health techniques were phony. Now Wang will face an investigation for fraud and allegedly illegal health techniques, according to reports in Chinese media.

Wang's fall from grace is all the more shocking due to the high profiles of his clients. Pictures published online show Wang with Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, former Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, and a number of former members of China's ruling standing committee.

Wang billed himself as an expert in qigong, a spiritual practice that has its roots in martial arts and Chinese medicine. While qigong itself may be relatively harmless and even growing in popularity in the United States, in China it remains controversial due to its link to the suppressed Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Moreover, Wang's practice of qigong appears to have been unusual. A number of videos circulating online show Wang performing what might better be described as magic tricks. For example, here is a video of him performing a trick that shows "snakes" being created:

Wang has not responded well to media attention. "I am telling you, you will die miserably, and your family will follow," he reportedly told a journalist from the Beijing News after an exposé on him came out this weekend alleging that he had been sentenced to 7 years in prison in 1979 for swindling customers.

Wang may have a lot to lose from the investigation. Various media reports suggest he has bought a Rolls Royce, three Hummers, and a luxury villa with the money he made from qigong (see pictures of that villa here). He also once boasted of 70 green-card offers from U.S. intelligence agencies, the South China Morning Post reports.

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A huge majority of cars these days come with automatic transmissions. That's not the case with the Fiat 500 Abarth, though.

The trendy and fast Abarth line of cars from Italy comes exclusively with manual transmissions – meaning you'll have to learn how to drive a stick if you didn't already know how. (The regular Fiat 500 comes as an automatic.)

Driving a stick is all about carefully coordinating the clutch, shifting to the correct gear at the right time (when the rpm is around 3,000), and using the gas pedal. Easier said than done.

Watch below to learn how to drive a stick:

Produced by William Wei

SEE ALSO: How The GIF Was Saved From Total Internet Obscurity

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GREENWICH VILLAGE — After much anticipation by food-frenzied New Yorkers, the beloved California burger chain Umami Burger opened its first New York location Monday, serving specialty patties on Sixth Avenue.

Burger enthusiasts formed a 15-person line outside the 432 Sixth Ave. burger joint at 11:30 a.m.

Village resident Frank Leone, 37, said he was willing to wait in line for lunch before noon to see if the burgers served in the chic, two-floor space lived up to the hype.

"I'm curious about the perfectionism and the science behind the burger," the personal trainer said.

Umami Burger is dedicated to the savory "fifth taste" called umami, which Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda named in 1908. A portrait of him hangs in the Greenwich Village restaurant.

Publishing executive Luke Parker said he was willing to wait because he heard gushing reviews of the burgers' "special flavor."

"My LA friends have been encouraging me to try it," said Parker, 35, from Montclair, N.J.

The signature Umami Burger ($12) is served medium rare and topped with shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onions, toasted tomato, a parmesan crisp and special umami ketchup.

Four other classic burgers are on the menu, including a truffle burger with truffle cheese, truffle glaze and roasted garlic aioli ($12.50).

A tuna burger, turkey burger and veggie burger made with charred corn and black beans are also available.

The burger joint will be open Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m and Friday through Sunday 11 a.m. to midnight.

Other Umami Burger locations are planned for a food court in Battery Park City and 156 N. Fourth St. in Williamsburg.

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SEE ALSO: The Best BBQ Restaurants In 20 Cities Around The US

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Ever wondered what happens when you order 1,000 extra slices of cheese on a Burger King Whopper?

No, no-one has, ever. But, regardless, this photo series of a guy doing just that is getting very popular on Reddit right now.

The pictures are actually stills from a video by Japanese-based news site RocketNews24 from last year. We've embedded that video below the photographs.

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Early-life stressors brought on by poverty can leave medical scars that linger even in adulthood – regardless of income, reports the New York Times' Moises Velasquez-Manof:

"Scientists find [people who grew up poor] are more prone to illness than those who were never poor. Becoming more affluent may lower the risk of disease by lessening the sense of helplessness and allowing greater access to healthful resources like exercise, more nutritious foods and greater social support; people are not absolutely condemned by their upbringing. But the effects of early-life stress also seem to linger, unfavorably molding our nervous systems and possibly even accelerating the rate at which we age."

In one case, people who experienced early-life adversity were found to bear scars of that stress right in their DNA. Our telomeres (the tips of chromosomes) get shorter as we age, but people who grew up poor were found to have even shorter tips over time, suggesting accelerated aging. 

And beyond the simple impact of stress on our bodies over time, studies have found that social hierarchy also plays a role in long-term health for the rich, the poor and everyone in between.

British epidemiologist Michael Marmot coined the term "Status Syndrome" to describe how people's health is often impacted by their social status.

"Conventional explanations for noncommunicable disease—lack of access to medical care, unhealthy lifestyles—at best only partially explain the status syndrome," Marmot wrote in a 2006 white paper. "Rather, the lower individuals are in the social hierarchy, the less likely it is that their fundamental human needs for autonomy and to be integrated into society will be met. Failure to meet these needs leads to metabolic and endocrine changes that in turn lead to increased risk of disease." 

In a study of British civil servants, he found that even people relatively high on the social ladder had a lower sense of control and, thus, poorer health than those ahead of them. 

"In other words it wasn't only the difference between top and bottom," he said. "But where you were in the hierarchy was intimately related to your chances of health and disease."

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Unlike most Platinum Club members, I gained my miles and status from the ground.

For example, several years ago, I took my wife on a once in a lifetime trip to New Zealand and Australia. We flew first class to Australia, stayed in an upgraded luxury hotel suite overlooking the Sydney Opera House. We used points and miles collected on the ground to pay for the whole thing.

Out of pocket, that trip would have cost us about $40,000, but thanks to a Hyatt loyalty program we were able to collect all of the points and miles we needed for roughly $2,000. Everyone wants to know how I did it, and I talk about it at length in Do More, Spend Less, but the deal that enabled that trip is long gone.

On the other hand, loyalty programs and reward bonuses are still alive and well if you know where to look for them, and there are still plenty of ways to earn miles while going about your daily life on the ground. Here are a few tips on how the pro travel hackers and I collect air miles quickly and painlessly with the same money we would be spending anyway.

1. Pick one program and stick with it.

One of the worst mistakes you can make is to sign up for a bunch of different air miles programs and try to earn miles on all of them at once. It will take forever to accumulate anything that you can actually use. Instead, focus on a single program. If Southwest has a route that you fly constantly, enroll in the Southwest Rapid Rewards program. If you’re looking for access to a large international network, consider American’s AAdvantage or British Airways Executive Club.

2. Think of every day expenses in terms of miles.

AAdvantage credit cards generally pay out rewards at 2 miles per dollar spent (I’ll reference this rate throughout this article). That means that a daily $6 Starbucks habit is worth 12 miles per day, or more than 3,000 miles over the course of a year. You can also put common household expenses on credit cards. Here are a few examples of what you might be able to collect in a year:

• Netflix: $8/month = 192 miles

• Putting gas in your car: $80/week = 8,320 miles

• Cable & Internet: $100/month = 2,400 miles

• Cell phone bill: $125/month = 3,000 miles

• Electric bill: $50/month = 1,200 miles

• Groceries: $500/month = 12,000 miles

• Starbucks: $6/day (5 days/week) = 3,120 miles

That’s 30,232 air miles earned on the ground over the course of a year doing nothing but paying a few ordinary bills while enjoying an iced latte. That doesn’t include other purchases, and I’m sure there are plenty more common household bills that I’m not even thinking of. If you’re renting your home, you may even be able to pay your landlord with a credit card. Consider, too, that I’m using some very conservative numbers for these examples. Many families have multiple phones on their plans, higher electric bills, long gas-guzzling commutes or high grocery budgets. Your mileage will vary (literally!) but the point is that those miles can add up to quite a lot.

Also, did you know you can pay your income taxes with a credit card? There are processing fees attached to doing so, but even TurboTax suggests putting your tax bill on a rewards card. A $1,000 tax bill at the 2 for $1 rate will net a quick 2,000 miles, just for paying a bill you have to pay anyway.

It’s important to note here that this only works if you are very disciplined about your rewards-bearing credit cards. Never use this card for anything that you wouldn’t pay cash for, and always pay off the entire balance.

3. Use a rewards card for big purchases, too.

Thinking of buying a new 56” Smart TV? You’ll want to put it on a credit card for the automatic insurance that some cards offer, so why not get the air miles for it, too? I’ve even seen a rumor about someone who bought a $2 million dollar painting at an art auction, put it on a rewards card, and got 5 million miles for it. While a $2 million dollar credit limit obviously is not available to the vast majority of us, and the story might not even be true, I like it as an extreme example of how a big ticket item can help you rack up miles very quickly.

4. Take advantage of credit card signup bonuses.

Credit card companies often will offer miles as an incentive to sign up. British Airways does a promotion every so often that gives new members 50,000 Avios. Sometimes the rewards are triggered by a single qualifying purchase, sometimes there’s a minimum spend condition to fill. Minimum spends are usually easy enough to hit when you’re using the card for your daily expenses as discussed above.

One of the best offers out there right now is the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. Once you have the card, go buy yourself some lunch - a single purchase unlocks a reward of 20,000 Starpoints. Although Starwood is technically a hotel rewards program, you can easily transfer these points to most major airlines at a 1.25:1 ratio, which translates to 25,000 air miles.

Other cards have better earning potential, so this isn’t the card you want to use for daily purchases (you’ll be better served by an AAdvantage Citi Platinum, which earns 2 miles for every $1), but this is one of the best signup bonuses available at the time I’m writing this article.

5. Stock up on gift cards you know you’ll use.

First, I’ll add a caveat that this is really just a variation on using a card for your daily expenses. What you’re really doing is prepaying for things you already know you’ll need. There are two main advantages to this tactic. First, you can get the miles very quickly instead of letting them trickle in slowly over time, handy for planning trips you’re taking sooner rather than later.

Second, discounted gift cards are available that offer additional savings. For example, a $100 Home Depot gift card goes for $93 right now at Raise.com. Toss in our coupon code BRADS75 to take an additional $5 off and your out-of-pocket cost drops to $88. You don’t need to use the gift cards right away, but you’ll get those 176 air miles immediately.

You can also just load up a bunch of gas or grocery gift cards. You know you’ll use them, so spending the money ahead of time just gets you to the miles that much faster.

6. Volunteer to take online surveys.

Some survey websites will give survey participants air miles as a thank you. OpinionPlace.com offers AAdvantage miles as a compensation option, and participants can get anywhere from 100-300 miles for their time. You can also earn 250 AAdvantage miles for enrolling with opinion site E-Rewards.com.

7. Donate to charity.

A lot of public radio and TV stations rely on donations from viewers and listeners, and offer donor incentives during fundraising drives to help sweeten the deal. I’ve seen at least one radio station offering miles as part of a premium donor package, so this may be a good place to look. Get even more miles by putting the donation on your rewards card. The best part is that the donation is a tax write off.

8. Register all of your credit cards at RewardsNetwork.com.

You can earn bonus miles for dining and shopping at select locations when you register your credit cards at RewardsNetwork.com. This website is partnered with a whole slew of rewards programs, including Alaska Airlines, American, Southwest, United and US Airways. (They also have non-airline programs for Best Buy, Hilton and several others.) The cards themselves don’t need to belong to a program, so register all of yours with your program of choice. My favorite is the AAdvantage Dining program, which offers bonus miles for eating at select restaurants, including some delivery and takeout.

9. Watch for bonus offers on purchased miles.

Through August 1, American is offering free AA Miles when you buy a minimum number of miles. The biggest bonus available is an extra 15,000 when you buy 50,000 or more. At the low end, you can spend $412.50 on 15,000 miles to get an extra 2,000, which works out to around 41 miles per $1. These kinds of incentives are common and can be handy if you’re just that close to a reward ticket that you want to book sooner rather than later. The processing fee on mileage purchases can be steep, so be sure to read the fine print.

10. Book a weekend getaway to anywhere with the cheapest airfare you can find.

Although this article is mostly about how to earn miles on the ground, I’d be remiss not to mention flying as one of the best ways to earn miles cheaply and quickly. Hardcore travel hackers call these “mileage runs” and they’ll often skip the sights, turning right around to board a flight home, just to get the miles.

You may be collecting miles for a trip to Paris, but if you spot an ultra low fare to Vegas on your preferred airline, why not take a long weekend? Find the cheapest ticket to anywhere and go. You can apply the miles you earn from your Vegas weekend to your Paris vacation.

SEE ALSO: 10 Things You Probably Never Knew About Money

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Twitter on Monday said it will soon add a "report abuse" button to individual tweets. The company had come under fire after an activist complained about an outpouring of rape and death tweets over the weekend.

It all began when Caroline Criado-Perez (@CCriadoPerez) made news last week. She successfully lead an effort to get Jane Austin pictured on the £10 bank note. Austin will be featured on the bill as of 2017.

Shortly after she appeared on news reports discussing the new Jane Austin bill, she started getting "up to 50 rape threats an hour" on Twitter, she told the Huffington Post's Jessica Elgot.

Criado-Perez went to Twitter to get help in stopping the threats and was "disgusted" by the way Twitter responded, she said.

"They were first contacted on Thursday, but it’s taken them until Monday to set up a meeting with me," she told the Huffington Post's Jessica Elgot.

Criado-Perez also went to the police and on Monday a 21-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the threats, reports the BBC.

But because the situation was widely reported in the U.K., people wanted Twitter to take action, too. Nearly 66,000 people signed a petition on Change.org asking Twitter to add a "report abuse" to individual Tweets.

Twitter already has this feature on its iPhone app and its mobile website, it says. Beyond that, users can report an abusive Twitter user account via Twitter's website, which is not as easy to use as a "report abuse" button on an individual tweet.

On Monday, Twitter promised to make the button available to more Twitter users:

"We are not blind to the reality that there will always be people using Twitter in ways that are abusive and may harm others," Del Harvey, Senior Director, Trust & Safety wrote in a blog post. "Three weeks ago, we rolled out the ability to file reports from an individual Tweet on our iPhone app and the mobile version of our site, and we plan to bring this functionality to Android and desktop web users."

SEE ALSO: Why This 24-Year-Old Thumbed His Nose At Google And Took Control Of Google Glass

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