It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

The rule are multi star systems. Single star systems are the minority.

Depends on the martial art. The most modern practice recognizes natural talent while incorporating considerable traditional technique; I assure you, everyone does not walk into their first day of training on an equal basis

Yeah, below Sho Dan. After Sho Dan you are limited by the restrictions of your federation, or you have to 'hand out' your 'own graduations' which are not respected by others or other federations.

Also, more on topic, I can definitely assure anyone who is curious that you're not doing high level thinking when executing advanced martial arts techniques.

Depends what you mean with that.
All you really need to do to understand this is think about bike riding. When you learn, you learn, you think like crazy. Which does you very little good. But eventually, you internalize the process (that's what I call it, anyway) and you can do it while carrying on a conversation with someone else, paying almost no attention at all to the activity of riding the bike.
So you mean: you are not thinking about the art. Ofc. not. But you perhaps think like a bike rider: what is about the next corner.
For me it is easy to think while doing martial arts ... as I do the actual doing without thinking ... if that is what you mean. Or on the other hand I use to do 'self reflecting' while practicing ... that is a lot of thinking, too :D

Gruber said in another comment in 2012 that the reason why you can't get subsidies for the federal exchange is so that states will be encouraged to make their own exchange.

Then try to wake up in that flow, and watch yourself. Much more fun.

I guess that makes it easier for you to pass as intelligent?
Hehe, sorry, but that was a perfect pass!

Well, ost of them have more brains than the interviewers :D that is enough for me.
E.g. during the game of germany against algeria the commentator kept repeating how bad both teams play. He kept repeating that it is a shame that germany can not handle that "third class team" (he omitted 'politely': from africa).
Then every time the game was a bit less hectic he was telling us about the algerian team: "16 of the 22 players are born in France", "Mr. X plays for Manchester United", "Mr. Y playes for Barcelona" ... bla bla. Point is: half of the Algerian team consists of players who play in world class teams. The rest plays also in teams that are not that bad.
The Commentators and Reporters simply are stuck in the late 70s where half of the world championships' teams where from third world countries that hardly could afford flying to the games. This game had only two teams that had no chance, USA and Iran, well Japan perhaps as the third one. People forget: it is a tournament. The one who is winning in the end is: The Winner. Not "The best Team(tm)".
There is to much luck, red cards, injury, bad referees, going into the penalty shooting etc. involved.

Now: how do you explain the first question of a reporter to the first player of the winning team after the mentioned game above: "why did you play so bad?" Retarded, isn't it?

In my eyes it is not playing bad if you play against a very good team and you struggle to win against it.

Well, I guess the answer of the german player, I believe it was Lahm, probably felt into the category you mean ;D

The same can be said about martial arts :D
And you need much less space, or other way around: you can place much more people on the same place, e.g. a soccer field.

Practicing 2x a week for 2h equals 208h per year.
In roughly 48years you have the 10,000h done.

Well, I don't know why it is called a "10,000h theory" ... after all it is a no brainer. Everyone who does some sports knows that a particular technique has to be repeated about 1000 times to work more or less and about 10,000 times to be close to perfect. But ofc. there is always room to improve even more.

The hours are less important, the repetition counts. Unfortunately if you learn something complex, you basically have to learn a few dozen basic and many more complex movements in that art.

However suppose one trains 5h each day (the art, not the additional body building, mental training, massages or gymnastics) for 6 days a week and practices 50 of the 52 weeks, he does 1500h in a single year. So from age 12 to 18 he has 9000hours .
That translated into martial arts is roughly the equivalent of a 4th DAN, but for that you need longer due to 'regulations regarding examinations', waiting periods between 2 examinations.

However I would not be scared if starting a new art. If you simply never stop you easy do it for 30 years, or longer till the rest of your life. Finally you will be an 'old master'.

We germans have a proverb or a saying, well it is more a phrase: "Das Glueck des Tuechtigen". Means roughly translated: the luck of the strenuous one. The final goal in the soccer champion ships, was such a thing. The guy giving the pass did that from an impossible position for the shooter. But the shooter somehow twisted his body, looking over his shoulder to accept the ball with his chest, from an 'impossible' angle, letting the ball drop on his left foot and placing it into the goal. 'Just like that'
Without his plenty of 10,000h's he would not have been able to do that, nor had the pass giver given such a pass. And it is very unlikely that someone with only 1000h training could have done that ... but that makes the "10,000" not a theory (in the laymen meaning of theory) but rather a physical fact.

That is a different state of mind.
When you play trance like soccer or are in a flow state in a fight, you are actually pretty aware about 'everything' going around you.
A 'normal guy' who is capable of going into such a meditative state would never execute excess violence. People who do that are more in a 'berserk state' or similar 'rage states'.

This is not muscle memory, but high specialized brain areas. Special neurons that clump together and specialize in certain 'low level' task.

It is not muscle memory.
Muscle memory is something completely different and works on a very different level.
Muscle memory e.g. lets you perform a perfect strike, or a punch or a kick.
But it does not let judge you how to pass a ball perfectly into the way of the guy who will make a goal, avoiding offside and the guy tackling you and the other one and that third defender running straight into the obvious path.
Nor does muscle memory help you to actually execute that pass.
Muscle memory only helps to execute perfectly simple basic moves in perfection. (I'm a martial artists, doing Aikido roughly 30 years and some others for decades, for Karate e.g. muscle memory is very important, for Aikido not so much)

Interesting perhaps, 'in the german article' they said his brain activity was lower in comparison with other professional soccer players. That *is* interesting.

But it is old news that high skilled professionals, especially if they do body work, like martial artists or artists or musicians easy get into a state called 'flow'.

"Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies."
That is ofc. nonsense. Instead of inventing brain dead 'explanations' they either should do some sports themselves, or cross link with other scientists.
Specializations like this happen because kinda large areas of the brain specialize on a certain activity, like the left hand of a guitarist.
While one part of the brain lowers its activity (that is what they figured) other parts have specialized into it (that is what many other brain researchers have figured long ago).

High German and Low German is a bit difficult.

In laymen terms and daily use "High German" is the "Dialect" that is talked in schools, used on radio and TV and is the modern "written german". It is in our days not really the "upper class" german but statistically lower class people tend to speak 'Dialect' only more often. While more 'upper class' people usually speak 'High German' only. However many people speak both, their 'Home Dialect' and 'High German'. I only speak 'High German' but I guess that is because I spend my time in school from 5th grade on in a gymnasium where most teachers spoke 'High German' and the kids came from 3 different majour dialects. Well, this particular dialect we now call 'High German' is a slightly evolved 'Dialect' (like all the other dialects, it is just a dialect, nothing 'higher' than the 'lower' ones). It is the dialect that is spoken or was spoken in the Area of Muenster. It became 'High German' that means distributed over whole germany and slowly adapted by higher classes because Martin Luther wrote his german translation of The Bible in that 'Dialect', and coincidently :D Johannes Gutenberg printed and distributed it widely.

Linguistic however the distinction is between the lower lands and is called 'Niederdeutsch' (roughly translated into 'Low' or more precisely 'Lower' german) and the higher lands. However that is as many 'Linguistic Classifications' just an arbitrary and very misleading one. At least we can says that all the dialects spread over the 'Higher Grounds' not necessarily have much in common, same for the dialects spread over the lower areas or the coasts. Or more precisely, coastal dialects amoung each other have much in common but not much with the dialects spoken in the non costal lower grounds, like in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxonia) or Nordrheinwestfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia). In other words I bet that modern 'High German' is according to the linguists more likely a 'Lower German Dialect' as it comes from the lower plains in the north-west of germany.

Beyond that, you'd need to ask a linguist. Over time, what you grew up hearing and saying defines how you say it, and what you can say. I strongly suspect there are some sounds that some people simply cannot make if they didn't learn early enough.

Yeah, we germans tend to mispronounce 'th' with a 'z' ... it is very difficult to correctly learn english (or any other weird language, like french or gallic) because you hear yourself different than others, when your teacher repeats 100 times 'what' you should say instead of mimiking what you 'actually sound' like you have hard chances. Most teachers are simply incompetent ... one even drove me to tears because he let me repeat stuff hours long instead of once explaining me what I actually do wrong.

On the other hand, try chinese ... they basically sing. And that in a way which is nearly not hearable for many europeans. The syllable 'shi' can have many meanings depending if the 'i' is simply pronounced, or prolonged or is going up in tune or down ... well perhaps 'shi' is a bad example, I don't speak chinese. Luckily japanese is super simple :D. Except for the unknown words it sounds like german or italian, clear vowels more or less written like you speak it (or other way around: spoken like it is written)

The longer I live, and the more non-native speakers of English I meet, the more I have a hard time explaining all of the corner cases in English, because it's made up of stuff from so many different languages.
Ofc, the british islands got invaded a couple of hundred times. Many invaders who stayed, got half assimilated and half they conquered a little kingdom for themselves. When the next wave of invaders came they fought with the older residential tribes together against the new invaders ... but again some of the new ones managed to settle ... so many languages got melted into english.