Hiking near the Flatirons just outside of Boulder, Colorado (photo by Aaron Dalton)
Wilderness weddings? Back-country bar and bat mitzvahs?
All in a day’s work for the Adventure Rabbi who epitomizes the spirit of her Boulder, Colorado hometown where nature transcends the scenic to enter the realm of the spiritual.
Take a mental trip to Boulder in this travel feature for The Jewish Exponent.
Categories: Environment · Journalism · Profile · Travel
Tagged: Adventure Rabbi, Boulder, Jewish Exponent
Award-winning novelist and UCLA professor Alain Mabanckou (photo via UCLA website)
In 2006, Alain Mabanckou won the Prix Renaudot, one of France’s most important literary prizes for his novel Mémoires de porc-épic (Memories of a Porcupine).
In this feature profile for UCLA College Report, Mabanckou talks about his influences (including American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis), his past career as a French lawyer and the value for a writer of living far from home.
Categories: Academia · Entertainment · Profile
Kolz's inventions improve the computing experience (photo by John Watson)
In four years, a moderately active IBM inventor might participate in filing 6 to 8 patent applications.
From 2003 to 2007, IBM project leader Dan Kolz submitted more than 100 patent applications for IBM.
Kolz, who calls genetic algorithms “the neatest thing in the world,” says the invention process is actually getting easier as he gains knowledge and experience.
Read more about Kolz’s prodigious mind in a feature story from the November 2007 of IBM Systems magazine.
Categories: Business · Journalism · Profile · Technology
Tagged: IBM Systems, inventions, inventor, patent application
Cartridge being ejected from a 12-gauge shotgun (photo by Nicole, a.k.a. Tigresblanco)
Find out how Blair Wyman survived a shotgun robbery as a Houston taxi driver and went on to become an award-winning software engineer at IBM.
Get the story on Wyman in this September 2007 profile for IBM Systems magazine.
Categories: Journalism · Profile · Technology
Tagged: IBM, software engineer, taxi driver
Crash test dummies at the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart, Germany (photo by Chuck Biscuito)
Many people try to avoid crashing cars. Jordan Haynes does it for a living. To say he likes his job would be an understatement.
Find out how Jordan helps the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) obtain auto safety data in this feature story for Popular Mechanics magazine.
Categories: Journalism · Profile · Technology
UCLA graduate student Awet Weldemichael (photo courtesy of UCLA)
Awet Weldemichael survived the Eritrean war of independence in a Sudanese refugee camp.
He then made in through the massive famine that swept across Northeast Africa in the 1980s.
Eventually he found his way to UCLA, where he learned the Indonesian and Portuguese languages in an effort to compare the independence struggles in his own homeland and the independence movement in East Timor.
Read his remarkable story in this December 2005 feature article for UCLA College Report.
Categories: Academia · Education · Journalism · Profile
Tagged: East Timor, Eritrea, independence, Indonesian, Portuguese, Sudan, UCLA College Report
Jordan Fisher Smith (publicity photo)
Guarding the U.S. national park system is a dangerous job.
Statistics from the Justice Department say Park Rangers are twice as likely get assaulted on the job as DEA agents.
Jordan Fisher discovered the risks and rewards of being a Ranger in California’s American River canyon.
Read more about Fisher and the book he wrote chronicling his experiences in this interview for Grist, a website providing environmental news and commentary since 1999.
If you had to guess which federal agents in the U.S. face the greater danger, who would you put your money on: the officers who wage the endless War on Drugs, or the rangers who patrol the green acres of the national parks? Well, it’s the rangers. According to a 2001 study by the Bureau of Justice, nature’s security guards are twice as likely to be assaulted on the job as agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Categories: Crime · Environment · Journalism · Nonprofit · Profile
Tagged: American River, California, DEA, Grist, Jordan Fisher, Nature Noir, Park Rangers, US National Parks
