In 2004, social entrepreneur Priya Haji, ’93, co-founder of the East Palo Alto recovery center Free At Last, started World of Good, a fair-trade giftware company. Her latest venture, SaveUp, is an online rewards program for people who save money and/or pay off debts.
Instead of performing in theaters, the drama group We Players uses Bay Area landmarks that seem atmospherically suited to their playbill, according to artistic director Ava Roy, ’03. From May 12 through July 1, their stage is Angel Island; the production an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. While the Greek hero’s journey took a decade, theatergoers will spend a day on a voyage around the former immigration station, military staging site, and Coastal Miwok hunting and fishing ground.
The Quake-Catcher Network, co-developed by assistant professor of geophysics Jesse Lawrence, detected a 4.0-magnitude temblor 10 seconds before it reached campus on March 5. The eventual goal is for the network, which uses inexpensive sensors plugged into volunteers’ computers, to notify surrounding regions via digital media about an earthquake’s approach in time for countermeasures. Learn more here.
In 2000, the Hoover Archives acquired the papers of Eric Hoffer, an unschooled philosopher/writer with a massive following. Using those holdings and his own interviews, Hoover visiting media fellow Tom Bethell has written Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher, published by the Hoover Institution in March.
Elaine Pagels, ’64, MA ’65, has long been instrumental, through her scholarship and bestselling writing, in explicating Gnostic writings, early Christian works considered heretical. Pagels offers a fresh interpretation of the apocalyptic Book of Revelation in her new book Revelations: Visions, Prophecies, and Politics in the Book of Revelation.
Terrorism expert Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, heads the Mapping Militant Organizations project to develop online interactive charts showing the evolution and activity of, and interrelationships among, terrorist groups around the world. The Iraq section is now available.
