Jeff Greenwald | |
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| Born | March 6, 1954 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Author, photographer, monologist |
| Years active | 1979–present |
| Website | jeffgreenwald |
Jeff Greenwald (born March 6, 1954, in the Bronx, New York) is a best-selling author, photographer, and monologist. He now resides in Oakland, California. [1]
On Greenwald's first trip to Asia in 1979, he designed urban playgrounds for UNICEF and the Nepal Children's Organization. Arriving several months later in Thailand during the Khmer civil war, he served as a volunteer water engineer at Khao-I-Dang—-the largest of the Cambodian refugee camps. These early travel experiences shaped his career and philosophy about travel. In the Spring of 1983, Greenwald was awarded a journalism fellowship by the Rotary International Foundation, and departed for a second trip to Asia. Over the course of 16 months he lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, and made excursions to the Himalaya, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Japan, Java, and Bali. His articles about those trips appeared in the magazines GEO and Islands. It was around this time that he began writing "Mr. Raja¹s Neighborhood: Letters from Nepal." Four years later, his travels in Nepal and Tibet would inspire "Shopping for Buddhas," first published by Harper and Row in 1990. A later edition, published in the Lonely Planet "Journeys" series, won the Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book of 1996. A 25th Anniversary edition, which includes Nepal's political upheavals since 1995, was added. [1]
As he circled the globe writing The Size of the World in 1993-1994, Greenwald posted a series of real-time dispatches to GNN, the Global Network Navigator, describing his journey. [2] The first was posted on January 6, 1994, from Oaxaca, Mexico. Nineteen more followed. Consequently, Greenwald is hailed as an internet pioneer for creating the first international travel "blog" (five years. before the term was coined) on the World Wide Web. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] In 2003, Greenwald co-founded the organization Ethical Traveler, of which he serves as the Executive Director. A project of the Earth Island Institute, Ethical Traveler is a global community dedicated to exploring the ambassadorial potential of world travel, as outlined in Greenwald's "Thirteen Tips for the Accidental Ambassador." [8]
Using his many travel adventures as material, Greenwald developed a one-man show in 2003 called "Strange Travel Suggestions." The show, which premiered at The Marsh in San Francisco to critical acclaim, is an improvised monologue. Each performance's stories and arc is determined by an audience volunteer's spin of an on-stage "wheel of fortune". [9] A more recent show, "108 Beloved Objects," based on Greenwald's 2021 book of the same name, premiered in San Leandro in September 2022 as part of Brian Copeland's "Best of SF Solo" performance series.
Thanks to a casting director who was a fan of his writing, Greenwald made a cameo appearance as Security Guard on the "Jail" episode of the NBC sitcom NewsRadio . [1]
In 2021, Greenwald was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. In May of 2024—hearkening back to his groundbreaking travel "blogs" of 1994—he began a series of Substack posts ("Jeffji's Big World") relating his adventures in everyday life—from a cruise along the Maine coast to Burning Man—to his "journey" with Parkinson's.
In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more. This result appears puzzling because each twin sees the other twin as moving, and so, as a consequence of an incorrect and naive application of time dilation and the principle of relativity, each should paradoxically find the other to have aged less. However, this scenario can be resolved within the standard framework of special relativity: the travelling twin's trajectory involves two different inertial frames, one for the outbound journey and one for the inbound journey. Another way of looking at it is to realize the travelling twin is undergoing acceleration, which makes them a non-inertial observer. In both views there is no symmetry between the spacetime paths of the twins. Therefore, the twin paradox is not actually a paradox in the sense of a logical contradiction. There is still debate as to the resolution of the twin paradox.
The Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of five science fiction novels (1971–1983) by American author Philip José Farmer (1918–2009). The Riverworld is an artificial, or heavily terraformed, planet where all humans who ever lived throughout history have been restored to life. The novels explore interactions of resurrected individuals from many different cultures and time periods. The underlying theme is quasi-religious. The motivations and ethics of the unknown intelligences that created the Riverworld and its inhabitants are explored.
Hippie trail is the name given to an overland journey taken by members of the hippie subculture and others from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s travelling from Europe and West Asia through South Asia via countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh to Thailand. The hippie trail was a form of alternative tourism, and one of the key elements was travelling as cheaply as possible, mainly to extend the length of time away from home. The term "hippie" became current in the mid-to-late 1960s; "beatnik" was the previous term from the later 1950s.
Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books.
Nyssa is a fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by Sarah Sutton. Although Nyssa was created by writer Johnny Byrne for the single Fourth Doctor serial The Keeper of Traken, the production team subsequently decided she should be retained as a continuing character. Nyssa returned in the following serial, Logopolis, in which the Fourth Doctor regenerated, and remained as a companion of the Fifth Doctor. She was a regular in the programme from 1981 to 1983.
Zoe Heriot is a fictional character played by Wendy Padbury in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A young astrophysicist who lived on a space wheel in the 21st century, she was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1968 to 1969. Zoe appeared in eight stories.
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure Through Time and Space, abbreviated The Pendragon Adventure or simply Pendragon, is a series of ten young-adult science fiction and fantasy novels by American author D. J. MacHale, published from 2002 to 2009. The series chronicles the adventures of Bobby Pendragon, an American teenager who discovers that he must travel through time and space to prevent the destruction of the ten "territories": critical times and locations throughout the universe. The series has sold over a million copies.
Globe Trekker is a British adventure tourism television series produced by Pilot Productions. The British series was inspired by the Lonely Planet travelbooks and began airing in 1994. Globe Trekker is broadcast in over 40 countries across six continents. The programme won over 20 international awards, including six American Cable Ace awards.
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet.
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy which focuses on fictional underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface. The genre is based on, and has in turn influenced, the Hollow Earth theory. The earliest works in the genre were Enlightenment-era philosophical or allegorical works, in which the underground setting was often largely incidental. In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or as a secret base for space aliens.
A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or tourist attractions without recommending particular package deals or tour operators. A travelogue film is an early type of travel documentary, serving as an exploratory ethnographic film. Ethnographic films have been made for the spectators to see the other half to relate with the world in relative relations. These films are a spectacle to see beyond the cultural differences as explained by the Allison Griffith in her journal. Before the 1930s, it was difficult to see the importance of documentary films in Hollywood cinema but the 1930s brought about a change in the history of these films with the popularity of independent filmmakers.
Christopher P. Baker is a professional travel writer and photographer, adventure motorcyclist, tour leader, and Cuba expert, and the 2008 Lowell Thomas Award 'Travel Journalist of the Year.' He is a contributor to magazines and other publications worldwide, and is the author of travel guidebooks for publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, Lonely Planet, Moon Publications, and National Geographic.
Richard Sterling is a travel, food and lifestyle journalist, as well as one of the foremost practitioners of the "literature of gusto". Originally from Northern California, he spent many years as a sailor, an engineer, and a diarist before becoming a journalist.
Space travel under constant acceleration is a hypothetical method of space travel that involves the use of a propulsion system that generates a constant acceleration rather than the short, impulsive thrusts produced by traditional chemical rockets. For the first half of the journey the propulsion system would constantly accelerate the spacecraft toward its destination, and for the second half of the journey it would constantly decelerate the spaceship. Constant acceleration could be used to achieve relativistic speeds, making it a potential means of achieving human interstellar travel. This mode of travel has yet to be used in practice.
Jane Wilson-Howarth BSc (hons), CF, MSc (Oxon), BM, DCH, DCCH, DFSRH, FRSTM&H, FFTM RCPS (Glasg) is a British physician, lecturer and author. She has written three travel health guides, two travel narratives, a novel and a series of wildlife adventures for children. She has also contributed to anthologies of travellers tales, has written innumerable health articles for non-specialist readers, and many scientific/academic papers.
Journey Through the Impossible is an 1882 fantasy play written by Jules Verne, with the collaboration of Adolphe d'Ennery. A stage spectacular in the féerie tradition, the play follows the adventures of a young man who, with the help of a magic potion and a varied assortment of friends and advisers, makes impossible voyages to the center of the Earth, the bottom of the sea, and a distant planet. The play is deeply influenced by Verne's own Voyages Extraordinaires series and includes characters and themes from some of his most famous novels, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and From the Earth to the Moon.
Denis Belliveau is an American photographer, author and explorer notable for retracing Marco Polo's route from Europe to Asia and back, a feat which culminated in the publication of the documentary and book titled In the Footsteps of Marco Polo; the documentary has been used by Belliveau to create a unique interdisciplinary educational curriculum that he presents at schools and libraries across the United States and internationally. As a "technical scuba diver with over 600 dives on the Mesoamerican Reef," Belliveau's photography was instrumental in establishing the definitive map for the coral reef of the Mexican island of Cozumel. Belliveau also participated in an historic archaeological dig in southwest France, unearthing a centuries-old Christian monastery, located at the current site of Abbatiale Saint-Maixent de Saint-Maixent-l'École. In addition, Belliveau's photography and writing have been highlighted in numerous periodicals, magazines and books, including The New York Times, Petersen's Photographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and BBC’s Planet Earth.
Daniel McCrohan is a British travel writer and guidebook author who has contributed to more than 30 Lonely Planet guidebooks to countries in Asia. He has also written a number of guides for Trailblazer, including the 2019 edition of the company's seminal guidebook, the Trans-Siberian Handbook.
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