When Fairview High's Paul Strode was a new science teacher in the early 1990s, he wasn't ready for the challenge that a student brought to him when he taught evolution.]]> Ever get the feeling you just can’t concentrate like you used to? Feel like your brain is stuck on overload and you can’t put together a coherent thought?]]> Jeanne Winer and Rachel Stein share a common worldview. Adrenaline junkies as well as staunch feminists, they both grapple with “spiritual tantrums” in their compulsive pursuit of justice. ]]> While teaching elementary school kids how to ski in places like Copper Mountain and Eldora Mountain Resort, Annie Fox saw her fair share of spills on the slopes. "On no, you fell! The snow snake ]]> “It sounded like the voice that I thought in,” says David Lipsky about the captivating literary style of novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace. “Which of course is what you’re trying to do as a writer. And he’d done it! It was amazing! I was so thrilled. I faxed it and copied it and forced it on people, the way I’m forcing it on you now. Everyone I know was doing that. You’d go to any party and people were talking about him.”]]> The tag for Stern%uFFFDs new book is %uFFFDTea Party Edition,%uFFFD which says as much of a mouthful in three terse words as Joe the Plumber%uFFFDs political science treatise above.]]> In 1989, a jury found Brent Brents, then 18, guilty of raping two children. He spent the next 15 years in jail, and when he got out in July 2004, he went on a terrifying rampage, raping and assaulting dozens of men, women and children until his capture in February 2005.]]> To the adults I met as a child, a person's capacity for achievement could be decided at around age 6 or 7 by a simple equation: genes environment, or 'nature nurture.' Given an extra dose of more expansive learning by dynamic teachers, they thought, a 'gifted' child could metaphorically grow from a caterpillar into a butterfly.]]> The bad boy of Islam is all grown up — and he might be badder than ever. ]]> He doesn't quite match the hermetic, reserved image many poets and novelists are so quick to embrace. Aside from being an accomplished and prolific writer of poems, short stories and novels (he has published more than 20 collections of his work), Sherman Alexie is a performer.]]> It’s every writer’s dream. You write the best book you can, sell it to the publishing company of your dreams and quit the day job to pen fiction all day. For Australian writer Anna Campbell, this dream is her reality.]]> "Twitterature," a 208-page work of two University of Chicago freshmen, looks at more than 80 classics of literature through the eye of the Twitter. And it rocks.]]> After 18 years of working the same job, most of us might consign ourselves to our workaday fate. Not Christy Reece. When she realized she didn’t enjoy her job, she decided to do something about it. She sat down and wrote a novel and then another and another. Now she’s a successful author with four titles to her name, an up-and-coming star in the world of romantic suspense, a hybrid genre that combines romantic fiction with elements of a thriller. Boulder Weekly tracked Reece down at her home in Alabama and talked to her about her books and the courage it takes to walk away from your job and start a new career.]]> What Mark Twain (himself a sometime-sportswriter) called 'games,' and we now call 'sports,' has captivated people from every intellectual, social and economic category in the last century and helps maintain sanity (as long as you don't think about mind-boggling modern details like $30 million-a-year contracts) in our current times.]]> Although the team is currently struggling just to hover near .500, not much in Colorado says %uFFFDsummer%uFFFD like the Rockies.]]> Thompson fired back a response to Auman some time later, and he then went to work setting in motion the machinations of a massive and eventually successful campaign to get her out of jail. Boulder author and political strategist Matt Moseley helped coordinate that campaign, and he has chronicled those experiences in Dear Dr. Thompson]]> In his next at-bat, the puzzled player hits a %uFFFDscreamer%uFFFD off the outfield wall but fails to leave the batter%uFFFDs box, standing curiously still until the ball is thrown in to first base %uFFFD at which point he walks to the locker room to face the press as the story ends.]]> There must be something in the mountain air. More and more young writers are coming to Boulder from far-flung American locales, unlearning who they thought they were as artists and people, and then (usually) moving on, spreading the cool, creative calm of Colorado elsewhere.]]> Fayhee, whose gruff and scruffy exterior are paired with wit and a healthy dose of sarcasm and cynicism, was known for having a bit of a wild streak. At times, his adventures were traced to one of the local watering holes, at others, to one of the nearby 14ers.]]>