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Visiting Professor of Communication John Adams was interviewed for an op-ed about political humor, written by columnist Patt Morrison in the Los Angeles Times (July 26, 2007).  The column, "Buy a Card, Mock a President," concerned the increasing number of greeting cards that poke fun at President Bush and Vice President Cheney.  Morrison cited an example of a birthday card where a smiling Bush is shown, with the message "What's a birthday party without a clown?" Morrison wrote: "I'd seen a few Bush greeting cards before, but they were pretty genial, joshing the chief exec for his mispronounciatin'. This was on a different magnitude. Before I got brain whiplash trying to figure this out, I called a professional big thinker. John Adams is a visiting professor of communications at Hamilton College in New York, and he's analyzed political humor. What we laugh at, he said, 'tells us just as much about who we are as an audience' as it does about the joke. Significantly, laughter 'is the surest sign of where we're coming from.'"

Summer is supposed to be time off, but for Xiaobo Ma '09 (Chengdu, China), it's math as usual. Ma explained that, as well as monitoring fund activity and attending marketing conferences, she had learned to do very advanced probability calculations as part of her work as a portfolio management intern with Archery Capital in New York City.

Ten students have been selected as new writing tutors for the 2007-2008 academic year: Stephanie Anglin '10, Winston Cook-Wilson '09 (music), David Foster '10, Whitney Kimmel '08 (English, French), Chris Love '10, Andrew Peart '10, Mallory Reed '10, Kevin Rowe '10, Emily Tang '08 (creative writing, Chinese), and Allison Trionfetti '10. Students must be nominated by professors to be considered for the position, and finalists are selected based on superior writing skills.

In a Reuters News article titled “YouTube gets candidates loosened up . . . sort of; With a new medium and format, some questions were frivolous, but the debate was traditional,” government professor Philip Klinkner shared his views on the novel CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate conducted this week.

Deanne Katz '08 started working with autistic children in high school and hasn't really stopped. This summer the rising senior has an Emerson grant to build a project around special needs services for autistic children in Massachusetts schools. Collaborating with Assistant Professor of Psychology Tara McKee, Katz is spending her summer researching the services provided to autistic children in Massachusetts public schools and how the district parents feel about these services.

Following Monday’s CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate, CBS News summer intern and rising junior Eric Kuhn wrote an article about his observations of the novel event. The article was posted on CBS’ “Couric & Co.” blog as well as on the CBS News home page. "Couric & Co." is a Web log whose principle contributors are CBS News producers and correspondents from around the world that, according to the site, focuses on “things large and small, from the meaningful to the amusing.”

Associate Professor of German Edith Toegel participated in an international conference, "The New Europe at the Crossroads" at York St. John University, England in July. Her paper, "'Heimat' Redefined: Women and Multiculturalism in Barbara Frischmuth's novels" discussed the writer's concern for racial tensions in her homeland, Austria, in particular with regard to the large number of Turkish immigrants since 1989.

Mollusks are members of the large and diverse phylum Mullusca, which includes a variety of familiar animals like snails, clams, squid, and octopi. Scaphopods are a class of marine mollusks with a tubular and generally curved shell having openings at both ends. Since their shell resembles an elephant’s tusk, they are more commonly referred to as "tusk shells." Many scaphopod species inhabit the deep waters off the West and Alaskan coasts. This summer, Matt Sharbaugh '08 (Simsbury, Conn.), a biology major, is working with Professor of Biology Patrick Reynolds to study how the latitude and ocean depth at which scaphopods live affects their diversity and distribution.

The Hamilton College Muslim America Poll, conducted in 2002 by Hamilton Sociology Professor Dennis Gilbert and his students, was cited in a Newsweek article, "Islam in America: A Special Report," (July 30, 2007). The Poll examined Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. war on terrorism and related international issues and documented anti-Muslim discrimination and harassment in the United States after September 11.

Prints by three artists associated with Hamilton College, Professor of Art Bruce Muirhead, Jake Muirhead '86, and Dan Wittenberg '07, have been selected for the juried Washington Printmakers National Small Works 2007 Exhibition. Of the nearly 500 images submitted, juror Greg Jecmen, associate curator of old prints at the National Gallery of Art, selected 27 works. The exhibition runs from July 31 to August 26.