All News

This week our program considered Mayor Bloomberg, first in class and then on a field trip to City Hall. Comparing Bloomberg and Giuliani was interesting for me as a New Yorker. For me, Giuliani saved the city, while Bloomberg made New York City move from September 11 inertia to economic prosperity. Both had goals and accomplished them, but with very different styles. Our visit to City Hall enabled me to understand Bloomberg’s position more than simply reading about him in The New York Times. I was especially interested in his initiative to coordinate after-school education programs.

This afternoon, one of the first really warm days of the year,  I took a walk through Central Park along with what seemed like most of New York. As Colson Whitehead puts it in  The Colossus of New York, "On the first day of spring in search of antidote they seek the park, hardly aware of biological imperative.  Everybody has the same idea."

As I peered down at the New York Stock Exchange floor from the gallery above, I was impressed that employees could work in that hectic environment.  People, mostly men, run around with tickets of paper, screaming "buy" or "sell."  Half could make all the difference.  Huge buying and selling stations divide the room and into a labyrinthine structure that the employees navigate with ease.  The runners sprint around like rats in a maze trying to find that elusive gourmet cheese.  While the runners shout "buy, buy, buy," the men in the booth type.  Fingers tap dance across the keyboard-- the two-step, shuffle, and Charleston.  A number rolls across the stock ticker and a cheer goes up.  Some one guessed right and another million dollars falls into his account.

I have the privilege of spending part of my commute in the main concourse of Grand Central Station. I believe it to be the greatest standing American monument to mass transportation. It is majestic and awe inspiring, as the hundreds of tourists who stand on its inner balconies each day snapping photograph after photograph testify.

Dayton Duncan gave a lecture titled "How Lewis and Clark Wrote Their Way Across America, and Into Immortality" on March 4 to students in Sophomore Seminar 295: "On The Trail of Lewis and Clark" and other members of the Hamilton community. Duncan is the author of several books on the journey of Lewis and Clark, including Out West: A Journey Through Lewis & Clark's America, a book which students read in the Sophomore Seminar. In Out West, Duncan describes his travel along the trail of Lewis and Clark, a trip the students of the Sophomore Seminar class will make later this year. Duncan’s lecture focused on how the Lewis and Clark expedition’s dedication to writing has helped to create their legacy.

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, is quoted in a Reuters article about Wen Jiabao's first year in office as China's premier.  Jiabao addressed China's parliament at its annual session on March 5.

The trick to being young and jobless in NYC is finding a job and  finding stuff to do that is free.  This week I tried my luck at both and came out pretty well.  As many before I have discovered, New York has everything one could ever want if you have the money. So earlier this week, I dedicated myself to finding a job. 

Professor of Geology Eugene Domack was quoted in an article about Tasmanian oil in the March 1 edition of Platts Oilgram News, an oil industry newsletter. The article discussed an oilman named Malcolm Bendall who is looking for oil on the island of Tasmania, a place where it was long thought that commercial hydrocarbons did not exist. Bendall, however, is certain that the island has potential for oil drilling. Professor Domack concurred, saying, "The potential for oil is 100%... The source rocks are some of the best I’ve ever seen and they have a thermal history. The problem is how continuous and producible the oil and gas may be due to faulting. It may be difficult to get at without a lot of drilling."

The Hamilton College Orchestra will present a concert titled "BRAINSTORM! A Sense of Time" on Sunday, March 7, at 3 p.m. at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts. "BRAINSTORM!" is a concert format that the orchestra introduced to Hamilton last year, in which the orchestra explores a topic with connections to multiple disciplines, interspersing discussion with musical examples of each piece to be performed in order to illustrate how the issues raised are reflected in the music. 

Cheng Li, the William R. Kenan Professor of Government, was interviewed on the BBC news program "World Service,"  Thursday, March 4.  Li discussed the meeting of the National People's Congress and the amendment of property right to the Chinese constitution.