Author Archives: Adam Lior Hirst

I am Connecticut Limo — the incompetent taxi service familiar to all Nutmeggers and Yalies who travel. Transporting people is my vocation; it’s all I am asked to do and yet I fail miserably. You may wonder why I should maneuver into an opinion column. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, »

America has a storied history of fighting for right and freedom “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” We have shed blood and spent treasure to ensure that people around the world could be free. As a nation, we are especially concerned with ensuring the safety and prosperity of those who have »

This is the first year I am old enough to watch baseball games at a bar. Wings and dollar drafts and televisions and mirrors are strategically positioned to allow you to see the game regardless of where you stand are unique to the bar scene. Drunk, obnoxious fans are not, but it’s great that the »

In Periclean Athens, most public officials were selected by lot; the chosen men would then gather on a hill called the Pnyx to debate the issues of the day. Under Pericles’ influence, public offices became paid positions, for the first time opening up the government to even the poorest of Athenian citizens. In Exodus, the »

The first recesses following principal Ken Bernabee’s executive order restricting the rights of the third-graders at James Caldwell Elementary School — banning kickballs and basketballs — occurred without incident. We turned instead to action figures, endurance contests, derivatives of tag and imaginary games of X-Men — I was always Wolverine — to satiate our youthful »

Our world is at war with itself and we appear unable to turn sword into plowshare. Nuclear proliferation presages nuclear Armageddon; Great Depression has squandered great opportunity; Regressive fundamentalism is beating down progressive liberalism. Sixty years of upward progress toward man’s old-aged dream of individual freedom consistent with law and order is giving way to »

Have you subverted the patriarchy this ovester? Consider this question as we celebrate the 40th year of women at Yale. In reading the News’ series on coeducation that ran over five days last week, two things popped out. First, I was impressed by the impact of Yale’s female graduates, at both the local and international »

Toad’s has taken its place alongside the Cato Institute as a leading exemplar of libertarian, pro-business, free-markets-make-free-men capitalism. It is a for-profit business, after all. But in its efforts over the past week, with particular attention to its proposal to create a 400-square-foot rooftop terrace and its dreadful decision to allow Buju Banton to perform »

With his plans for health care reform stalled, President Obama should return his attention to stabilizing the financial markets. At this point, the administration has provided public money to keep failing industries afloat. Examples include the investment banks of New York and the automakers of Detroit. In contrast, the administration has spent little money restarting »

Freshmen: Heed Thomas Jefferson’s charge and make your residential college a “laboratory of democracy.” In a country that has built up federal organizations at the expense of state and local institutions, the colleges, isolated within the Yale bubble, retain the vestiges of opportunity and experimentation that once rested with the states. Think of each residential »

How will you spend your summer? Many of us spend more months considering this question than we do at our internships. We send applications with our cover letters, résumés and transcripts to potential employers in hopes that they will consider us for internships or, in the case of fellowship applications, so they will consider us »

The political lessons of pick-up basketball are unclear to me. But each time I watch or participate in a game, I have a renewed faith in people. The last time I played, my teammate was on the wing on the left side of the court; he crossed over his man, went into the lane, slashed »