Michael Zink
Michael Zink
Recent Stories
Newly beyond the gates of Yale …
Four former columnists who graduated in May write about their lives these days, and share perspectives they have gained since leaving Yale.
Zink: Vote for all three
The News has been suffering from a distinct lack of discussion of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for Ward 1 alderman.
Zink: Economy = skiing
A digest of recent top stories from CNN and MSNBC: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot might be disappearing, having shrunken by 15 percent in the past ten years; Michelle Obama touched the queen, causing royalists everywhere to swoon fitfully; A man dropped the engagement ring during a marriage proposal on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was later recovered.
Zink: Harness volcano power!
Lots of Yalies tuned in to watch President Obama address Congress this Tuesday, but I was more interested in what happened afterward.
Zink: Save the cuties
If you happen to be reading this article over a piece of dining hall tilapia, then hold up: You may be about to sink your teeth into a kitten, sort of.
Zink: In defense of nemeses
This is what a medieval joust looks like today: Two students, armed with the vague sensation that they are acquaintances, approach one another from opposite ends of an empty hallway. Tension grows. One, defeated, looks away — but nobody cheers.
Zink: OMG, whom did we elect?
In a tableau that was mirrored on countless college campuses, in city streets and suburbs across the country, hundreds of Yalies converged on Old Campus on Tuesday night to celebrate Barack Obama’s historic victory. People hugged. People cried. Chants of “Yes we can” were met with even more spirited chants of “Yes we did.”
Zink: No STDs, but other dangers in virtual life
In his novel “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture,” Douglas Coupland coins the term “ultra short-term nostalgia,” defined as the modern feeling of “homesickness for the extremely recent past.”
Spare the drill, spoil the child
Even in the face of skyrocketing oil prices, some American policy-makers stubbornly refuse to abandon bans on domestic drilling. Rather than tap into the nation’s most bountiful oil reserves, they would prefer to sit on these supplies in hopes that they will, at some point in the future, prove useful.
Zink: Absolut divestment
This sounds like a simple problem of subtraction, but it is in fact a question so thorny that years from now, experts will still be trying to decipher the complex financial implications of the deals that led Lehman and other major investment firms to their collapse. Even a partial explanation of how Lehman Brothers accumulated over $600 billion in debt would need to involve lengthy and bewildering discussion of “tranching,” “hedging,” and “leveraging”; “CMOs” and “CDOs.”