Electricity and trash

The good news: Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle (1958) was worth going out in the eventual freezing rain to see (as was the unexpected short feature, Cours du soir (1967), essentially a masterclass in mime—I have never seen anyone so convincingly fail to hold on to an nonexistent fish), and we're going back on Saturday for Playtime (1967).

The bad news:

A report by the Brandeis school of arts and sciences proposed that the university scrap graduate programs in anthropology and theater design and reduce the number of university-sponsored doctoral students in computer science and chemistry. Undergraduates would be affected, as well, with the proposed elimination of Italian studies and Hebrew majors . . . Ten of the faculty positions would be cut from the sciences by eliminating the teaching and research of chemical dynamics, immunology, radio astronomy, and combinatorics, a branch of mathematics . . . In addition to fewer majors to choose from, undergraduates would no longer be able to minor in Yiddish, East European Jewish culture, or Internet studies. Those courses will still be offered but less frequently, Jaffe said.

Because evidently neither theater arts, nor Yiddish, nor Hebrew is essential to a Jewish liberal arts university. (And radio astronomy is fighting words with me.) O my alma mater, stop embarrassing my degree!