The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is home to so many large heads.
Heads that need nurturing. Heads that needs feeding. Heads that need, just occasionally, to sweat and play and bang.
Now, some of MIT's finest brains will be denied these sources of release.
Yes, in a swathing, thoughtless massacre of all that is good and important in human development, MIT has withdrawn funding for eight crucial sports.
No longer will the men and women of MIT be able to represent the school in ice hockey or gymnastics. No longer will the artificial intelligentsia of tomorrow be able to declare: "I alpine ski for MIT."
No longer will they be able to duel with competitive pistols at dawn, nor wrestle their fellow brains from Dartmouth or Cornell to the floor, clutching at their spare tires as if trying to grasp a new thesis.
Who will be surprised if these windows are suddenly assaulted by flying golf balls?
(Credit: CC Open Content/Flickr)However, perhaps most shocking of all, most stunning to the ear, the eye and the moral system that so many live by, is the fact that MIT will no longer have a golf team.
Golf, a game that requires the precision of a programmer, mixed with the nerveless guile of a venture capitalist. How is it possible that MIT might slice its golf team like the rind of a dried-up ham?
This surely is the equivalent of British ministers eschewing semi-clothed sex in the Houses of Parliament.
Might I beg those who seem to believe that saving a derisory $1.5 million on this insane potential-shrinking scheme consider whether they have accidentally donated their brains to some Cuban cloud computing cabal?
Our finest technological brains need golf to appreciate how capricious a game, and therefore life, can be. They need golf to grasp how even the most perfect stroke can be diverted by the mere grain of growing grass.
They need to understand the pain of poor club selection. Yes, they need to appreciate that sometimes they're just not right.
If golf doesn't tell them, who will?
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