Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

Yesterday’s mail contained a newsletter to neighbors (Cambridge, MA residents) from Harvard University.  It was just after I read a news report on Harvard’s endowment, which earned 16.7 percent on an approximately $30 billion stash.  In other words, Harvard earned around $4.5 billion, tax-free.  After deducting for inflation, in other words, Harvard earned enough last year to purchase a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, complete with a fleet of fighter jets.  What did the letter to neighbors say?  It seems that one day per year, Harvard’s museums, normally $10 per person per museum, open their doors to Cambridge residents for free.  That’s right, 1/365th of the time, Harvard will not collect every last possible dime.  When is this glorious day to occur?  September 17, 2006.  I.e., the “connections” newsletter arrived in my mailbox several days after it would have been possible to visit the museums for free.

For those who believe that aviation and alcohol don’t mix well, a video of Robinson R22 and R44 helicopters being used to open beer bottles… http://www.glumbert.com/media/beerbottle

Our summer rental in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb with two-acre minimum zoning, is coming to an end.  My friend Tom asked me whether I was sorry to be giving up the yard, woods, and pond and moving back to my crummy two-bedroom apartment in Harvard Square.  I said, “Well, in three months here I’ve only met one other person.”  Tom said that he’d lived in a Manhattan high-rise and found it difficult to meet people outside of work. The authors of A Pattern Language advocated a three- or four-story maximum height for housing with a lot of public squares, which is sort of what Cambridge is like (sadly the three- and four-story structures are wooden and fell into disrepair 50+ years ago).  It is definitely much easier to meet folks while out walking the dog in Cambridge than wandering around in isolation over the trails of Lincoln.

Could it be that Cambridge has the ideal physical structure?

One of my favorite things about God is that He chose to give most of the world’s money to folks who aren’t sure what to do with it.  Some friends of mine want to start and run an online community sort of like www.photo.net, but on a different topic.  Have you ever asked yourself “I wish there were a photo.net for ____”? If so, on what topic(s)?  Please use the comment section to answer.

We gave at least 30 MIT students rides on Labor Day.  An interested photo is on the front page of the September 8, 2006 Tech.  The fly-in inspired me to write http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/helicopter-landing-zone

A friend of mine recently went to work for a 50-year-old 200-employee company that has bumbled along with modest success as a niche supplier in its (very large) market.  She talked about how happy the employees were and how so many had worked there for decades.  I said “That means they are overpaid.”  She questioned me on this point.  I cited a study of married people that found that each thought he or she was doing more than 50% of the chores.  The explanation was that a husband is guaranteed to be watching when he himself is doing a chore, but doesn’t see all of the things that the wife is doing (and vice versa).  The same phenomenon applies at work.  An employee knows all of the things that he or she does personally.  The employee isn’t aware of what the others in the company are doing.  Consequently, the employee develops a major overestimate of his or her relative productivity and the percentage of overall work done.  (Programmers, starting off with massive egos and having little contact with other human beings, are perhaps the worst overestimators of all, especially the 80% of programmers whose contributions are purely negative.)

An employee will overestimate his value to the company by at least a factor of 2.  If he is not griping about his salary, it means you’re paying him at least twice as much as he is worth.

[Shortly after this conversation, the investor who had recently purchased the enterprise decided to fire the long-serving Chief Operating Officer.]

The weather forecast calls for clearing conditions here in Boston.  If you’re around and want to go for a helicopter ride, come to Briggs Field at MIT (the end closer to the BU Bridge) between 10:30 and 1 tomorrow (Monday, September 4) and you can buy a raffle ticket for $5 that will probably get you on or just wave some serious cash and the students running the show will let you ride.  The whole thing is a benefit for the MIT Flying Club and their Web page explains more about the event.   All proceeds go to the club; I am paying for the machine and the gas.