Category: All Posts

Mem Drive and Mass Ave.

I first thought about mentioning my peripheral connections to MIT after reading this item in Technology Review at the end of June.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/29/1053303/how-mit-ended-up-on-memorial-drive/

My conversation this week with an MIT astrophysicist has nudged me into action. Did we discuss cosmic rays? Black holes at the center of galaxies? Or was the topic her particular area of expertise, the search for dark matter?

No, it was something quite Earthbound and mundane. A contractor had sent her to me for a reference.

Unknown to me for many years, when my family moved to Massachusetts, my father’s cousin Jane was at MIT, getting her PhD in Political Science.

Dr. Jane Pratt, 1943-2013

In the 70’s my father worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management for a few years. In the 80’s my twinster Jean worked at MIT while I was working at a nearby company named after MIT, founded by a couple of its grads. A friend who’s reading this is an MIT grad.

How Much is Free Advice Worth?

I don’t follow personal finance gurus, like PBS favorite Suze Orman, and not because her sales pitch is directed mostly at women. The inspirational self-help tone, with its “pay yourself first” catchphrase advice, isn’t for me. Here’s an Orman podcast with another cutesy slogan.

The Freakonomics podcast has a related discussion. What do academic economists think about personal financial advice? After all, the spending decisions made by consumers, in the aggregate, are what drive 70% the economy.