mattmanna/blog

Tweets posted from May 23, 2009 thru June 7, 2009.

• Good & fast is unfailingly slower than bad & fast. It won’t pay to be good if you compete where the two are valued equally. Best to move on.
• WWDC is just a couple of hours away. Video iPhone = exciting. See video’s made with an iPhone, not so much.
• Microsoft need not continue advertising which tries to evoke a sense that Windows PC’s are cheap. Everyone I know already feels that way.
• There is no comfort to be had from a government that forces us to accept what it cannot persuade us to accept.

Tweets posted from March 8, 2009 thru May 22, 2009.

• What did your counterpart say? Why did your counterpart say it? What are your objectives? Answer these correctly & success will soon follow.
• I would rather be penniless in a free market economy than rich in a command economy. Having said that, I don’t believe either is possible.
• Being the best at something requires you to accept what you just made as having unusual value only until someone else duplicates it.
• Rap music would be a perfect locution with the addition of a leading C.
• Physicists spend much time sorting out a unified field theory. The field of government has a unified theory. It’s called individual freedom.
• Just when I thought the Kindle was right for me, they’ve decided to “fix” its most notable feature . (http://tinyurl.com/d7jkx4)
• If you resize my browser window you’re suspect. Highly suspect.
• The difference between amateur & professional: Professionals persuade. Amateurs force. This is why markets are superior to government.
• People absorb impressions before they absorb substance. The amateur communicator attends only to the impression. The pro attends to both.

“Hey batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, batter, ssswing batter. He can’t hit it, he can’t hit it, he can’t hit it, he can’t hit it, ssswing batter.” This chant, used to entice opposing hitters to swing at bad pitches, makes sense in the context of the game. It’s good for your team when the opposition’s batter swings at a poor pitch, and it’s bad for them.

Swinging at a good pitch, and laying off a bad pitch, is basic, top-notch baseball dogma; a dictate that flows from the time honored history of the game. Sadly it is ignored for the first half of the Carrollton Little League Modified Kid Pitch season.

The league’s rules say the first four pitches will come from the opposing teams pitcher. The next two pitches will come from the batters coach. The umpire calls strikes on all pitches. If the batter has not struck out or put a ball in play after six pitches, the batter is out. There are no walks.

This is an inane set of rules that encourage bad performance. They also tend to discombobulate the eight-year-olds upon whom they are applied. A better set of rules would be for the batter to remain at bat until he/she strikes out or puts the ball in play. Pitch count should be inconsequential.

Under the current rules, fans, teammates and coaches applaud the batter for not swinging at bad pitches that are among the first four. “Good eye, good eye,” is a common call from the stands and dugout.

When batters with one or no strikes get pitch number five and six, they are encouraged by fans and instructed by coaches to swing regardless of pitch quality. The common call becomes, “gotta swing, gotta swing.”

Fortunately the rules change in mid-season. At such time coaches will not make any pitches. The batter will be called out on strikes and awarded a base on balls.

Still, it is a reckless blunder to invoke a rule system that, for half a season, encourages both bad performance and support of bad performance. That’s what chants from the opposition are for.

Gotta Swing
by Matt Manna
Document: 00557CCD
Published: 4/30/2009

Tweets posted during the week of March 1, 2009.

• In the end it all comes to, “How much is it?” Technicians work on the “how much” part. Communicators work on the “is it” part.
• When reminded that he could save paper by using the double sided option, he threw away 6 just printed pages and reprinted them on 3. Argh!
• Without regulation we would either understand our investments, invest ignorantly, or not invest. Regulation adds invest based on lies.
• It’s wrong to believe certain things go without saying. Certain things go away without saying. The most important of these is liberty.
• Perception is reality. Horse poop! Perceptions are epistemological ponzi schemes, reliable for a time, but inaccurate in matters of truth.

Tweets posted during the week of February 22, 2009.

• It took much too long before I realized this headine was about hockey, “Ducks trade Chris Kunitz for Penguins’ Ryan Whitney.”
• I’m inclined to listen when a politician starts talking about zombies.
• Government can only create money. The rest of us have to create wealth. The former is easy and every time it’s done the latter gets harder.
• Reading Bloomberg.com is like asking a carny if their rides are safe. You know what they’re gonna say before you even ask the question.
• When an animal behaves in a terribly harmful way, we destroy the animal. We should adopt that strategy in regards to government.

Tweets posted during the week of February 15, 2009.

• Copywriting works. Nothing so suffocates the itch to see a movie than the words “a post 9/11 investigation into the American psyche.”
• Regarding my previous tweet. I meant lose not loose. Must be loosing my mind. Oops!
• Every day in the U.S. 305 people experience a one in a million chance event. Didn’t loose my keys at any point in time today - who’s next?
• It’s clear who you are. All we’re doing now is discussing price. Oy! (http://tinyurl.com/cbetqg)
• Wealth creation has always been in spite of top down, centrally directed economic policy, never because of it. I can think of no exceptions.
• Quite sad to hear that Louie Bellson died today. (http://louiebellson.info/news.html)
• For Sale: Weight loss potion that guarantees you will loose or not gain 20 lbs. by tomorrow morning. This sounds stupid because it is.
• President Obama’s blue-chip campaign theme lives. In much less than 100 days it is clear that this is still a time for change.

Tweets posted during the week of February 08, 2009.

• Politics, in engineer speak, is a system designed within “narrow operating conditions.” To expect anything but homogenized goo is silly.
• If forced to choose between God and the Devil, I choose Government; not that I believe in any of them.
• I wonder if any of the presidents advisors have the gravitas to say, “Mr. President, first the economy gets better & then jobs are created.”
• Upon hearing the word ocelot, I began to ponder the title Mac OS X Ocelot. Time to modify my circle of friends; maybe join a bowling league.
• I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. -A. De Tocqueville. Indeed!

Should an arbitrary parent-set bedtime trump the delightful lump of learning that so often results from the marriage of minor and machine? My answer: No way! Everyone learns rules but few rule learning; a condition remedied (as so many conditions are) by extending maximum freedom.

Joe is always happy to put my philosophy into action. After many attempts, we have not yet managed to hit his prescirbed bedtime. We have managed to learn a few things together. And, I fancy, make a nice picture.

Canon EOS 5D
ISO: 1000. Shutter: 1/100. Aperture: f/1.2.
Focal Length: 85.0mm.
May 11, 2008 - Dallas, Tx.

Tweets posted during the week of February 01, 2009.

• Chicago is rapidly becoming ground zero for deep dish taco.
• Defined & limited resources ≠ lack of opportunity. Just think of all the effective writing & music created with just 26 letters & 12 tones.

Tweets posted during the week of January 25, 2009.

• The best way to demonstrate cognitive dissonance is to use the term “social fabric” in a speech for which you have dressed in plaid.
• McManna Dictionary: Government Economic Policy - Lies about supply and demand. (Stolen from this must read book: http://tinyurl.com/b55zaj.)
• To the lady I met today at Starbucks: “Wow! You make carbon trading take on an altogether different meaning. Even cap & trade sounds good.”
• So, it’s biology, geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, etc… v. a 2000 year old book that doesn’t mention any of the above. Easy as pie!
• Some day I want to look as good as Lisa Loeb sounds. And looks.
• Job description: Event coordinator. Required skill: The ability to treat an individual as an equal only if they treat you as a superior.
• Every time “virtually” is used in a sentence it is used in error. Virtually.
• A colleague just said, “Even the most cheerful of people dislike something about everything.” That virtually screams post me on twitter.
• The words “The Best Of” are best served when followed by “Bob & Ray.” (http://tinyurl.com/c33lyg)
• When it comes to certainty, it’s important to remember, no proof of ≠ proof of none.