Is noise the message?

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commercials, communications, critical thinking, healthy, information, information age, knowledge, life experiences, machines, meaning, media, media age, message, music, noise, painting, skills, sounds, technology, TV, understanding, wisdom

We are swimming. Many of us are swimming hard. We are swimming up a river, against the current. With every stroke, we are being carried away in the flow, treading hard to keep our head up—to keep from drowning.

You’ve probably heard somewhere that we are living in the ‘information age’ or the ‘media age.’ Perhaps, you have noticed how, to keep up, you have to really struggle. I’ll put you a bit at ease, you can’t. You must pick and choose what information you wish to consume. These days, you need to also make sure you select good information.

We are all surrounded by plenty of information, but how much of it is valuable, useful, accurate, or even true? That’s right, not all information is good for you. Somewhere in all the information you must daily sift through is the message. The message is the content and meaning that is being communicated to you by another person or group of people and is also of importance and worth to you. When the amount of information and the number of messages increases, you need to determine what is most important and of greatest value to you.

You might now be asking, what is the other information? That is, what about all the less important and less value or of less worth information? Well, it is noise. Just like useless sounds that get in the way of you hearing something you want to hear, there is information that is noise. You need to learn to ignore it. It will waste your time and draw you away from increasing your knowledge, skills, understanding and wisdom in the way you truly want.

When I watch TV, I don’t want to watch commercials. They are there to cleverly try to persuade me to buy a product or service. I flip to something else. I have to be careful. It is too easy to get lost, even mesmerized into watching useless TV shows that really have little or no value or interest to me. The same goes for music, in fact any information from any media. We all need to be critically thinking about what we are consuming and how it is affecting us.

OK, I have covered valuable and useful. What about accurate and true information? You will have to keep in mind that life is about quality, not quantity. You will be better off if you take the time to verify information rather than believe it and move on because you will never get through everything you want.

How can you verify information? Stick with reliable sources. There are reasons why traditional news sources are worthy, however, you can, and should verify those too with other sources. Be careful not to spread inaccurate or false information. You have a responsibility to not be part of the problem. So, have a variety of sources that you feel are accurate. Read, listen and watch with a critical mind. Don’t believe everything as truth unless you are sure. Don’t believe everything just because it is on TV. As the old saying goes, ‘…trust everyone, but always cut the deck.’ That is, make a final check before you bet.

Remember, machines can hold information, your goal is to grow in that which makes you more human than a machine—wisdom. Wisdom might be gained from the assimilation of the best of information into knowledge and understanding blended with real life experiences. Tune out the noise and listen to the message. Take time to link it to what you already know. In this way you can come to understand the message better.

Perhaps, it is like food. If you eat a lot of foods, some will be good, some not so good. Keep eating a lot and you will get quite a bit of good food, however, you will get more bad food and that food will make you unhealthy. If you can identify what is good for you and eat mostly that food, you will be healthy. I think your mind works much the same way, with the goal of healthy wisdom.

Is this old school? Some people might argue that the world has changed. That there is too much to learn these days. They would say that, as you immerse yourself in the sea of information, the message will get through. In the same way, instead of studying an image, such as a painting, one would view many, perhaps hundreds, of images to get the message.

Is noise part or all of the message? Depending on the situation, the amount of noise in relation to the message might reach well over 90 percent. That’s a lot of noise and a lot of time to filter out the noise. Check the speed of images that are flashed before you on TV. Like viewing billboards from a fast moving train. Can we gain wisdom from quantity? Can we get the message from among the noise? Maybe what’s important will stand out, no matter what the flow of information. The human mind might be able to sift and sort out that which can bring wisdom, despite the noise. The noise is certainly going to do something though. It seems clear that this is a situation of us being kept busy and overwhelmed—not in control.
Should we care? Why not simply go with the flow? Why not just see where we end up and enjoy the trip? Well, that is not how humans ha

Should we let technology carry us away, down the river into the info-abyss of information, perhaps making us less human through the erosion of what makes us more human than a machine—wisdom.ve acted in the past. There is something about us that wants to be in control. It is a survival mechanism.

Kauai — From Christmas to New Years

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abundant, academics, activities, air, airplane, alcohol, bag, banana, bar, bathing suit, beach, bed, board, boarding, boogie, bowl, breakfast, brother-in-law, burrito, camera, cameras, clearing, coconut, combo, confident, contract, course, crowded, daily, daughter, days, demonstrate, dining, dinner, dirt, dishes, drift, drink, drinks, drive, edit, electric, expensive, family, fancy, fantastic, feature, feed, fire, fireworks, fish, float, flying, food, fun, generous, golf, graduate, grand caravan, grand hyatt, guacamole, guests, guitar, hawaii, hawaiian, hosts, ice cream, instructor, instructors, jazz, juggling, kalua, land, lanterns, launching, lava, lecture, lesson, links, live, macadamia, Marriott Waiohai Beach Club, mask, master, meal, memories, mexican, mitch, morning, movie, movies, music, neal, nelson, new years eve, night, nut, onboard, outdoor, pacific, paddle board, pancake, park, party, pedro, people, performance, photoblog, photography, photos, plastic, pocket, poipu, pool, post, potholes, price, private, pulled pork, qualifications, qualifies, red, reef, regulators, resort, restaurant, riding, road, rocks, rough, scuba, seattle, shore, shot, sing, sister, skills, snorkel, snorkelling, son, sort, sorted, spam, stand-up, stocking, storage, sun, sunrise, sunset, surf, surfer, surfing, surfs, swam, swim, swimming, syrup, talked, teaching, trains, treat, trip, TV, ukulele, underwater, vacation, vancouver, velocity, video, virgin, waiohai, walked, water, waterproof camera, waves, wife, world war II, written, youtube

Whew! We are flying home from our fantastic vacation at the the Marriott Waiohai Beach Club in Poipu, Kauai. My sister made sure we were kept busy experiencing all that we could. I have already mentioned some things we did. I continued to take an enormous number of photos, many of waves and sunrises. My storage for photos has been eaten up by the unexpected videos I shot with the little waterproof camera my sister gave us. I am now down to the onboard storage of both my cameras. I should make it, however, I will have to do some real juggling to find storage space to sort photos and edit all the videos into a short movie.

Back to the activities. Our hosts, my sister and brother-in-law, were truly generous by not only stocking the unit we stayed in with plenty of food, but also, getting us out to eat in the local dining places. For them, it is the experience with the dining rather than the price, however, they always point out that we are the least expensive guests to take out since we do not drink alcohol. So, the food is even more abundant.

One night we went to a semi-outdoor restaurant nearby. We sat right near the live music which included a fellow who surfs by day and plays the electric ukulele and sings by night. He was good too. Besides the fellow playing guitar at the outdoor bar at the Waiohai, we did not hear much more live music. Oh, there was a small jazz combo at the Grand Hyatt bar as we walked through.

One morning, we went for breakfast at the local golf course and had another huge meal. It seems that the World War II canned meat spam, still has a following in Hawaii. There are many dishes incorporating the meat, long forgotten elsewhere. I also had Kalua pulled pork, on other occasions too, even on the airplane a while ago. I tried my sister’s breakfast burrito and had a banana and Macadamia nut pancake with coconut syrup. I simply could not resist.

Another night we went to a Mexican restaurant, yes, Mexican in Hawaii, just to be different, I guess. The unique experience here was the table-side guacamole. Pedro came and made the guacamole, two servings, in a lava bowl right at our table and it was surely the best I have ever had.

We were treated to more surfing lessons. Our instructor, looked like true Hawaiian surfer. No family, just teaching surfing everyday, all day. He was there at sunrise and still around after sunset. Very dedicated. We were learning on reef surf, different from the beach surf at the previous lessons. All I can say is, it is still hard to do. But, we sure had fun. My son really took to stand-up paddle boarding and spent some hours on the last day trying to graduate to catching waves on the board.

The resort has a new contract to have daily scuba lessons available. Our instructor struck me immediately as very confident. There was my sister and three of us from my family. Neal told us that we had to do the academics first, so, he gave a short lecture, but, at a high velocity. One rarely runs across someone who can speak so fast. He assured us by giving his long list of qualifications, including the fact that he is the top person for the Pacific area and does work in movies and trains and qualifies instructors. Next, we had a couple of performance skills to master and demonstrate, such as clearing our mask of water and finding and clearing our regulators, all under water. It turned out to be so simple that, in no time, we were swimming around the pool underwater and having a great time. After, my sister invited Neal for a drink where we talked more about scuba and other interesting stuff. We came away from the experience knowing it had been a real treat. We had been in the company of a true master, just as we were with Mitch and Nelson, our surfing instructors.

As the trip was nearing its end, my sister urged me to do a few more things. One morning they took me to a somewhat remote beach for some photography. The drive was rough, through some private land. The road was the common red dirt with deep potholes, however, the Grand Caravan finally made it. We walked along the beach, along some rocks, I took many photos and then we did some snorkelling.

It was the last day, so when we got back from the early morning trip, my sister still had a few more activities for me to do. I had to keep up, somehow, so I grabbed some food and then we were off to have a swim with my wife and daughter at another beach and then, do some boogie boarding at still another beach on the other side of the resort and past a park. It was a crowded beach that we went to. People were body surfing and boogie boarding. It was difficult to keep from running into each other. On one ride I crossed over and my son ended up riding on top of me all the way into the shore.

I was not finished yet. My sister had some fish food to feed fish while snorkeling, so, off I was again to snorkel. My wife even went too. Not knowing where to put the food while we swam out to the reef, my sister suggested I shove the plastic bag into my bathing suit pocket. At one point, as I was using my small video camera, I realized that there were more fish than normal. A quick check of my pocket and I knew they already got the fish food.

Finally, it was time to get ready for the New Years Eve party on the beach. We started at the bar with some fancy drinks, virgin for most of us, and some dinner. People were already setting off fireworks on the beach and launching fire lanterns (I know there is proper name for them, but, I don’t have it on hand) that would float high into the air and drift away. Then came the big Poipu Beach fireworks display and the party was over before midnight. We went and had some ice cream, watched TV and then got tired, so we went to bed.

I feel as if there is so much I have not written about. We really did pack plenty of memories into this eight days of fun in the sun. We are about to land in Seattle for our connecting flight to Vancouver.

I will post some photos on my PhotoBlog and Feature Photos website once I get them sorted. I may even post some video on YouTube. I may also post links relating to the trip, if I get a chance.