Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The signal to noise ratio


There is a heck of a lot of noise outside. And lots of it sounds bad- real bad ! Before you start to worry , think about whose making it and why!

Wannabes are in love with volume, so they are happy to push it up when its coming through. But the finer point is they don't always know which is signal and which is noise. With all that volume ( of 2 kinds)and all those open channels the wannabee hero on the panel may not know how to " listen"- whether they were tuned in or not - more not that know .
The " what did you want to talk about " feedback noise of talk back radio is a great way to limit the damage, but the leaders are still behind the times - neither 774 nor 3AW will make it easy for you to connect with other callers. This should not be so. The simple shaking of my rattle has always been, but wannabees now face a new threat - irrelevance The wannabes turn up the volume up on their old machines even louder with the gain control on fearmongering bigger than ever (takes one to know one I say!)
Recent wolf damage doesn't help reduce the fanaticism amongst them .Embarrased by the bushfire and summerhouse fire damage to their reputation on risk planning ,wannabes are hell bent to tell us they can still warn us - The fact is there are better ways than emergency stations and one way conduits through them - some old some new.
Don't believe the panic merchants ; don't wait for them and don't encourage them to think they can now do things they are simply not good at doing - force them to refer you / themselves to trained people. Big bad noise triggers depend on many things ;one is where you are in relation to the Wolf .
There is always a lot of noise coming into the wannabes mixing desk. They should not try to tell us when it's really the big bad wolf - they are very poor at discerning the signal from the noise. Most importantly, the right adjustment is for the professionals ( should they still have some ) -each channel has its own gain level, and each sound has its uniquewave form.
While most of the journos focused on the absence of any content on the travellers Flu risk website yesterday, the symbolism ( no content) is lost on most of the noisemakers .There is often no proper gain control on the noises our leaders make. There could be no output, or lots of it ; lots of sound and fury, or even silence -all signifying nothing !

Whatever they or we expect, they are not our mothers and we need be careful not to encourage them to be so -They can take it too seriously . They may sound very caring ,or very scary but its not their job - it's ours or it was ours .Thats the point.
While I personally won't worry with more wolf talk from Wong, I think most of the public have already had too much of Father Christmas Kevin and Motherboard Theresa Gillard. The gallery is so full of noise , its hard to hear whats coming up next . Copyright Emperors Academy

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Everybody's angry- when the wolf is inside the house

We all need help with anger - there is an epidemic out there and the really , really worrying thing is that most people in this generation of westerners have no effective way of dissipating its energy and the sins possible if no effective response is offerred .
The wolf is often at the door with anger, but when we think the wolf is still outside , we really are in trouble!.
Example : I have my own theory as to why Neil Mitchell 3AW today struggles to control his own anger over Kevin Rudd's angry outburst over a flag. Maybe Neil too is tired or grieving or guilty , so why the big deal? Have we no kindness left? Is hypocrisy and projection lurking even closer to us than we think? .
The big problem .,it seems to me is that post moderns are confused about the way they should understand anger - They didn't listen hard enough in Sunday school to realise than anger is not a sin - its what can so easily come after it that is really worth worrying about.
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How can a genaration that believes what's natural is good worry about anger when anger is natural; even the Bible says " be angry but " as its storytellers often were. How easily confused we have become . This idea of behavioral damnation was exorcised from our cilization nearly 20 centuries ago
So why have we gone back to this confused doctrine of what sin is?. Does this confusion help explain why our leaders want again to return to the stultifying pharisaism of the regulators ( attendant real risk today ) and reinforce the woosy sentimentalism and copout that we are all "victims" of some determinism that won't allow us to ever be free indeed - ever again .

Take a step back -its good that Neil gets angry - " Be angry Neil but ...." ( advice for us all) Previous generations of journos would have followed/ or been made to recognise the 5th/ 9th Commandment that seeks to protect a persons reputation and honor. A
Previous generations of journos would also have followed/ or been made to recognise that anger is not a sin and that postmodernists and reactionaries , in their rush to try and restore some sort of morality NOW , allow all sorts of nonsense talk about sin into the discusssion - including the complete myth that anger is sin.
We all need help with anger - there is an epidemic out there and the really , really worrying thing is that most people in this generation of westerners have no effective way of dissipating its energy and the sins possible if no effective response is offerred . ( Knight the man who shot manyat his workplace said this about "the audience"- you talk kindness, but you don't listen!) Anger is not the problem its made out to be , lack of really listening can be - that the bigger problem maybe is the audience problem ??
Fortunately the effective remedies of generations only take a few lines HERE and the acceptance of the basic boundaries.