More From the 'Ark'

Here is video of the exploration team posted on YouTube. They have found something remarkable, it appears. But can it be Noah's Ark?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGIUfWXvwJI&feature=player_embedded

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The Lord Told Noah To Build Him an Arky, Arky...

My dad showed me something most remarkable yesterday. A group of Christian explorers and scientists claim to have found a wooden structure that they believe to be Noah's Ark buried in a glacier on Mount Ararat. Noah's Ark? The group of Turkish and Chinese Christians (no Americans involved) say that they have found a multi-room wooden structure preserved in the ice. Carbon dating says the wood is 4,800 years old, according to the group, which equates to 2,800 B.C. According to a literal dating of Genesis, the flood would have happened between 3,000 and 2,500 B.C.

Here's an excerpt from a Fox News article posted yesterday:

Representatives of Noah's Ark Ministries said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000 feet in the vicinity, Yeung said.

During the press conference, team member Panda Lee described visiting the site. “In October 2008, I climbed the mountain with the Turkish team. At an elevation of more than 4,000 meters, I saw a structure built with plank-like timber. Each plank was about 8 inches wide. I could see tenons, proof of ancient construction predating the use of metal nails."

As you might expect, the news has been met with a mix of excitement and skepticism. I have both. It's exciting if the find is real and there is no fraud involved. Whether or not this is Noah's Ark or just an old mountain cabin will probably be debated for eons to come, much like the Shroud of Turin. The bottom line is that faith must be present before proof becomes proof.

The skeptic in me says that this is too good to be true and makes me hold off belief until I see another set of scientific analysis. Does this structure really exist? Don't forget that we live in the age of Photoshop and Twitter, where fakes can be manufactured and distributed quickly. And... I wonder why this would come to light now, at this time? I briefly saw an article in which even an old ark hunter is skeptical about this new find. Then there are those linguists who claim Genesis 8:4 refers to the mountain range of Ararat and not the mountain itself.

Anyway, here was the Fox News article from yesterday. It's fascinating and I hope it's true. But I can't get super-excited yet.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/noahs-ark-found-turkey-ararat/

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A Song About Adventure

I wrote this one a few years back as a lullaby for a young boy. In some ways it sheds light on my yearning for adventure.

— John

Sweet Dreams

Standing on the beach I watch the tide roll out

Sending the boats out to sea

And I wonder, young man, how you’re doing right now

Chasing your heart’s deepest dream

Cause right here on the shore, it is such a bore

I’d rather be out on the sea

Sailing away to some far away land

There’s adventure just waiting for me!

So drift off away to a far away land

Of paupers and prophets and kings

May God ever hold you in the palm of His hand

And fill your young mind with sweet dreams

In every boy’s mind there’s a treasure to find

Of stories too good to believe

Of heroes and giants, villains and kings

Who play out a breathtaking scene

Maybe there are pirates! Maybe a storm!

Maybe a princess in need!

I’m never gonna know if I never go

To follow my heart’s deepest dream!

And I pray that you know what it means to find love

And love what it means to be free…

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An Adventure Awaits!

I'm thinking about going on an adventure this summer. A real journey of epic proportions. Or so I've imagined it.

Maybe I'll go volcano hunting in New Mexico, where hundreds of extinct volcanoes dot the landscape. I just read the other day that one of them is not yet considered extinct because it still shows signs of volcanic activity. I've always been attracted to volcanoes. They're just kinda really... cool.

Maybe I'll go on a mountain expedition to Colorado, hiking up 14,000-foot peaks and descending into 2,000-foot canyons. I haven't been to Colorado in nine years; not on my own since the mid 1990's.There's a lot of history there, too. Maybe I'll find me some gold...

Maybe I'll seek out some sun and sand by the sea. I have a desktop background that always seems to beckon me to come to the Caribbean (or the South Pacific) and relax by its scenic waters. I can see it now... sitting in a hammock stretched between palm trees, my hat pulled over my eyes, an ice cold lemonade in my hand, listening to the sound of the surf...

Maybe I'll do something with deeper meaning, and go serve on the mission field this summer in some far-off place. I think I can work with my hands, even though I make my living in front of a computer.


Wherever I go, there's adventure waiting for me! I just know it! And my camera crew will be coming with me....


I have discovered during the journey of my life that I have a spirit of adventure infused into my soul. Like a tapestry, it is woven into the fibers of my being. You cannot take the desire for adventure away from me without destroying me in the process. I long to explore new places, meet new faces, and do new things (non-crazy things, that is). I'm rarely content with where I am in my life if there is a lack of adventure, challenge or growth. I cannot accept the status quot if it isn't taking me or those I love somewhere better than this.

I have recently concluded that sitting in a desk chair all day is the antithesis of adventure. But since it is my job at present, I need to stretch my explorer side this summer. Where I go is what I have to determine.

There are some challenges to going on adventures. Take being single, for example. Without a traveling buddy, anywhere I go for extended periods of time will have to be done alone. And as I discovered last summer during my vacation to California, being alone in strange places can be tough. I did a LOT of talking to myself. And to my camera crew (a Panasonic, a JVC, and a Canon).

Finances are another challenge to adventure. Right now I'm struggling to get my financial head above water, so wherever I go needs to be cheap AND satisfying. I have been blessed with a newer car that gets great gas mileage, so I'll probably drive wherever I go this summer. That limits my range of adventure, unfortunately, and I wish it wasn't that way. But every adventure needs to be balanced by some (if little) reality.

There's something spiritual in adventure, too. My heart is restless and I can tell you with confidence that this is not a thing of the flesh but of the spirit. I am not at home in this world and my heart knows it. I am different than the world and I see it everyday by observing people around me. Oh, I look like them, for sure, but the eyes of my heart have been opened and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, while those who do not know Him are still asleep. One of my favorite movie lines comes from an adventure movie, "Joe Versus the Volcano." The female lead says this to an adventure-seeking Joe, "My father says almost the whole world's asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says only a few people are awake.  And they live in a state of constant total amazement."

My restless heart comes from a yearning for freedom, freedom of the mind, freedom of the heart, and freedom of the body. I want to be free! I also want to find a place of rest for my weary heart and mushy head. I've been taxing my body in that desk chair and straining my eyes and my mind for way too long. I owe them a break. I need a place of rest.

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 55. In that song, David is stressed out by the revelation that his enemies are slandering him and his best friend has betrayed him. His heart and his soul are weary. So he says,

"Oh, that I had wings like a dove! 

I would fly away and be at rest. 

Behold, I would wander far away, 

I would lodge in the wilderness. 

I would hasten to my place of refuge 

From the stormy wind and tempest.”

This is the relief for which my heart longs. An adventure that brings rest. Is there one waiting for me?  I hope so!  I just know I have to get away to find it. No metaphorical "adventures in life" for me — I need real, physical adventures.

So I plan and dream until I find one.

— John

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We Be Mass Communicatin!

 A very young me on local TV. Note the sports tie. 

I've collected a few dozen of those! See those peeling letters on the backdrop? 

I cut those out of copy paper and taped them to the backdrop my senior year, 

hoping to "up" the quality of our broadcast!

When I first stepped into the TV studio at John Brown University's broadcasting department 15 years ago, I was awestruck. The room was absolutely huge! Twenty-foot ceilings with hanging studio lights, a sit-com set in one corner and a news set in another. A big green screen on the wall and really big cameras on wheels. It was a freshman geek's heaven!

When I first visited JBU the spring before, I fell in love with the idea of broadcasting. After talking to one of the television profs, I made up my mind that I wanted to learn as much about radio and television as possible during my four years there and that fall I set about obtaining my lofty ambition. The first semester, I took "beginning radio" and learned about putting together radio newscasts, advertisements, and doing dramatic readings. I wasn't on the air yet, but I knew that if I was good enough, I'd be on the air in just a few months.

The next semester I was on-air to Northwest Arkansas via music station KLRC-FM and starting my courses in TV production and mass communications. By my third semester I was calling basketball games and anchoring sportscasts on television, working on-air at the campus radio station and has started to write news articles for the campus paper. Add to that a budding (and bumbling) baseball career, and I was in heaven.

Mass communication was so fun! Students were reading my written words, common folks were hearing my voice in their cars and at work, and I was sending basketball broadcasts through the telephone from far off gymnasiums. I was learning the importance of sending and receiving messages and how the manner of our delivery often shapes the message we deliver.



The Newest Oldest Technology

As I recall the "good old days" of the late 1990s, I have on my mind how much mass communication has changed in just a few years. There are still messages to deliver and the method still matters, but there are so many more methods now than there were 10 or 15 years ago. Just look at the development of the Internet, for example. It existed when I went off to college but its potential to be a source of news gathering and relay had yet to be tapped. Journalism entities were slow to jump on the e-bandwagon, perhaps for fear of the unknown. If you wanted to dig up a story, you used the telephone. If you wanted to videotape an interview, you sent a camera crew. If you wanted to broadcast the footage, you edited it from tape-to-tape and stuck the edited tape in a tape deck, ready for TV or cable broadcast.

Audio recording was done on 8-track-like "carts" that varied in length and could be recorded on only once before needing to be magnetically erased. Later, radio stations used either mini-discs or CD recorders for recording audio. Editing took place with multiple cart/disc decks and the skillful timing of a producer.

I was first exposed to computer editing at JBU but it was viewed as experimental technology. Now, there are no more tape-to-tape editing decks (or very few) and carts, mini-discs and CD recorders have followed suit. Everything is computer-based and digital.

My, how mass communication has changed!


When I was in broadcasting and journalism school, mass communication was through radio, television, newspapers and film. Now newspapers are dying, radio is quick to follow, television news has become entertainment and films... well, films are still films. It's sad to see my industries fade away. The very equipment I was trained on is no longer used in the communications professions. Most of what I've learned about shooting, editing and distributing media has come post-college. And college was only 11 years ago.

Information is communicated almost instantaneously these days thanks to the development of cell phones, social media websites, and computer media software. A person can shoot, edit and post anything within five minutes, sometimes quicker. They can video a fiery car crash with their iPhone and e-mail it to the local news station before the drivers even get out of their mangled vehicles.

On last week's Deadliest Catch TV show, I was blown away by something I saw. After a small fishing vessel capsized off the Aleutian Islands coast, a nearby ship rushed to the coordinates to assist the boat's four-man crew. The following rescue was captured on video, not by a documentary film crew, but by a camera phone. The whole five-minute sequence, with clear audio, was shot by one of the rescuing crew and the quality was amazing. I have an old Panasonic digital camcorder that couldn't capture better video. The Discovery Channel obtained the video from the fisherman and included it in their show. It was powerful.

During the recent earthquakes, camera phones captured both rubble and rescue and video from the impact zones was on the Internet within a half hour of the quakes. Texting has also revolutionized communication. Within minutes of each earthquake, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites were flooded with on-the-scene reports. Before a single journalist had landed on the ground — before a single helicopter had taken off to survey the scene, the whole world knew what had happened and how bad it was.

ABC News surprised the media world last month by announcing a new approach to the way its journalism is done. The major media entity will rely more on regular folks with cell phone cameras and other handheld devices to collect news stories, interviews and opinions than its paid news staff. As a result, a lot of producers, reporters, cameramen and behind-the-scenes folks will be out of work soon, as the network trims its budget and tries to streamline its news operation. CNN already uses "iReporters" to gather news and create online media content. These iReporters may be paid a few bucks, but I gather that most are just citizens with cameras and a healthy dose of curiosity.

Mass communication has been turned on its head in some ways. Ten to 15 years ago, mass communication was sent from selected entities to the masses. Now, it's sent from the masses to selected entities. The messages are the same: hard news, soft news, entertainment. The methods are changing, however. Those who hold broadcast-journalism degrees and have multi-point resumes like myself are wary of the way things are going, not because the people have been empowered but because anything and everything can be reported as news. No filters. In the old days, the professionals were the editors, weeding out fact from fiction. Now, each person is his or her own filter, and there are some awfully porous filters out there!

As I seek to use mass communication in the context of church ministry, I am wondering how the new age of communication is going to affect my efforts. Is simple video good enough anymore? Can I put ink to paper and have it be effective communication, or do I need to text message my words? How can I make sure a message I deliver is the message received?

It is a different age, though I hardly feel 11 years older than when I graduated. Time is a funny thing, you know.

Oh, and the fact that I am blogging is, in itself, evidence of the new communication age. Didn't have THAT when I was in school, either!



A few more pics for your amusement...

I actually won some awards for column writing during my junior and senior years of college from the Arkansas Collegiate Media Association. Here I am posing with a first place award at my Siloam Springs townhouse.

I cut my broadcasting teeth on college basketball, calling four years of JBU Golden Eagle hoops on both TV and radio (taped simulcast at home, live radio on the road). I also announced local high school hoops, including a state championship run for the Siloam Springs gals, and football. I loved doing on-camera work. Getting paid for it was a big bonus!