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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 26 April 2011

I’ve been on a binge learning curve, trying to jettison my video-illiteracy and catch up with the young-uns. I’ve got more to learn, of course, but I’ve come a long way. Very cool.

Today I sat at my son-in-law’s (Joe Drouillard) side as he tutored me in video and audio posting to websites, YouTubing, MP3 and MP4, burning DVDs, and more. Since he’s a web designer (J D Web Design Studio) he also created the video box in the right column of my rexmrogers.com homepage. I can now rotate a new video, most likely from the ministry with which I serve, SAT-7, whenever I want. This is a useful skill that will allow me to add a video blog or vlog feature to the website. Very cool.

Here I’ve learned to “embed,” as opposed to just link, a video from YouTube. This will allow me from time to time to highlight a video with relevant content re my blog. Very cool.

Short videos or films are called, guess what, “shorts.” These days, given the abbreviated attention span of virtually everyone, especially under 40 years of age, a short is all you get. Like the “Making a Difference” radio programs I used to do: you get in, try to say something meaningful, and get out, all in about 90 seconds. Video shorts are generally anything under 10 minutes, but the shorter the better, as in under 2 minutes…kind of like television commercials.

One reason to climb this learning curve is to experience the sheer joy of learning. I know, some people write me off at that one. But I’m an old educator with a lifelong passion for lifelong learning. In fact, I’ll do you one better. I think one of the things we’re going to be doing in heaven for eternity is learning from the omniscient, infinitely interesting, Sovereign God. Very cool.

Another reason to learn is to be able to speak to the current generation. If we want youth to know about Christianity or international missions, for example, we have to go where they are, where they live. Youth and young adults live in cyberspace, online, plugged-in, and tuned-in. They speak through interactive new social media via smart phones. I want to speak their language, so I have to learn. So I am and I have. Very cool.

What this video short phenomenon says about our ability to communicate, much less our culture, I’ll save for another time. For now, I’m happy to catch up, a little, with Generation Y, the Millenials. Very cool.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at http://www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at http://www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 25 April 2011

I’ve wanted to learn more about video—recording, importing, editing in iMovie, posting on YouTube, Vimeo, and websites, you name it.

For awhile now, I’ve also wanted to learn how ebooks and audiobooks were made, what’s an MP3 and an MP4, and how to post audio online.

In a manner of speaking I wanted to understand the technological revolution that had happened “behind me.” By this I mean that at 58 years of age, I didn’t grow up with so-called “new media,” which includes social media. Actually, I didn’t grow up with computers of any kind.

I find my way around Facebook pretty well. I even “tweet” on Twitter at www.twitter.com/rexmrogers. I’ve used RSS feeds, sent text messages, and blogged. I know what Flickr is but haven’t used it much, nor have I accessed many podcasts—but I plan to record and distribute audio podcasts shortly. I can navigate the Internet with relative ease. But I hadn’t until this weekend caught up with and climbed the learning curve of video and audio media.

Long story short, over the weekend I took advantage of the infinite number of tutorials available online, on Apple and YouTube in particular. I must have watched more than 50 videos. A lot of viewing, but now I can import a video into iMovie, edit it, and export it to YouTube, iDVD, or some other final resting place (and I have).

I finally understand the general process by which audio or video content becomes accessible, including how it is compressed, which is to say I now know the difference between an MP3 and an MP4. I can post audio and video to my website. And oh yes, I “get” keywords or meta tags, understand embedding videos, and can come pretty close to creating my own ebook. Audiobooks are much more challenging, and maybe as yet less useful. But ebooks are here to stay and increasing in popularity thanks to Kindle, iPad, and the Nook.

I now understand enough new media lingo and functionality to be dangerous. I can’t do everything, but now I can at least talk to more sophisticated techies to get done what I need done. Things have come a long way.

I remember first using a Digital VAX mainframe computer when I was in graduate school at the University of Akron. Some students were learning BASIC, COBOL, and other early programming languages. But I was fortunate enough to come along when packaged programs were being marketed as user-friendly ways for non-techies to use computers. To compute our regression analyses as political science graduate students we used SPSS, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, or SAS, Statistical Analysis Software, still being marketed today. At UA I sat at IMB punch card machines and typed/punched IBM cards to form the “Job” we’d submit to the computer center, then wait, holding our breath. That was 1978-79.

A few years later while pursuing my doctorate, 1980-82, at the University of Cincinnati I worked at the Behavioral Sciences Laboratory (later known as the Institute for Public Policy Research). Here we used SPSS and SAS too, but now we’d moved up the ladder to remote terminals. No more punch cards, no more waiting at the computer center. Here we got feedback on the screen. Here also I saw my first “PC.”

During my first two university assignments I used a PC. Eventually I had to learn about websites, blogs, and emerging social media. Before that, I had to learn how to switch from overhead projectors to PowerPoint slides and video projectors. I did. I even learned to craft my own Ppt presentations so I could model this frontier thinking for faculty members and so I wouldn’t have to depend upon administrative assistants, thus could build my own Ppts the night before if I wished.

Learning is about investment. That’s all. It takes some time and effort, but the dividends can be huge. This I enjoy.

A couple of months ago I talked to a middle-aged pastor and said I’d email him if he gave me his address. He told me his wife did his email and that he wasn’t on computers. I didn’t say anything to him, but I was nearly stunned. How can a person, much less a leader, function well today if he or she remains willingly unconnected and unconcerned to boot?

So, when it came to video and audio I had to climb the learning curve. Or if you prefer, I had to catch the wave. I think I’ve caught it, even if I’m not yet riding it. Surfing that wave is the next thing to learn.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 23 April 2011

Alexander Graham Bell aimed high. In 1876 his first message over his new telephone was, “Mr. Watson. Come here. I want to see you.”

When Mr. Watson heard him, the 29 year-old Bell rushed to the correct government office with his phone patent, beating a competitor by only a few hours, and launching an invention that would change communication into the Twenty-First Century. The next year, Bell married Mabel and formed the Bell Telephone Company, thereby providing his family with a substantial income for the rest of their lives.

Blessed with an abiding intellectual curiosity, Alexander Graham Bell developed and tested ideas for kites, sheep-breeding, desalinization techniques, water distillation, and a metal breathing device, forerunner of the iron lung.

Bell invented a “photophone,” a device transmitting sound over a beam of light. He considered the photophone his most important invention, perhaps for good reason, for it became a precursor to modern laser and fiber optics technology. Bell spent the latter years of his life working on flight machines, and his hydrofoil set a water speed record in 1919 that remained unsurpassed until 1963.

Fame and fortune were not Alexander Graham Bell’s goals, yet he received and achieved them. Discovery and invention were his goals. He became a great American scientist and success story because he used all of his considerable talents. He took risks and he worked diligently. He developed and applied his vision for a different tomorrow. Through it all he remained a man of notable character.

Bell defined a particularly attractive kind of “success”—talent plus work ethic plus character. We have some “Alexander Graham Bell’s” among us today but not enough. When you add the character element the pool of worthies shrinks quickly.

It seems as if not a month goes by without hearing of some highly talented and “successful” individual whose character, or lack of it, has brought them low, tainting their reputation and legacy, e.g., Tiger Woods, Mel Gibson, authors of bestsellers later charged with plagiarism or lies, Lindsay Lohan, multiple affairs of numerous political leaders like former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Bernie Madoff. This list goes on.

Talent matters. Everyone’s been blessed with multi-talent potential. This we can choose to develop.

Character matters too. This we develop, intentionally or not, one decision at a time. Bell did both throughout his life. So can we.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 21 April 2011

I meet people who love the Jewish people, their heritage and history, their culture, food, and religion. These people also tend to root for, support, defend, and otherwise embrace Israel as a nation state.

I meet people who love the Arab people, their heritage and history, their culture, food, and possibly their religion. These people also tend to root for, support, at times defend, and otherwise embrace Lebanon or Egypt or other Arab World nation states.

Mostly these two groups, those supporting Jews and those supporting Arabs, stand alongside one but not the other body of people. In other words, it’s like never the twain shall meet, an eternal juxtaposition. It’s assumed or sometimes stated in bold relief: “Love the Jews not the Arabs” or “Love the Arabs but never Jews.” It’s like Jews are North Pole and Arabs are South Pole, Jews are Water and Arabs are Oil, Jews are This and Arabs are That. Never, under any circumstances, are the two great bodies of people brought together. They’re invariably stated as “Versus” but never “And.”

But in the Scripture, God said, “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”

The Bible also says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” By “Greek” the Scripture means non-Jews. It means Gentiles. It means Arabs and Native Americans and Australian Aborigines. It means all who are not Jews. So the divine point is that “in Christ Jesus” no ethnic, racial, or gender barriers exist.

The Scripture reinforces this understanding of God and the human race, stating, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame. For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” No difference between Jew and Gentile. “Everyone” who calls…will be saved.

If you believe the Bible for what it claims that it is, the Word of God, and if you believe what it says in these verses, than you cannot join either the Pro-Jew or Pro-Arab group if it means you must therefore be at odds with or perhaps despise the other. No exclusive “this side only” position is presented or promoted in Scripture. A Christian worldview demands a Pro-Jew and a Pro-Arab mentality. We not only need not, we must not, take sides one against the other.

To say one supports Jews still leaves room to acknowledge that Israel is a secular nation state that acts in its own interest, and as such, should be subject to critique—just like the United States and all other countries of the world. To say one supports Arabs still leaves room to recognize that some Arabs give themselves to extremist religious views that in turn lead them toward violence. Loving a people is not the same as giving each individual or even a nation state a free pass to do as it wills without regard for human rights and civilized values.

Yet some Christians, including some Christian leaders, unwisely make comments suggesting or stating outright that “Israel can do no wrong” or “Palestinians should be banished from the Holy Land” or “Arabs are our enemies.” A few, though certainly fewer, unwisely make comments suggesting or stating outright that “Arab nations can do no wrong” or “Israel (and/or Israelis) should be banished from the Middle East,” or “Jews are our enemies.”

How, though, can they justify these negative, nasty, ill advised, and wrong perspectives based upon Scripture? The answer is: they cannot. Scripture doesn’t teach or even fairly lend itself to this kind of simplistic and harmful binary thinking.

Put simply, God loves all people in his creation and calls all to himself. He doesn’t write some of them off as if they are lesser humans. Remember how Blacks were viewed as sub-human or not human by many in the 19^th Century and well into the 20^th Century? It wasn't biblically justifiable toward Blacks, and such an attitude isn't biblically justifiable toward Jews or Arabs.

In a truly Christian worldview it is both commanded by God and possible to love all humankind, even as we “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” We are divinely commissioned to love all people, even as Christ first loved us, and even as we recognize that not all members of any group will always behave properly or do what is right—the same as all people. Arguing for attitudes or perspectives a Christian worldview demands is not pollyanna thinking. What the world does is one thing; what Christians do or say must often be another.

It’s simple, but it’s good theology: "Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, All are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world." For Christians, it’s Jews and Arabs.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Keith

Published: 21 April 2011