The Rebelution

The official definition of the 'rebelution' is "a teenage rebellion against low expectations." When you look around today, our culture does not expect much of us young people. We are not only expected to do very little that is wise or good, but we're expected to do the opposite. Our media-saturated youth culture is constantly reinforcing lower and lower standards and expectations.
The word 'rebelution' is a combination of the words "rebellion" and "revolution." So it carries a sense of an uprising against social norms. But in this case, it's not a rebellion against God-established authority, but against the low expectations of our society. It's a refusal to be defined by our ungodly, rebellious, and apathetic culture. Actually, we like to think of it as rebelling against rebellion.

And it's exciting, because the Rebelution has become a type of counter-cultural youth movement among young people from around the world, who are not only rejecting the lies of popular youth culture, but they're returning to biblical and historical levels of character and competence.
In 1 Timothy 4:12, the Apostle Paul tells Timothy, "Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity." In other words, as young people we are called to be exemplary in all areas of life. Our generation is falling incredibly short of that calling. Instead of serving as the launching pad of life, the teen years are seen as a vacation from responsibility. We call it the "myth of adolescence." And the Rebelution is all about busting that myth.

Our battle cry is just three words, but it's an explosive concept: Do Hard Things. That's it. And "do hard things" is a mentality. It's a mentality that flies right in the face of low expectations. The world says, "You're young, have fun!" It tells us to "obey your thirst" and "just do it." Or it tells us, "You're great! You don't need to exert yourself." But those kinds of mindsets sabotage character and competence.

Do Hard Things is just the opposite. It's how we build character and competence. It won't drop to meet the low expectations, it won't just do what comes easily, and it won't become complacent. It applies no matter who you are or what level you're on, because there's always something harder to do, something that will take you outside your comfort zone and cause you to grow.

The Rebelution is made up of three fundamental parts. We've talked about character and competence. The third is collaboration. It's not enough for us to be individual exceptions. We have to create a counterculture. We do that is by networking and encouraging one another in our common cause. That's what the Rebelution has become. When you have a community of young people committed to doing hard things for the glory of God and the good of others, that's an incredibly powerful thing.

Taken from: The Rebelution website, www.therebelution.com

Ye Olde Booke

Today I traveled all the way down to Bungendore to pick up a parcel and do a few odd errands. One of the errands was to hire out the new movie "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", but as our video store doesn't open until 3:00pm (and closes at 7:00 pm), Jamie, who had come down with me, and I decided to walk into the second-hand bookstore.

It has an amazing pile of books, barely any order at all. Any other time I have walked into there I have come out empty handed, as they either do not have anything I might want, or if they do, it is an old, broken down edition with a very pricey tag.

This time, however, I found a whole section of truly glorious books! I squeezed past "bookshelves" and tiny openings, into a back section dedicated to real literature. I found Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope and other great authors...and then I came across the WWII section...

I found heaps of books by my favourite WWII author, Paul Brickhill. I have read "The Great Escape", "The Dam Busters" and "Reach for the Sky" already. But Jamie found for me "Escape -or Die"......then I found something that I have been wanting for a while, "The Wooden Horse" by Eric Williams M.C. So Naturally I bought them both, but as hard as I and the bookstore owner looked we couldn't find my favourite war novel of all time, "HMS Ulysses" by Alistair MacLean. I just have to keep an eye out for that one.

"Escape or Die" is a collection of "eight stories: stories of escape in the desert, escape through Poland and Russia...escape by canal boat, and perhaps the most horrifying and amazing escape of a war that was richer in escape stories than any war ever fought--the escape of Squadron Leader McCormac from Malaya to Australia by way of Java."

("Escape or Die" introduction)

"It is well known that when a member of the armed forces is captured by an enemy in time of war, it is his duty, by all possible and reasonable means, to escape."

("Escape or Die" introduction)

"The Wooden Horse" takes its genius from the Trojan Horse myth. The POWs involved in this operation thought through their plan carefully. They built (out of wooden planks shoring the underside of the camp huts) a wooden 'horse'. It was hollow, with enough room for one man. The man whose lot it fell to would climb into the 'horse' and the others would push it over to a certain spot by the barbed-wire fence. Then he would dig through the opening underneath the 'horse'. There were two shifts per day, a morning and an evening. Over time, they dug a tunnel all the way into the woods on the other side of the fence, covering up the hole after every shift. The Germans never suspected what they were doing, not until the escape was made. The escapees traveled through Germany, Switzerland, eventually up through France and eventually back home to England.

I have found the sixth person to tag!

The sixth person I am tagging for the "6x3 meme" is Sarah at Middlepaw.

Six by Three Meme

Six things I value

My Family

Spending time watching quality movies with my Family

Reading quality books (Like "Dombey and Son" by Charles Dickens!!)

Learning about everything this earth can teach us (except economics, physics, and complete evil spouted forth by completely evil people--like Richard Dawkins for example!)

Freedom of religion

Smiles and playtime with Michael and Lily

Six things I don't support

Abortion

Infanticide

Rubbish taught as if it were truth

People believing the rubbish taught them without question

The legalising of wrong in order to gain 'control' over it (i.e. legalising abortion so that 'safe' practice may be ensured)

Climate change being taken up religiously by anti-Christians and socialists

Six (umm...five) people I tag


Mum


Rachael


Bethany

Danielle

Liz

This sounds pretty familiar...

Memes

I am going to post about a few memes soon, but beforehand want to clear my name of corruption: I totally do not have anything to do with Richard Dawkins! But I will use the term anyway, for the want of a better one.....

A meme (pronounced /miːm/)[1] consists of any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, gestures, practices, fashions, habits, songs, and dances. Memes propagate themselves and can move through the cultural sociosphere in a manner similar to the contagious behavior of a virus.

Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" as a neologism in his book The Selfish Gene (1976) to describe how one might extend evolutionary principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, beliefs (notably religious belief, clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches).[2]

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (similar to Darwinian biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. Thus one can expect that some memes will propagate less successfully and become extinct, while others will survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. "Memeticists argue that the memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts."[3]

Origins and concepts

The word meme first came into popular use with the publication of Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene." Dawkins used the term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as replicators, generally replicating through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (though not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes.
Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", but memeticists in general promote varying definitions of the concept of the meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics.

Etymology

According to Dawkins, meme represents a shortened form of mimeme (from Greek mimos, "mimic"). Dawkins said he wanted "a monosyllable word that sounds a bit like gene".[4]
The concept of a unit of social evolution called a mneme (from Greek mneme, meaning "memory") appeared in 1904 in a work by the German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translated as "Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings"). According to the OED, the word mneme appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme. Dawkins had no awareness of Semon's mnemes.[citation needed]

Dawkins' genetic analogy

Richard Dawkins introduced the term meme after writing that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission — in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplifies another self-replicating unit, and most importantly, one which he thought might prove useful in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution.

Dawkins himself, in a speech on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Selfish Gene, described his motivation for postulating memes: he portrayed the idea not so much as an attempt at creating an account for cultural complexity, but rather as seeking something with which the selfish-genetic mechanism would still work with unreliable replicators:

Next question might be, does the information have to be molecular at all? Memes. This is not something that I’ve ever wanted to push as a theory of human culture, but I originally proposed it as a kind of... almost an anti-gene, to make the point that Darwinism requires accurate replicators with phenotypic power, but they don’t necessarily have to be genes. What if they were computer viruses? They hadn’t been invented when I wrote The Selfish Gene so I went straight for memes, units of cultural inheritance.
– Richard Dawkins[5]


Taken from Wikipedia

life in the 1500's

I had these interesting facts from the 1500's sent to me via email, so I thought I would share them with you:

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married...

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water...

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying ... It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house... This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence...

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance way. Hence the saying a thresh hold...

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old...

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat...

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust...

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake...

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer...

And that's the truth...

Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

Song of the Federation

This is my favourite poem of all time, so I thought I would share it with you : )

Song of the Federation

As the nations sat together, grimly waiting--

The fierce and ancient nations battle-scarred--

Grown grey in their lusting and their hating,

Ever armed and ever ready keeping guard,

Through the tumult of their warlike preparation

And the half-stilled clamour of the drums

Came a voice crying, "Lo! a new made nation,

To her place in the sisterhood she comes!"

And she came--she was beautiful as morning,

With the bloom of the roses on her mouth,

Like a young queen lavishly adorning

Her charms with the Splendours of the South.

And the fierce old nations, looking on her,

Said, "Nay, surely she were quickly overthrown,

Hath she strength for the burden laid upon her,

Hath she power to protect and guard her own?"

Then she spoke, and her voice was clear and ringing

In the ears of the nations old and grey,

Saying, "Hark, and ye shall hear my children singing

Their war song in countries far away.

They are strangers to the tumult of the battle,

They are few but their hearts are very strong,

'Twas but yesterday they called unto the cattle,

But they now sing Australia's marching song."

Song of the Australian's in Action

For the honour of Australia, our mother,

Side by side with our kin from over sea,

We have fought and we have tested one another,

And enrolled among the brotherhood are we.

There was never post of danger but we sought it

In the fighting, through the fire, and through the flood.

There was never prize so costly but we bought it,

Though we paid for its purchase with our blood.

Was there any road too rough for us to travel?

Was there any path too far for us to tread

You can track us by the blood drops on the gravel

On the roads that we mile stoned with our dead!

And for you, of our young and anxious mother,

O'er your great gains keeping watch and ward,

Neither fearing nor despising any other,

We will hold your possessions with the sword.

Then they passed to the place of world-long sleeping,

The Grey-clad figures with their dead,

To the sound of their women softly weeping

And the Dead March moaning at their head:

And the Nations, as the grim procession ended,

Whispered, "Child! But ye have seen the price we pay,

From War may we ever be defended,

Kneel ye down, new-made Sister--Let us Pray!"

I have (unofficially) finished my first year of university!

I finished my last exam yesterday...such a relief!!

I went into it sure that I didn't have enough study up my sleeve to pass, but when I saw the questions I was pleasantly relieved. So now all I have to do is wait for three results to come in, and kick up my heels and SLEEP!!!!!!!!!

The Anthony's

It has taken me ages to come up with this post....but finally here it is.

I decided a month ago that I would do a post in honour of the Anthony family who have recently moved to Kazakhstan. I taught the three boys Noah (8), Caleb (6), and Jared (4) piano for 7 months, but even though some photos were taken of me and the boys together, they are rather unflattering photos of myself, so I refuse to put them up (sorry). I have put up some photos of all the kids together though, and of Mrs. Anthony having a cuddle with Michael.

We have had some very fun times with the Anthonys and were great friends, so have been very sorry to say goodbye. May God bless them in their new home and new life.

Jared, Mrs. Anthony (holding Michael)

All the boys and Lily

Robert (holding a teddy bear he has named Libby Tricket), Jared (holding a pine cone), Caleb, Noah.