Month: April 2022

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Paddington Bear

Paddington Bear

In the late 1930s-1940s, Michael Bond, author of Paddington Bear, saw Jewish refugee children (Kindertransport children) walking through London’s Reading Station, arriving in Britain escaping from the Nazi horrors of Europe.

Mr. Bond, touched by what he saw, recalled those memories 20 years later when he began his story of Paddington Bear. One morning in 1958, he was searching for writing inspiration and simply wrote the words: “Mr. and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington on a railway platform…”

“They all had a label round their neck with their name and address on and a little case or package containing all their treasured possessions,” Bond said in an interview with The Telegraph before his death in 2017. “So Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees.”

Paddington Bear – known for his blue overcoat, bright red hat, and wearing a simple hand-written tag that says “Please look after this bear. Thank you,” Paddington embodies the appearance of many refugee children. His suitcase is an emblem of his own refugee status.

“We took in some Jewish children who often sat in front of the fire every evening, quietly crying because they had no idea what had happened to their parents, and neither did we at the time. It’s the reason why Paddington arrived with the label around his neck”. — Michael Bond

Michael Bond died at 91 in 2017. The epitaph on his gravestone reads “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”
Please look after all the young Bears in Ukraine and around the world. – David Lundin

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Ripples

Marie Berry wrote:

I’m a firm believer that real, significant change, comes about one person at a time.

We are currently witnessing a transformation, each one of us is creating ripples of positive change that will impact others, and in turn they will impact others, and so on. So never underestimate your ability to contribute to this transformation, every gesture, however small has an impact.

The trick is not to expect to necessarily see that impact as an immediate ‘cause and effect’, it very often doesn’t happen that way. Don’t push to see the results, simply say or do, and move on, too much conflict will only drain your energy, which is counterproductive.
So plant your seeds of truth, and let things be.

Way above what you may have to say, simply by living your life honestly, courageously, lovingly and healthily, you are setting an example for others to follow.

Your inner strength and happiness will radiate and have a positive effect on anyone that comes across you.
Be the change.

Ripples

Could not agree more with this! That’s why I crafted this:

https://www.bringorder.info/English.html

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What was the most eye-opening comment a student wrote on an end of course evaluation?

(Tom: Saw this over on Quora and thought it well worth sharing.)
I’ve always learned a lot from my students.

One comment I received long ago – not on an end of course evaluation, but rather immediately after a particular lecture – changed the way I taught. It was in an intro calculus-based physics class. I knew the students had found that latest homework assignment a bit of a challenge, so I went through the problems – not just solving them to get answers, but carefully setting them up to show their similarity in approach and how to specialize each set up to correspond to that particular problem. My claim was that if you could set the problem up correctly, the rest was just manipulation to lead to an algebraic solution.

This particular student caught up with me as I left class and thanked me for going over all of that – then said, “I could follow every step – and it made so much sense. But what I want to know, is how did you know to make that step? I mean how do you make those decisions in setting up the problems?” I thought it was a very insightful question about problem solving.

Problem solving is just decision making. You want to ask yourself the right questions in order to be able to decide how to proceed with setting up the problem – formulating a “solution pathway”, in the words of one of my honors students. And that means deciding what the problem is about. That is, is it fundamentally a force problem or a motion problem? What principles apply – momentum conservation, energy conservation, both, neither? Are there special conditions we need to consider? And so on.

What that young woman asked led me to show my classes how to think about the problems in order to make the decisions needed to set up the solutions. It’s the difference between learning problem solutions and learning how to solve problems.

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10 Prepping mistakes to avoid before SHTF

Prepper Survival Man

Ignoring the basics

Before even touching the more complicated aspects of being a prepper, you should make sure to have your fundamental prepping skills covered. Some of these basic skills include first aid and emergency medical care, water purification, food preservation and fire-making.

Going over your budget

Prepping is undoubtedly an investment, but that doesn’t mean you should have to spend beyond your means. It is possible to prep even while on a tight budget. However, you may have to change your spending habits and plan your expenses ahead of time. Remember to stick to your budget and buy only what you need – your wants can (and should) wait.

Focusing on supplies instead of skills

No matter how much survival gear you stockpile, you can’t use an abundance of supplies to compensate for a lack of skill. Prepping equipment can be destroyed, lost or stolen, but as long as you regularly practice your survival skills, they can never be taken away from you. Invest in skills more than supplies. This can also help you stay within your budget.

Ignoring your health

It is easy to take your health for granted, but when SHTF, physical fitness is crucial to your survival. Staying in peak physical condition means that you will have a much easier time lifting heavy objects, traversing difficult terrain and outrunning your enemies. Simply put, your chances of survival are greater if you’ve been living a physically active lifestyle rather than a sedentary one. (Related: Why physical fitness is crucial for survival (and why all preppers need to take good care of their bodies).)

Not properly rotating your food supply

A common problem with long-term food storage is that once you’ve bought it and placed it in the pantry, you tend to forget about it until an emergency happens. By the time one does occur, the food might have already gone bad. You can avoid this problem by making an inventory of all the food you buy and marking their expiration dates. If you stock up on raw ingredients, it is also useful to learn how to make meals from scratch. You can also supplement your food supply by learning how to fish, hunt and forage for food.

Overlooking your local SHTF situation

Not all survival situations will happen on a large scale. Sometimes, a crisis may only affect your local community, your family or even just you specifically. Just because a crisis doesn’t affect everyone else doesn’t mean you should underestimate it. Give it your proper attention and resolve it immediately.

Trying to convince everyone to be preppers

You think you might be doing everyone a favor by trying to convince them to prepare for some unseen future disaster, but it’s probably not worth your time and effort to “convert” these people. Unfortunately, not everyone is fit for the prepping lifestyle or willing to actively engage in it. You’re more likely to end up outing yourself as a prepper.

Preparing for only one kind of disaster

Even if your specific location is only prone to a single type of disaster, anything can still happen, so you should be able to change your plans accordingly. Think about all the possible scenarios that could happen and create contingency plans in case anything goes wrong.

Not putting in the hard work

No one simply becomes a prepper overnight. True prepping is a full-time commitment that requires a lot of planning and effort. If you want to reap the rewards, you need to first put in the hard work. This often entails setting up your bug-out location, tending to your edible garden, crafting DIY prepping equipment and practicing your prepping skills. It’s also easy to become complacent by thinking that you’ve already “prepared enough,” so sharpen those survival skills to avoid getting rusty.

Trying to do too much all at once

On the other side of the spectrum, you could fall into the trap of doing too much all at once. If you take on more tasks than you can handle, you’re more likely to end up starting too many prepping projects and finishing none of them. You could also end up rushing through your tasks, which could result in costly mistakes in the long run. Pace yourself and learn to organize your priorities. This will help you go through your tasks more efficiently.

Even if you’ve committed any of these prepping mistakes in the past, all that matters now is that you’ve learned from them and can properly avoid them in the future.

https://newstarget.com/2020-01-28-10-prepping-mistakes-to-avoid-before-shtf.html

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence

Australia’s newly announced commitment to the NATO SCCE in countering “hybrid threats” matters, and you aren’t likely to hear about it from anyone else.

So let me explain.

The NATO SCCE is like the CIA, only worse.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO SCCE) is an officially accredited, yet unofficial branch of NATO operations formed in 2014, and they don’t answer to the rest of NATO, or really to anyone anywhere.

They are a multinational intelligence agency without true borders.

Their listed functionary abilities are:

•Public Diplomacy

•Public Affairs

•Military Public Affairs

•Information Operations

And

•Psychological Operations, which is defined as: “planned psychological activities using methods of communications and other means directed to approved audiences in order to influence perceptions, attitudes and behaviour, affecting the achievement of political and military objectives.”

In short the NATO SCCE are not your friends.

They are part of an international uber-propaganda machine that you should be aware of and their entire purpose is to twist the public around the expansion of the military superstate.

Their self-declared specialty is in “combatting hostile state, and non-state actors”.

“Non-state actors”, is a term for any non-government person or group.