Fat Old Guy

I guess that baby oil would have a deleterious effect on the rubber and that vegatable oil would get sticky. I used to build rubber band powered planes and I used the green soap/glycerin mixture.

"And I certainly won't expect the President of the United States to rise when I walk into the room just because I'm older. " However, he probably would out of courtesy.

"Volatile can also denote "explosive"" Only regarding behavior as in, "Central, we have a volatile situation!" or "boy, he has a volatile temperment." However, it would not be correct to state, "that dynomite is volatile." "IF you poured black powder out on your sidewalk and lived anywhere close to my residence, I would become very volatile! " Why?

" Sounds like the BSA's free speech right is being infringed upon! " Don't you know that heterosexuals have no rights?

"FOG, you don't think Black powder evaporates easily? Volatile "readily vaporizable at a relatively low temperature", as seen in many burn units. " If I pour a pound of black powder on my sidewalk and a gallon of water on my sidewalk, the next day the black powder will still be there but the water won't. Black powder doesn't evaporate, it is a mixture of solids and has no vapor state.

"And most people (aside from twocubdad) will not understand that, even on a $1 a year evergreen lease, leasehold improvements revert to the leasor." I know that in the case of the organization that I mentioned before, the improvements only reverted ot the leasor at the terimination of the lease. If that's the case with BSA, they could dismantle all of their improvements. " the ACLU would still consider the BSA discriminatory since it does not accept girls in all aspects of the program. Sometimes, you just can't win. " Oddly, the Girl Scouts are not considered discriminatory even though they have no programs for boys.

"If the taking in of information and retaining it, is what education is. Then this does work. If we want people who can think for themselves, we may need to look at alternative ways of getting the message across." Today, they aren't concerned with with thinking, the teachers are concerned with passing standardized tests.

So far what do we know? That one boy allegedly assaulted another. We know nothing else.

Sorry but black powder is anything but volatile. In the world of chemistry volatile means "evaporates easily."

Hey Merlyn, be consistent. In one place you say 80% and another you say 100%. "Can I lease public land for $1/year and use it all the time for my own use?" If you are a cattle rancher.

"According to this article from Feb 2002, the BSA uses the land about 80% of the time, and they have it booked solid in the summer, so only BSA members get to use this public parkland in the summer. The property is "open to be used by anyone", but only when the BSA isn't using it; they always get first choice:" That's no different from the local public pool blocking out time for the summer swim league. The swim league gets first pick of times, the rest of us are forced to use the pool at other times.

"They probably should, I'm not convinced they have a place at a Scout camp." While we're at it ban bows, arrows, rifles, shotguns, knives, and fire.

We have ME, I still think that it sucks as software goes. I don't understand what there'd be to go over when he calls for a BOR. It is easy for him to look in the book and see if anything is missing. In fact, if he had his Scoutmaster Conference everything should have been checked at that point. What am I missing here? Do you get continuous updates, "Jimmy passed his swim test. Johnny served as patrol cook."?

Now they'll ban cannons at scout camps.

Sleep deprived kids? No. . . not in this world. ;-) I am continually astounded that we expect middle school and high school kids to be at school before many of us are at work. In twenty years, I have never had to be at work before 8 AM unless it was an unusual situation. In college I never had a class before 8 AM and I avoided, usually electing to have my classes start at 9 AM. I never found summers boring, there were bikes to ride and baseball to play. If you find summers boring, look at todays kids. They sit around and stare at video games all the time. The title of this thread is "Not a sitting animal?" I'll dispute that. I came home to find four 12 year old boys sitting on my porch playing with Game Boys. "Why don't you guys do something?" "Nothin' to do," I'm told. Within a mile of my house is a pool (they all have passes), football field with goal posts, a baseball diamond, six basketball courts and tennis courts. The field and courts are open and available but no one uses them. It is a national tragedy.

If Pack Master is anything like Troop Master, I would be impressed by it. The program has some big usability problems. I looks like it was written by someone who had a bare minimum of understanding of software design. I came from a fairly good sized pack, about 50 Cub Scouts. Our Advancement Chair designed a fairly simple form to track advancement for all of the Cubs. There was a sheet for each Cub Scout, on the front of the form were spots for the ranks, plus arrow points for Wolf and Bear. All Webelos activity pins had a place as well as the Compass device and compass points. The date was recorded when each was earned. On the back, all of the Academic and Sports loops and pins were listed. Other information on the form included service stars awarded, religious awards, and a big section for other stuff such as Pinewood Derby. Den Leaders tracked indivual advancement toward ranks and the Advancement Chair didn't need to worry about that. It does seem a bit anal retentive for the Den Leader to have to tell the Advancement Chair every time a boy completes another requirement.

Our policy is that if a Scout quits, all the funds in his Scout account revert to the troop. So far this hasn't become an issue because we the few boys that are do enough selling to have significant funds in their accounts are the least likely to quit. We haven't had the issue of moving to another troop come up yet but that probably should be addressed before it becomes an issue.

Over here we use charcoal as the heat source for a dutch oven. Charcoal comes in large bags of "briquettes" which are small, regularly sized pieces. When charcoal is ignited and has reached the stage where the briquettes are glowing red, they are often referred to as "coals." Charcoal, as you probably know, is wood that has been heated in the absence of oxygen, just leaving the carbon. I don't know if you'd want to try to carry bags of charcoal back on a plane. I see a great potential for a disaster. There is usually a number on the lid of the Dutch oven, that is an approximation of the number of coals needed under the Dutch oven and on the lid to maintain a temperature of 350 F. If memory serves, if the lid says "13", you put 12 on the lid and 13 under the oven. This assumes fresh, glowing coals. Using actual coal, as dug from the ground, is an unknown territory for me. I'd guess that if you cannot get charcoal in UK, you could build a campfire and wait until you have glowing coals and use those with your Dutch oven. Visit http://www.kingsford.com/ for more information about charcoal.

"So he wasted 2 years completing easy, dull worksheets in exchange for candy" That actually sounds like the mainstream classes in my daughter's school. "If you think back to your own education as a youngster, don't you rememember field trips and special projects better than anything else? I do." I must be strange, I have a much clearer recollection of my arithmetic "facts" than I do of any field trip. When and where we went for field trips is fuzzy but I surely do know that one plus one equals two.

The basics haven't changed. Arithmetic is still arithmetic and even calculus is calculus. Basic science hasn't changed much, there aren't any new natuarally occurring elements and F still equals ma. Geography? Well, maybe some borders have changed but the Atlantic ocean hasn't moved. One of the greatest indicators that the education system is not doing its job is the need for high school students to take special classes to enable them to get decent scores on the SATs. If the schools were doing their job, these kids would know about analogies, have a decent vocabulary and be able to solve simple math problems without special prep. How important is rote information? When your boss says that he wants you to go to France, it is important to know that it isn't in the next county. (This message has been edited by Fat Old Guy)

"We have always allowed any interested parent to have a vote." We used to do this until it became a disaster in the making. Rabble rousers would get parents who never had anything to do with the running of the troop to come and vote. Of course, once they had their way, they were never seen again. Now, to vote you must be registered and have gone through Fast Start training. When parents complained about the new system, they were told that the troop didn't belong them nor did it belong to us, we were the caretakers and if they wanted a say, they needed to sign up. We still don't have a perfect system but it is getting better.

" But I do not feel that it will impact our relationship with them and/or their relationship with the BSA." Until they hire a lesbian priest who wants to become an ASM.

The American flag is always the rightmost flag. For more information download http://usasma.bliss.army.mil/pubs/FM_22-5/PDF/ch9.pdf This is the chapter of the Army's manual of drill that covers color guards among other things. It specifies that the fellow with American flag is the commander of the detail. Which makes me wonder why we had the guy with the sword. We may have been a college ROTC detail but our advisor was an Army officer whose last posting had been with the ceremonial guard unit in DC. I guess that will be one of those mysteries of life. Bear in mind that this is the ARMY way of doing things, it is NOT law. If you as a Boy Scout unit come up with another way of doing a color guard that looks good and is respectful of the flag and presents the appearance being a color guard, do it.

Memories fade with time but I looked at the picture and it doesn't look like my old color guard. We had two guys with rifles and five or six flags all commanded by a guy with a sword. My memory is that the commander marched in front of us. I'll have to dig out my FM 22-5 and check what it says.

As I recall from my days on military color guards ^ | C | G T S U G Direction of march indicated by arrow Where C is the color guard commander G is a guard T is troop flag S is state flag U is US flag