Fat Old Guy

A mammoth whale? Is that the one with the long nose and the tusks?

Bad example Wheeler. Mary was blowing off work and just chilling while her friend did all the work. Sounds diametrically opposed to what you espouse.

"In all of his education at Yale, George Bush never learned that this is a Republic. He uses the word democracy. What is his Yale degree in history worth, not the paper it is printed on." Wheeler, if you'd care to crawl into the 21st Century and read something published in the last 20 years, you'd find this . . . Democracy, political system in which the people of a country rule through any form of government they choose to establish. In modern democracies, supreme authority is usually exercised by popularly elected representatives. The representatives may be replaced by the electorate according to the legal procedures of recall and referendum, and they are in principle responsible to the electorate. and you'd also find . . . Republic (government), form of state based on the concept that sovereignty resides in the people, who delegate the power to rule to elected representatives and officials. In the theoretical republican state, republic and democracy may be identical.

"In the Zulu context you put forward, the trial of white paint was the test, not the whole process. Years of training and discipline went into the young man prior to his test" Maybe that's part of the problem. Our society doesn't have the years of training and discipline before we cast the young men out into the world. Look at any school's lost and found. The number of coats, hats and gloves will astound you and that can be in the coldest January. Why? Because when a kid loses a coat, no one makes him go look for it. If anyone looks for it, it is usually the parent. After all, they are just kids, they can't be expected to keep track of stuff. The lost and found at my school was a hook in the janitor's room for coats and a drawer in his desk for everything else. Why? Because we were expected to keep track of our stuff. How about other forms of responsibility, like earning money for things? Right now we have roughly 50 Scouts, only three of do anything to earn the money for Scouting. I can't count the parents that have told me that they don't want their kid wasting time selling popcorn or having a paper route. Chores? Most kids that I know today don't have predefined chores to help out around the house. Actually work for them is a special occasion. Where is the training for manhood?

I know that BSA would never adopt something so practical but the M-65 field jacket is nearly perfect. water resistant warm with the removable lining has a hideaway hood can have a heavy hood attached four big pockets drawstring waist drawstring bottom One problem that I see happening is goofy parents buying coats in adult size large for a kid that is 5' tall and 100 lbs.

I'm in it for the paycheck and the snazzy uniform.

Wheeler, I will agree with you in part. We concentrate too much on letting "kids be kids." The idea of the ideal childhood is relatively new in human culture. Before the 20th century and for a good part of that century as well, children, especially teens, worked their butts off. They played but they tended animals, harvested crops, did chores, worked in mines, etc.. Now we have a really strange attitude toward teens. In one breathe parents will say, "He's 16, he can make his own decisions about going to school" but if that same teen commits a crime they say, "Don't be too harsh, he's only a kid." The problem is that you shoot yourself in the foot. You talk about life being more than fun but look at yourself. You avoid gainful employment so yo can study, which for you is fun.

The OED has no entry for "effeminancy."

Sure an ax can be used safely. I've done it, others have done it. Over the years, many kids have done it. Unfortunately, our society does very little to teach our children that some things are more dangerous than other and that care needs to be taken with them. The messages are "Axes are dangerous, don't use them," "Knives are dangerous, don't use them," "Guns are dangerous, don't use them," "Power tools are dangerous, don't use them." Oddly, our society encourages teens to drive (very dangerous) and does little to discourage them from having sex (also very dangerous).

"Co-ed scouting didn't seem to hamper his Scout survival skills." I'm sorry but I don't see where it gives his age.

"John McCain would have been their nominee 4 years ago." I've been told by both Senators and staffers that McCain is a small minded and vindictive person. Evidently, if you oppose McCain on any issue, you have become his enemy and will set out to damage or destroy you. He really would have made an interesting Prez.

"What is wrong with being "PC"?" Because it binds the freedom of expression.

"but maybe just a simple change in material and style for pants, the shirt has changed little in the past 50 years besides wording, patches and material." Shirts haven't changed much in the past 50 years but the BSA shirt has gone through some major changes. In the 50's and 60's it was cotton with pleated pockets, tails, a yoke, and the collar had a band so it could be worn buttoned. Later the pleats and the collar went away and the shirt became plastic. Next they changed the color, eliminated the yoke and the tails.

Wheeler, I was agreeing with you about a bunch of stuff but I think that you've stepped off into the deep end. You remind me of baseball managers that I'd run across. "Fun," they'd scream, "we're not here to have fun. We're here to play baseball." We can learn while having fun. We can have fun with work. People who take the fun out of life are the same people that start wars and fly planes into tall buildings. Nah, I'm sure that latter group had fun while training.

" I heard or saw Clinton called a "draft dodger" approximately 10 million times. (OK, maybe 1 million.) In fact I STILL hear it and he has been out of office for 3 years." Well, he is a draft dodger. He admits to lying to the ROTC commander to evade the draft. W, on the other, may have manipulated the system but he did it legally but let's look at some other things. W was an officer in the ANG. That requires a college degree and he didn't join the ANG until after he was out of college (Yale, class of '68). As I recall, not too many men who were already out of college were drafted. How did W evade the draft from 64 through 68? So it really doesn't look like he joined the Guard to evade the draft, does it? As for changing the rule, the Dems are the hypocrites. They whine that people bring up the war but then bring it up themselves. If you don't like your neighbor spitting on your sidewalk, do go spitting on his.

What I continue to find interesting is that when Clinton's lies to avoid the draft came to light, his supporters said, "Viet Nam was a long time ago. We need to move past that." It seems that isn't their philosophy when it isn't their guy being questioned. As for Kerry, he's letting everyone else do the questioning.

"I'm interested in how weather forces the cancelation of an outing." Let's see . . . last fall we had a little thing called a hurricane cause cancellation of a campout because the ocean front campground had pretty much ceased to exist. Last spring we had so much rain that camping area were closed because of flooding, mud so deep that cars couldn't go, trees uprooting and closing roads. This winter we missed out on a campout because the roads were closed because of an ice storm.

"Guide to Safe Scouting (free)," Free? I just picked up six copies for my troop and it ran me nearly $20.

"I am not sure what we do for a high adventure trip that covered a weekend. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." I have it on good authority that God really dosen't get too upset if you miss a Sunday every now and then (your grandmother may not agree).

Bad weather has caused us to cancel numerous campout over the past few years. That's life. If it means enough to the Scouts, they'll organize a patrol campout. So far not one patrol campout has happened. This isn't a race and even if it was, our role as coaches doesn't mean that we push them down the track.

"I know that they are military terms, I was must wondering how the terms became so popular with the BSA crowd, if it has never been in a BSA publication." Probably because so many Scouters are either in the military or have been in the military and the terms became part of their lingo. Others picked it up because nearly every one likes to use "cool" military lingo even they are using it incorrectly.

I really must have killed too many brain cells in college. It's the Fifth Dimension and the New Edition. Argh!

Bob White gave the expected Bob White reply. I've heard of Black Loops for funerals before. I don't see anything grossly wrong with it considering the other egregious uniforming problems that I see. I think that the neckerchiefs are a much nicer idea.

NJ Dude said, "There certainly is no consensus within the BSA or its CO's, otherwise nine councils would not have tried to get the BSA to change its policy." Depends on what you think that a concensus it. If only 9 councils in all of BSA have disagreed then we still have a "general agreement." tjhammer said, "you refuse to acknowledge is that within the BSA there are many gay boys and leaders, like myself, who are not a part of the "vast conspiracy" you see." Shame on you for flying false colors. Shame, shame, shame. That said, I'm pretty sure that I've met some homosexual scouts but I can't recall meeting a single "avowed" homosexual adult in Scouting. Lemme think . . . nope, not a one. Might be the area that I live in.

"You a literary critic now too?" We all are in our own way. You stated an opinion of the handbook, I stated mine. Like your father, I have a good sized collection of Scout handbooks. Not as extensive as his, mine started with the 5th edition (the book not the singers). I have four Scoutmaster Handbooks, including the current one. I also have a few foreign handbooks. The old books are interesting in that you can see how the program has changed over the years. The distressing thing is that after they screwed up the handbook, Green Bar Bill wrote a version that is wonderful. Did BSA keep that book? Did BSA simply update that book? Nope. BSA seems to have fallen into the trap that public schools have fallen into. They find a need to get new books on a regular basis. My son's school has changed 7th grade math books three time in the past six years. If you look at colleges, you don't see this trend unless a professor is trying to sell his own book. "Physics" by Halliday and Resnick has been in use since the early 70s because not much has changed in the world of basic physics. My father used Samulsen for Econ and so did I. Do yourself a favor. Go visit your father's library and peruse a few of the older handbooks. Don't worry about requirements. Just look at the information in the books.