Hal_Crawford

Kenk: Congrats to your son. He has every right to be proud of his accomplishment. You have every right to be proud of your son. I've sat on a number of EBORs and seen a lot of other scouts go through the process. Most did no more than your son. Every Eagle has his strengths and weaknesses but they all did their best in the eyes of their SM, their merit badge counselors and those that sat on their Boards of Review (from Tenderfoot through Eagle). No small feat. Hal

"If merely fulfilling all the requirements is what it takes, why doesn't every Scout earn Eagle?" Because not every scout wants to work for it. Really, any scout who wants to do the work can earn Eagle. Part of it is living the Scout Oath and Law which will weed out some but for the most part it is the willingness to complete the merit badges that makes the difference. Is it a diploma or an honor society? It is closer to an honor society. When you get your diploma it is time to clean out you locker and move on to another phase in your life. Many Eagles age out about the same time they earn the award but for younger Eagles there is no reason they have to leave. Others choose to leave after earning Eagle because they were doing it for their parents; sort of like saying "I got into NHS so now I can drop out of school. But others who get the award at 15 or 16 will continue to be active in the same way they were as a Life scout. They are the best. Perhaps for them the diploma is when they turn 18 and become Assistant Scout Masters. Hal

Just saw this from Popular Mechanics. One of the stories refers to the Little Sioux scout ranch. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/4331486.html Be Prepared! Hal

I just stumbled across this news item and I see the victim was a scout leader and school teacher. A terrible thing for his family, his students and his scouts. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090924/ap_on_re_us/us_census_worker_hanged Hal

Here's a link to his article: http://www.inquiry.net/ideals/within_my_power.htm

Is your mom on medicare? Hal

Pack: Where were you in Turkey? It was 50 years ago but I remember seeing snow on the ground when I lived in Ankara. Hal

Actually, I don't have a particular objection to much of what they say. I don't think that their expectations that charities will pick up all the nations social needs is particularly realistic. There are some other areas that I disagree with but I think they make some valid points. Non interventionism isn't always a bad thing. I think the country would benefit from hearing the libertarians every time we consider sending in the Marines. As a nation we are too quick to put boots on the ground creating a mess that the next couple of presidents have to live with and/or end. What struck me in the last year was a lot of folks who previously said that they were conservatives and/or Republicans started saying that they were really libertarians. With most it seemed that you could sum up their total knowledge of libertarian thought in two words: Ron Paul. If you asked how they felt about drugs, abortion, prostitution or gay marriage you got anything but libertarian responses. A libertarian would tell you that the government has no business regulating any of those. A libertarian would say (as the Libertarian party does) that we should make most immigration legal. Oddly, most of these new converts to the libertarian cause were not in favor of legalizing drug use, prostitution or gay marriage. Some had strong feelings against abortion and some didn't particularly care for illegal immigrants or immigrants of any ilk. That is why I suggest that folks read up before joining. Hal

Before folks start piling on the Libertarian band wagon they might want to look at where the Libertarian party stands on major issues. http://www.lp.org/issues Hal

I guess I missed the part where Obama refused to send more troops. The request hasn't been received yet and SecDef Gates has said he will not send it to Obama until they finish a discussion of strategy based on previous McChrystal's report of the situation. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090923/pl_afp/usafghanistannatounrestmilitary_20090923190856 To suggest that Obama is throwing McChrystal under the bus is premature. I wish that LBJ had taken a little more time to consider a strategy and the wisdom of General Westmoreland's troop requests. There's a black wall in Washington that might be a whole lot shorter if he had. Hal

Looks like he put in a full day today. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama;_ylt=At7umlIzz.VCQNDY_wjiB5.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJtbGo3cjU1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwOTIyL3VzX29iYW1hBGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDMgRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDc3Rlcm5vYmFtYWNv Hal

Joe Bob, do you have a link to that Pew survey, I can't seem to find it. I did find one that said that Fox's audience was more balanced but nothing about content, or at least nothing that agrees with what you have posted. There were some interesting figures on favorability released a week ago. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2009/09/14/public-trust-media-accuracy-lowest-ever-liberal-v-conservative-bias-gap As for Obama on Letterman. His appearance did nothing to diminish my respect for him or the office of President. He has a message and he is looking for every way possible to get it to as wide an audience as possible. He did all the Sunday morning wonk shows leading some to say he is overexposed, then he does Letterman and some find it beneath the office of the president. I think that the critics are really in disagreement with the message more than the means. I think that many are looking for any opportunity to criticize. As to whether he has enough spare time to go on Letterman, consider the long vacations and early bedtimes of his predecessor. This was alluded to last night when Obama was talking about how they had let his daughters goof off this summer and then said, "I couldn't do that", to which Letterman responded, "Others have". Hal

A Mighty Wind is a very funny movie. As someone who has worked on a lot of concerts and festivals it cut very close to the bone. I have been in some of those conversations especially when non-technical producers/promoters feel compelled to give there input on the lights, sound or scenery. Bob Balaban was suberb in the role of the promoter, that is to say, I wanted to smack him. I have also been there when the artist wandered off just before they were supposed to go on (and a number of variations like not making it from the hotel to the venue or not being able to pass the bar in the hotel... and not making the show!). The music is also superb in that it captured the near absurdity of much of the 60's (and later) folk music. Shortly after seeing the movie I saw a concert on PBS that was basically a folkies' reunion. Barry McGuire sang Eve of Destruction, Roger McGuinn sang Turn, Turn Turn and Mr. Tambourine Man and the Kingston Trio was also on the bill. Watching this concert it was very hard to separate them from their parodies in A Mighty Wind.

Pack: You mentioned Pete Seeger. As a kid in Greenwich Village, Mary Travers lived in the same building as Pete Seeger. Mary was one rare among the Village folk scene in that she actually grew up there. As a teen she got her start in a group called the Song Swappers backing up Seeger and the Weavers. Who would have thought that she would be gone before Pete? Hal

I don't remember. Thank God they didn't have Facebook back then!

Virginia! I said they got past it... not that they got over it. Actually, here in Arlington we are not really part of the old Virginia as we are much more tied to the Federal City. Not that we don't have our Civil War history; if you dig a hole the odds are still good that you will find a Union belt buckle or a minie ball. Though in Virginia, Arlington (then Alexandria County) was pretty much a Union armed camp with a series of forts that protected the capital city. But now days most of the people here were born somewhere else and we have as many yankees as southerners. We are by far the most liberal county in Virginia. If a democrat gets less than 60% of the vote he or she is in trouble; 70-75% is more common. That said you can drive less than 20 miles and go back almost 150 years to a day when Lee, Jackson, Stuart and Beauregard were rock stars. Hal

That raises an interesting question. 25 years ago I was teaching at a college in Nebraska. The library had a suggestion box and they printed the suggestions and responses. Someone had suggested that the library should have a subscription to Playboy. While many at the time considered it to be pornographic it was a much more mainstream magazine than things like Penthouse or Hustler. The Library's response was that there was no academic justification for having Playboy in the library. I was conflicted on whether I bought this answer. I wondered if a student were writing an essay on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign would he or she want to read the full text of his Playboy interview which was a pretty big deal at the time. Would this be a legitimate academic justification? On the other hand the phrase, "I just read it for the articles" is a line sure to get a laugh. I suspect that the library's patrons would spend more time looking at the pictures than in more scholarly pursuits. I also suspect that most issues would have been pilfered in short order. It probably was wise for the library to spend their money on something else. I usually come down against censorship but in this case (in spite of my disagreement with the library's reason) I did think they made the right call. I have no idea what other college and university libraries do and I have never really thought to ask but now I wonder. BTW, the last time I looked at a Playboy it was far raunchier than back in the 80's; I can certainly see lots of reasons not to put it in a library. Still I wonder where the line should be drawn and if there should be a line at all. Hal

When I was in the sixth grade our teacher had us learn Puff and Where Have All the Flowers Gone. It was 1964 so the PP&M albums were still on the charts. I remember that there was a girl across the aisle from me who got teary every time we sang the last verse of Puff and I thought that was silly. 45 years later I get misty when I hear that verse; more now than a week ago. Hal

I've seen it and agree it is a great story and a great documentary. Hal

Skeptic: I knew I was OLD when my my son was taking history in 11th grade. They covered the Vietnam war at the end of the 3rd quarter. I took the same history course during the Vietnam war and now that war was only 3/4 of the way through US history. Arrrgh! Oh well, at least they got past the civil war. Hal

Nike: Amen to that. But I think maybe this has been going on for a long time. I grew up in Virginia (except when we were stationed overseas) in the 1960s and the schools taught US and Virginia history in 5th, 7th and 11th grades. For some reason the first two courses stopped at 1865. I thought that the teachers were just disorganized but later came to think that in Virginia they just didn't want to discuss what happened next. In 11th grade we got the rest of the story. Hal

Vol: You mention holocaust deniers. There are two ways to deny the holocaust, one is to actively say that it didn't happen. Folks that do that here are usually written off as wackjobs (in Iran they are called president). The other way is to not teach it or have books about it in the school library. I fear that is more common. A few years ago I was talking to a fourteen year old from somewhere in the midwest. The lad was on an annual visit to the grandparents. Each year he had visited a couple of the museums on the mall and he asked me if I could recommend something he hadn't seen. I mentioned the Holocaust Museum. He asked me what the Holocaust was. I explained, thinking that he probably had heard of it but didn't recognize the name. No, he had no idea that had ever happened. Did he know about WWII? Yes they had studied that in history class but nothing about concentration camps or genocide. The boy did not strike me as a dummy or someone who would have slept through that particular aspect of the Third Reich. He had not been taught. Like I said earlier, a gaping hole in his education. Maybe his school system got around to it later, maybe not. Maybe they thought it was too intense for middle school. Maybe there were a lot of German-Americans in his community who didn't want to think or talk about how their cousins could have done such a thing. I don't know. I know that by fourteen I had seen documentaries about the Holocaust in school, on TV and even at a troop meeting. I was fifteen before I learned that my dad had helped liberate one of the camps. I would bet that there were no books by holocaust deniers in this boy's school. To deny it would first require that it be acknowledged. Hal

Vol, I think you have touched on why you don't see that much book banning in the more conservative states, the schools and librarians practice "sensitivity" in ordering so the potentially "objectionable" books are not there in the first place. I suspect if this soft or preemptive book banning were tracked the map would be much more crowded. On one level it may be just common sense. At the extreme it can leave a gaping hole in the education of the students and/or perpetuate biases by providing only one point of view. Hal

Maybe they're morons, maybe they're not but at some point someone will tell the "Teabaggers" what the slang term "tea bagging" means. It isn't appropriate to post on this site or this thread (it is neither courteous nor civil) so if you don't know it, google it. Lets just say I wouldn't want to walk around with a tee shirt that said "Teabagger" any more than I would want to wear one that said "Moron". Hal

Zoom in on the map and then click on the markers and you get a very different picture. In the densely populated Northeast there really aren't that many and some of them are cases where a book was challenged but not removed. At least on case was a Catholic School that banned Harry Potter books. Silly perhaps but it is not like a (tax payer funded) public school system banning books. If you look in the Maryland-DC-Virginia area you see that most if not all the bannings or attempted bannings were in more conservative areas (North Stafford County for instance-they are to the right of Genghis Khan). Really though, if that is all there is in the country, book banning doesn't seem to be that common. That, to me, is good news. Hal