Stosh

@ I have no problem with the boys having fun with the modern electronics. It's kinda fun and does simplify life in general. But to rely entirely on it is a dangerous slope to be sliding on. On more than one occasion I have done the paper/pencil routine with my kids coming up through the grades and it amazes them what can be done and how accurate it is. Even my youngest was amazed at how good the slide rule can be. She was also blown away that I could calculate square roots using paper and pencil too. She went on to win the Mathematics Achievement Award at graduation. I have been using a GPS in my camper for many years now when I do my major trips. But I can assure you that tucked away under the front seat is my Rand-McNaley. My Silva is also tucked in the door pocket. I have hunted for 50+ years and still haven't worked up the courage to rely on a GPS, still the old map and compass for me in the woods.

I know of only a few. One of my Eagles was in the Air Force after leaving high school. As part of his training he was awakened at 2:00 am put on a helicopter and flown out into the desert with nothing but what he had in his pockets of his uniform. In groups of a half dozen they were dropped off at various points, given a map and compass and told that breakfast was at 6:00 am. He looked at the map, oriented it to the North Star, triangulated his position and got back to base in time to shower and get ready for breakfast. No one in his group knew what to do other than him. There were some groups that missed supper that day and after being out all day in the desert needed to be rescued. Another Eagle from a neighboring troop tells of his Army training in Alaska. They were all shown how to set up their tents in the dead of winter, but he chose to burrow into the snow instead. They all made fun of him, but by the end of the week's training, everyone, including the instructors were burrowed under the snow. Occasionally BSA still turns out Real Eagles.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Stars and Stripes has more heritage for racism than does the Confederate battle flag. The Stars and Stripes as stood racially against Negroes, Indians, Irish, Chinese, Catholics (and other religious groups) and any "foreigners" in general over the years. Pick any of the above and a quick check of today's media will produce at least one such indicators. So the whole issue of the Confederate battle flag is nothing more than politically correct smoke and mirrors to keep everyone's attention focused away from the real problem we face. It's nothing more than a media shell game.

LOL, No, I do not own an electric or gas grill, charcoal only! And the Mrs. has mentioned an earth home on several occasions. And as I sit here typing this on my computer, on the left arm of the chair is a the July/August 1980 Mother Earth magazine and on the right side, under the mouse, is my newest purchase from Barnes and Noble titled "COOKING WITH FIRE From Roasting on a Spit to Baking in a Tannur, Rediscover Techniques and Recipes That Capture the Flavors of Wood-Fired Cooking." by Paula Marcoux. Tease me all you wish @, you're probably spot on anyway.

The Civil War was not fought as a racism issue. It was started by the South to preserve it's economic system based on slavery. The North went to war not to abolish slavery but to preserve the Union. They had a few abolitionists in the north threatening the South's economy, but not enough to sway any politicians. For the first two years of the war Lincoln would have accepted the South's demands for slavery if they would only lay down their weapons and preserve the Union. When Lincoln realized this wouldn't happen, he put out the Emancipation Proclamation, negating the legal hold of slavery on only those places in the Union that were trying to break it up. Lincoln wanted only to disrupt the economy of the South enough it couldn't afford to keep fighting. Slavery in general was NOT abolished. Slavery was not abolished until July 28, 1868, three years AFTER the Civil War. Civil rights for the freed former slaves was never resolved with the Civil War. It only abolished slavery and all those former slaves could stay down in the south as far as the North was concerned. This Jim Crow era lasted for yet another 100 years and wasn't legally settled until 1960's. 50 years later we still are aware of the issue. The laws change overnight, the economic issues change, but take a lot longer. People don't change much over the course of their lifetime, nor do they pass on much change to their offspring. Our Founding Fathers knew this was going to be a problem, but ignored it so that the southern colonies would join up with the others against England. So it's been around for well over 250+ years here in America. If anyone thinks that it's going to simply go away with some flag removal in SC, or some other legislative token gesture, guess again. The world doesn't work that way. In many respects, people think that they have won some great and important issue with what they were able to do with a flag, but remember the flag also represents the rebelliousness of people and it may be gone from the SC capital grounds, but it's not going to go away anytime soon. My brand new "Don't Tread On Me" flag is a testament to that process. All that has been accomplished is the turning of yet another page of history whose future has yet to be determined. A country based in racial slavery will never be able to overcome that legacy. After all the Indians have it correct, The Stars and Stripes have flown over racial bigotry a lot longer than the 4 years of the Confederate battle flag.

I know I'm going to get a red tick for this comment, but I do believe someone along the way has missed a very important requirement for being an Eagle Scout. Tenderfoot Requirement #9. Without a complete understanding of it, it is what makes excellent Paper Eagles. I hear no reference to any of the dynamics of this requirement and thus I wonder whether scouts who track this path are getting what is needed out of scouting other than a "I Finished" certificate.

I have a TI-90, so I don't need to know how to add, subtract, multiply or divide. My little hand-held calculator does all the thinking for me. When that isn't around I have an app that does the same thing. It tells me what I need to do to tip the waiter and how much gas mileage I get. All this and I don't need to know how it works, it just does. The GPS in my car replaces all those stupid maps in the glove compartment, too. The dictionary on the shelf is now gone as is the set of encyclopedia. Newspaper doesn't come to the door and all my magazine subscriptions have now been replaced by my smartphone apps. I can even now watch TV on it and play my favorite computer games, too. But if I ever forget to recharge it, or the battery goes dead.... life as I know it, ceases to exist. If I ever had to go back to relying on my brain, or some old fashioned way of doing it on paper with a pencil, I wouldn't know where to start. Oh, by the way, Walmart is having a sale on batteries this week, better load up, your life may depend on it.

Welcome to the forum. Seriously? You need to ask? NO, there is no life outside of Scouting, Scouting is who you are. I just drove 2,000 miles to attend a wedding of one of my Eagle Scouts.... It never ends.

I like the idea of one rank at a time. If the boy gets hung up on one requirement, why are they taking their focus off that to do other things? and if they get "hung up for 30 days on the TF requirement for physical fitness, what's the big deal. Learning a little patience and focusing on an important task is more important to me than making the 3 ranks (now 4) on one year plan a lot of troops shoot for. My troop is just over 1 year old and no one has yet to earn the TF rank. We went out last night and worked on their 5-mile compass hike and didn't finish after 3 hours. They learned a ton of stuff about coming to the event better prepared next time we go after it. There's a lot more learning going on than what's being pencil whipped in the book.

For some of us real progress is a step backwards. Glamping is not my cup of tea.

You know when you have a good program when others mimic and follow your lead. I wouldn't worry too much about it, you're setting a good example for other to follow and remember, they are always going to be one step behind so that shouldn't be a big problem later on down the road. It's a good thing for Scouting in general in your area that the others are following your lead, it's nothing to be afraid of, everyone knows which troop out there is the one to follow and that's the best PR you can get.

It's good to know we have old goats that still rely on the tried and true, but how many of our boys do? That's the legacy that needs to be passed on, not the digital battery operated options. As far as historical records are concerned, a topo with a highlighter does just as well. Triangulation and a topo will do just as well as any GPS and will extend well beyond the battery life of any GPS or Smartphone. My only real complaint about the GPS systems is the fact that most people gloss over the map and compass necessities to get to the glitzy fun of the GPS. Sorry, but even to this day I do not rely solely on my life-jacket, I learned to swim first. "Hey Joey, look at this neat GPS I got for my birthday. You just push this button and it remembers where you are like here in the parking lot. Then you can go out in the woods and run around all over the place and then you just push this button and it tells you how to get back to the parking lot. Hey, wait a minute, I think the battery just went dead." I have no problem with the boys playing with a GPS MB after they have mastered Map and Compass.

Just because one is Republican or Democrat or Independent or whatever, it isn't anyone's "fault". That is just playing into the polarizing blame game and accomplishes nothing in the long run except hard feelings and long forum threads. Let's just all assume that no matter what happens in our country today it's always somebody else's fault. Now that we have that out of our system and we have agreed on something, we can start from there to fix the problem. Oh, that's never going to happen? Well, then learn to live with it because the only people that can make a difference is the people themselves. They elected idiots, then live with the decisions idiots make. Otherwise keep elect people who aren't idiots. If the majority of people buy into political double-speak and lies, then they deserve to keep electing idiots. The rest are going to have to learn to live in a country run by idiots. That process is the definition of Fascism. I bet a lot of people didn't know that, but that's how tyrants are able to take control of a country. Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin are great examples of how this can happen in today's world. All came about because of liberal social reforms that allowed the development of socialism/communism that collapsed into tyranny and dictatorial forms of government. This is nothing new, it has happened before, it's a natural progression of events and if left unchecked with happen again.

Yep. If there's a ton of paperwork and the boy can do it for himself, the adults should be drinking coffee instead of trying to do all the boy's work and burning themselves out. If that information needs to be accumulated from the boys, then each patrol needs a functional Scribe who then reports all that information to the Troop Scribe who turns in his report to the Troop Committee. Oh, welll, your Scribe POR's are not functional? Nothing to do because the adults are doing all their work? Hmmmmm, then I don't think it is proper to blame National for an adult-led breakdown of the troop. And Adult Association process might be developed to work with the boys to have them comfortable enough to work out a system whereby these things get done with a coordinated effort of both working together. If the boys are to learn to work with adults on a peer level rather than parent/child, teacher/child, relationship, this might be a great opportunity. By the time the boys are 11 years old, they should have grasped the idea of paper and pencil and enough arithmetic to record the necessary information.

http://survivalcache.com/death-by-gps-survival-electronics-backup/ Map and Compass, reading the stars and using the sun I'm the only scouter I know of that still carries a pocket signal mirror in my first aid kit. It's been there for 50+ years and I haven't replaced the batteries once. Sure GPS and electronic stuff is fun, but the real stuff needs to be there as backup? I just go with the real stuff to begin with. There's nothing fun about being lost and out of batteries.

We used to be a society that celebrated tolerance as a virtue. Now we have accepted intolerance as the norm. The majority no longer determines the course we take. Any special interest group that wishes to push their agenda gets their way regardless of the polarization it produces along the way. We are destined to soon find out what the needle that broke the camel's back is going to be for us.

If one is running a good program, one doesn't need to worry about others raiding boys from them. Half my boys don't come from my general neighborhood, but drive past other troops to get to mine because my program is different and that seems to be what the boys want.

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/flags/usa/confed.htm What about the other Confederate flags? At least if one is going to get bent out of shape on the subject, at least pick an official flag to whine about instead of a battlefield marker flag. I'm kinda partial to the Bonnie Blue flag, that's the flag flying over the first Confederate forces that fired on Ft. Sumter. All the rest are Johnnie-come-latelys. (pun intended.) Second choice is the Stars and Bars, the OFFICIAL Flag of the Confederacy. I love the "in your face" gesture of the Georgian legislature when everyone made them change from the non-official battle flag reference and they went with the Official CSA flag instead. It shows the lack of knowledge people really have on the subject.

I never said that it was not fun for the kids, I said it was not for me. That's what I have ASM's for.

I've known kids that a day at the mall or on the couch playing video games was fun but I wouldn't call it scouting.

What's so great about camping on the WH lawn? No trees, no fires, no fun. Next will be a Jamboree in Central Park. Seriously? The only thing I would think is worse is a BSA STEM Jamboree in front of the Smithsonian.

They have the right to free speech and can use those words whenever they wish. I have a right to the pursuit of happiness and getting up and moving away from such people is a choice I frequently make. My dad is in the nursing home and goes off on a rant (former naval aviator) and starts with the foul language. The solution is simple, just hang up and I have done so on many occasions. When he calls back the language is always a LOT better. They have a choice and so do I.

Let's just use the term inappropriate language because swearing has nothing to do with bodily functions. It has to do with using language to persuade or validate one's position whether it is true or not. "I swear I didn't do it!" Cursing is using the word Damn, that is to use some power (mostly God's) to condemn someone. Truly an inappropriate prayer petition. Vulgar is mostly what one tosses around indicating something tossed in to offer some sort of strong emphasis to the comment. Most adults use inappropriate language to emphasize their conversations because they lack wordsmith skills. After a while, it's just habit and used really as their normal conversation. Youth pick up on the vocabulary as an indication of adulthood which they then emulate. While I don't make it a habit to really study speech patterns because I just leave when the conversation goes south. Generally for emphasis I have other more appropriate and effective ways of getting a point across to the boys. Sometimes what is NOT said is more effective than what is emphasized with vulgar language.

Swearing on a Bible before giving testimony in a trial case is forbidden by Christian, Jewish and Islamic law, but like a lot of things it has now become "socially acceptable". Let's just go with inappropriate language so everyone understands in their own way what that means.

A lot of it has to do with one's situation, cultural environment, religious background, etc. What is offensive to one is not necessarily offensive to another. When my mother told me to go back and pick up all the crap that we dumped by the front door when we walked in, it was always translated as junk or clutter, like books, coats, gym bag, etc. that we unloaded when we walked into the house. It had nothing to do with what the dog or cat left there. Others on the forum must have been raised with pets. Then again when we refer to swearing, it has multiple meanings as well. Cursing is something of a broad term reference as well. One could fill a whole 2" loose-leaf notebook of words that are inappropriate in certain places at certain times that mean something differently in a different context/place. When your mother tells you it's time for bed, it doesn't mean the same thing as when a guy tells his date that. So, OMG, who's going to define what is inappropriate? Normally people don't generally walk down the street using foul language, but in certain places at certain times it does get used. I'm thinking that sometime in the past it became okay to use poor language and what is said in the troop activities is not the same language used at the scout's supper table at home. The patterns of language used in one place can be altered for differing situations. Inappropriate language at the supper table will invoke a reaction from Mom, discourteous comments aimed at a teacher will get a free hall-pass to the principle's office, etc. Anything goes on a scout outing? Well, that's what's been taught. It can be untaught as well.