Stosh

I took WB back in 1993. It was okay, but not very useful. Working the ticket was far more beneficial, but that part of the curriculum, I designed. I had grown up in the GBB era of scouting. Now that my WB is obsolete, they want me to take it again. Sorry, I'll pass. Stosh

Maybe the "plan" was not to provide health care for all people. What if the plan was to have the government provide health care for all people. The way things are going, it just might be true. As the costs skyrocket, don't worry about it, we can always nail the taxpayer down the road. Stosh

Private industry spends an enormous amount of time evaluating it's effectiveness in the open market. It is responsive to changes and adapts or dies. The "government" is under no such mandates. The best story I ever heard was from my brother who worked 30 years for the "government". A black woman with a disability, (three strikes, your in!), was hired to be the telephone receptionists. Her disability? She was deaf. It might sound like the lead in to a joke, but it wasn't. It took the "government" a month to find her a job filing in the office, a position they didn't need, no problem, the taxpayers can afford two people and after all it was a black woman with a disability. Kinda hard to fire her just because she wasn't qualified to do the job. One example doesn't provide definitive evidence, but as my brother said, it was just the tip of the iceberg, and he was involved in only one location, he figured if it happened where he was, it had to be rampant elsewhere. Other stories collected from fellow co-workers (all hearsay) seemed to point in the same direction. Where's Senator William Proxmire when you need him?! Stosh

I've worn pants the past 20 years, that I hemmed up. No one has ever commented on how bad it looks. And if you use badge magic or iron-on basting tape, well, it will never show seeing how it's glued on the inside of the pant leg. I also used regular thread instead of gold thread to keep the cost down. If you really want to do it the scouting way, use duct tape. If you are planning on never selling them and you don't intend to grow anymore, cut the leg 1" longer than you want, fold 1/2" over and sew with a sewing machine. Looks passable. You aren't going for a fashion statement here. No one in the woods really worries too much how it looks. Stosh

2 minutes of research? Stosh

The only pair of switchbacks I saw had a hem and pull string in them. If they got away from that, then that's terrific! Stosh

LOL, if someone told me they were on the congressional staff, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. I'm thinking there might even be a few working for the ICE it wouldn't surprise me either. But hey, who am I but some wacko conspiracy nutcase. Stosh

Vee know vare you leef.... My apology for that statement, it simply isn't true. There are 11+ million illegal immigrants that the government has absolutely no idea where they are. Stosh

From my experience and the experience of finding uniforms for boys, the sizes run pretty much true to "regular store" sizes. Of course the store sizes are often widely different as well. When it comes to pants, the inseam and waist sizes are pretty accurate. Inseam on older pants was a moot point because they were not hemmed at the cuff. Some of the older scout pants had elastic waistbands and worked pretty well for growing boys as they bulked up. The switchback pants have a finished cuff so you will need to adhere to the inseam measurement. I would say that if you are starting out, go for sizes that are too big and expect over the next 7 years the size of your boy WILL get larger. To-date, I have never seen where adage this doesn't hold true. When I was starting high school I was 5' 11" tall, 98 pounds. At the end of my sophomore year, I was 6' 135 pounds. My mother would take things back to the store and complain that they had shrunk in the wash. I have purchased on-line from both BSA and such places as E-Bay where the people merely read labels. I haven't had any problem with sizes being "off". Hope this helps. Stosh

At least that's what you have been lead to believe. The neat thing about it all the conspiritorists out there may one day be proven true if this keeps up. They know where you live.... http://keyw.com/google-street-view-turns-your-house-into-a-snow-globe/ Yeah, but it's so cute! And some call me a paranoid dillusionist! Did you put your address on your last tax return? Bummer! How about your date of birth? Double bummer! How about your social security number? Triple bummer! Paranoid means one thinks they are being watched. Kinda looks like I'm cured! Stosh

Brave New World we live in, must be 1984. Stosh

So after a careful explanation of where I'm coming from, the responses are, go back and read some article and a nope, you're wrong on the unmeasurable timeline. Not much room left for any meaningful dialog. Sorry, gentlemen, neither answer leaves much to discuss. It might have been fun. It isn't going to keep me from commenting, which may indeed be the goal of this one-liner retorts and personal attacks by some, but it will pretty much curtail any serious dialog. By the way, there's a ton of stuff in my comments that warranted a stronger response back that I have received from others who propose evolutionary theory elsewhere. Stosh

I kinda quit reading when I get to comments like "Smuckka heads". Sorry, bad habit of mine. Stosh

Packsaddle, I did carefully read what EagleCat had to say, and it's all true. But mutations/adaptations over time should have produced far more varieties, after all biological evolution takes billions upon billions of years to come about. While not all mutations are viable (deformities), others are unsustainable (unable to reproduce, i.e. mules) while others may have survived, but killed off by "survival of the fittest". This all seems plausible as a hypothesis and that is the lure of the theory. Yet so far, through environmental alterations and genetic alterations, science has been able to produce mutations and maybe even some adaptations, but like the fruit fly experiments and maybe the E. Coli experiment, none of the scientific attempts have produced any superior fruit flies or bacteria. The study may not have yet been finished, but were any of the adapted bacteria sustainable and were they superior to the original? I didn't see any conclusions drawn that were proposed. The next step for accepted science is: is the experiment repeatable producing the same results. Well, we can wait another 15 years to see if it happens. I'm thinking it might not, but the jury is still out. So, we can't approach it definitively in the laboratory, but we do have the archeological record. We have snap shots here and there of the various "prior" species from which the modern species is supposed to have been derived from. But what about the time periods in between which show the link between the two. Archeologists are having a difficult time coming up with any of these links. There was a study done a few years back, maybe even more recent than that which showed interbreeding between Homo Sapien and Neanderthal. Some DNA confirms it, but that only showed interbreeding, not evolution from Neanderthal to Homo Sapien. What it does show is two species and one became extinct or absorb partially into another species through interbreeding. Two species producing a hybrid is not evolution, it's only hybridization. So hypothetically if we had 100 species in the past and now we have 500, maybe only 200 because of extinction or non-viable. Is that evolution through mutation/adaptation or is it hybridization? Again, jury is still out on that. Of course, speculative on both counts, modern species may have developed as a result of evolution over time, long time, on a coincidental basis through random mutations (evolution) or it may have been a result of catastrophism (short creation) and the variations we see today are hybridizations. The catastrophism camp says that the world is far to complex to be explained as random coincidence could provide. However, evolution relies on a long period of time to develop. Catastrophism doesn't. Science has yet to discover how to measure that. The age of the earth is put at about 4.6 billion years, but that is a linearly estimated number. Even with the questionable RadioCarbon dating method, we can at best go back maybe 60,000 years. Everything is then extrapolated by a formula of estimations. There are other things that can't be measured, such as non-carbon material. We estimate the age of rocks by the extrapolated linear reverse evolution of animals found in the rock. All that is well and good until one realizes that the earth cannot accurately be measured linerally. How does one handle the multiple catasrophic events such as the one that is assumed to have wiped out dinosaurs all at one time? It kinda puts a glitch in the process of measurement. Because of the limits of time and inability to measure it, catastrophism can be scientifically viable as well. Either way it takes a bit of assumption and belief to jump to some conclusion either way. This is why the debate rages on. Neither side has been able to settle the issue. I'm sure someday they'll figure it out, but for now both are scientifically viable yet not provable. So, just for fun, let's put on our aluminum foil hats and go another route. Earth has a habitable environment but it is plagued by huge flesh eating nasties. So another alien life form comes in, destroys the predators and leaves a colony to be whatever, later on. Heck, we have a ton of questionable evidence that science doesn't have any idea what it is or how it fits in. But it's there and people are working on it. So if we're looking for coincidences. On all the major habitable continents, about 4,000 years ago, huge civilizations popped up, all very technologically advanced. Over the past 4,000 years humans have developed at a rate that far exceeds any time before that. Coincidental? Sure, why not. Okay, you can take your caps off now. One last thing. Every major civilization on every continent has also besides exploding technology always had some idea about a "god" of some sort as the master creator of whatever civilization that has resulted. Even as primitive tribal societies, all over the world, separated by major water barriers they had some "great spirit" creating and maintaining their civilizations. How come they all came to the same conclusion even when separated. If people think catastrophism is a hard myth to accept, I'm thinking a bunch of ape-like men siting around the campfire, sipping a brew just came out and decided there was going to be a god and the idea was so profound that they literally ran all over the world and told everyone else. Don't cha think this speculation stuff is fun. However, none of it is provable scientifically, all three scenarios. It just seems that catastrophism is the most plausible guess, but I kinda like the H. G. Wells version too. Stosh

Isn't it strange that civility and civilization both come from the same root word?

"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthty's methods to keep silent. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result." - Edward R. Murrow

"Look, YOU MADE A CLAIM. Back it up or shut up." Hmmmm, so now I'm not entitled to express any opinion on my beliefs? I was wondering how long it was going to take you to finally get around to the real issue. So, here's how it goes. In this country, under the Bill of Rights, I have the freedom to express my opinions in a free-thinking society uninhibited by bullies, distractors, or any thing else that would keep me from that process of expression. The key to the whole thing is, tolerance allows a person to politely listen, consider it, judge it, and if the conclusion doesn't suit the listener, they can then express their opinions under the same conditions and the two can either further dialog it or walk away. Only the bully will remain and attempt to intimidate the other into silence. By the way, feel free to cut/paste any of my comments where I attacked you personally. Want me to do it too? Stosh

So then the US government can prejudiciously stereotype Christian groups the way those groups are perceived to stereotype others? Hmmm, do the math. One group is a hate group for stereotyping but the group that stereotypes them is not? Okay, that adds up for me too. If the Thought Police are ever turned out in force, we'd all be arrested. I kinda thought one had to actually DO something to commit a crime. Stosh

Has the military in any of those countries defined Christianity as a hate group in any of those countries like it has in ours? Stosh

"Why are you trying to avoid having to back up your own assertions and putting the onus on me?" Same reason for why the victim would be expected to prove intolerance against the bully? The bully never sees their action as being intolerant. http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131023/A_OPINION0619/310230306/-1/A_OPINION/ Obviously the college saw this as nothing wrong with their policy, but here you have a "free speech" zone inside a nationwide free speech country? I kinda thought the First Amendment applied from Hawaii to Maine and Alaska to Florida not some little square on the college campus. It is also quite obvious the student on public property handing out Constitutions on Constitution Day was a right accorded to any American. I guess not. The very document that gave him the right to do so was not allowed by public officials. http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/college-sued-for-stopping-constitution-handout/ Where was the ACLU? I would have thought they would have been first in line to jump on this one. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has filed because ACLU is definitely AWOL. Kinda leaves one wondering why only certain individuals have ACLU support and others don't. I wonder what the agenda of the ALCU really is? Like I said, in a tolerant nation, none of this would even be on the radar of local news, let alone international news. And if it was, those organizational watchdog groups should have been the first to jump. As a matter of fact, if it were truly a tolerant nation, I wonder if any of it would have even occurred. Keep it vague to stay just out of reach, and then expect everyone to produce specifics to deal with it. That's what the bully relies on. That last statement is why you'll not get specific examples. It's kinda like the rantings of the intolerant having school and professional sports to change the Indian names of their school mascots. Where's the outcry against the slam against the Norwegians, depicting them as brutal and warlike by using the offensive term Viking? Like any other hypocritical agenda, it all depends on who's ox is getting gored. Stosh

Let's go for the shorter list, show me examples where atheists have been tolerant towards any other religion. Try and be as specific as possible. Otherwise, do a search on ACLU cases, especially the one filed against the ACLU by it's employees. Here, let me do the research for you: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/15/aclu-embroiled-in-contract-dispute-with-its-own-unionized-employees/ Stosh

Sorry you don't believe that, I do believe that tolerance is a two-way street. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. Stosh

I kinda thought that might have been what you were driving at, but even the really poor don't make enough for much of a refund, much of which would be absorbed into medical costs anyway. If I were to receive a $500 refund for filing and a $1000 fine for not having insurance, there's no way I'm going file for the refund. I'm just disappointed that those that really need medical assistance aren't the ones that are going to be helped. Stosh

Attach loops to the top of the MB and layer them so those interested can flip up the upper ones to see the lower ones. The requirements say they have to be ON the sash, doesn't say HOW they are to be fastened. Stosh

Critical observation used to be a major part of early Scout requirements. Now all they see are check marks. Stosh