AZMike

With all the reports of the president referring people to websites for disaster relief, it made me wonder how many people even own transistor radios now? It seems like an essential item in a disaster, but a spot check with people at work found that outside of car radios, only a couple had battery-powered radios. I think I need to buy one and a solar-powered battery recharger. I had one after we lost power for a few days after the Northridge Quake in LA, but we don't have one anymore, just iPods...

Peregrinator, Actually, while you may not be up to it yourself, a virus HAS been assembled by other persons from off-the-shelf reagents. It was subsequently inserted into a bacterium and it did what viruses do. So yes, that one is possible. That doesn't support abiogenesis, though. Life created other life. Heck, I've done that three times myself. Can we show how increasingly complex life forms were created by random happenstance, without a thinking causative agent? No. Directed evolution seems to be the best explanation for the creation and increasing complexity of life.

My newspaper reported it this morning, and it's on AP, so it should be getting wide publicity. The big issue raised at the conference is how youth organizations can legally share information on potential abusers with other organizations, without placing individuals and organizations at risk of lawsuits under privacy laws. This is a huge concern, and it is good that the BSA is taking the lead in raising it. This is one of the ways I've suggested that the BSA reclaim its standing - become the leader in youth protection training and advocacy. The reason for making this a session closed to the media was so the the participants could talk freely without fear of every statement being microanalyzed by the media and attorneys. A media conference will (I hope) be held afterwards to explain what was discussed and conclusions. The BSA should host a national training conference for all youth organizations to promote youth safety training with outside speakers, similar to the Dallas Crimes Against Children Conference which is held every August and is the largest law enforcement training conference in the country (this is heavily subsidized by outside corporations, such as Facebook and Google - the BSA should consider becoming a sponsor as well - www.dcac.org). As the BSA's youth protection policies become stricter, there is a real danger that offenders will migrate to smaller youth organizations, so the BSA should advocate for better policies for all youth organizations.

Very nice, Clem. I like the idea of the 4 columns listing the number / the requirement / what the scout needs to do before meeting with the MBC / what the scout has to do when meeting with the MBC, and the links with the on-line resources. I will borrow that format, if you don't mind, with the merit badges for which I am a counselor.(This message has been edited by AZMike)

Could be a useful badge. I think anything that makes kids more conscious about the need to make effective choices about use of resources is a good thing, and could be one of the most lasting things they take from Scouts into adulthood. (I remember seeing an infographic this year about adult Eagle Scouts, a surprising number were active in an environmental organization.) Maybe the MB will just be a MB version of the Leave No Trace course. Whether this merits (no pun intended) being a separate badge from Enviro Science? Maybe. You see a lot of shilly-shallying with terms of science, as in the 1970s when saying you were into "Ecology" didn't mean that you could graph the ecosystem of a microclimate, it meant that you thought not littering was a good idea. "Environmental Science" is a separate field from "Sustainability," so maybe it's worth being a separate badge. Maybe it's just posturing by BSA HQ to curry favor from the political left (not that conservation should be sectarian.) It'll be interesting to see what the requirements are.

Foot conditioning is huge. Wear the trail boots whenever possible, even around the house, trim the toenails right. Rubbing the feet down with rubbing alcohol each night is said to toughen the skin, I don't know for sure but I've done it when preparing for big hikes and it seemed to help. Try to get up an hour early, throw on the boots and a weighted ruck, try to get 4 miles in by walking two miles away from your house and two back. In the gym, focus on squats and deadlifts to strengthen the knee joints and the back, endoboards (if your gym has one) are great for strengthening the ankles, do shrugs to strengthen the traps to help support the shoulder-straps. Hike on weekedn whenever possible, especially any routes with a lot of inclines. Hill runs are great for building endurance for switchbacks - pick a spot with a hill or incline, sprint up it, walk down to let your heartbeat return to normal, repeat as many times as possible. Don;t do any of this until your doctor clears you - a stress EKG is a good idea if you are middle aged and still trying to stay active. Get a stretching or yoga book and develop a 5 to 15 minute routine focused on stretching the back, thighs, calves, etc., and do each night while watching TV. Use a hard foam roller pad to work out the kinks. For abs, work on stability - various forms of planks, for gradually increasing time periods, are best for backpacking.

BSA24: "Everything we have as a species - all of our advances and abilities - from how to exercise - nutrition - making gadgets and machines - building homes - everything we do is based on a science. Experiments and observations of the world. The human race lives longer, more comfortably, and with greater power over the world today because of scientific advances. Science gave us EVERYTHING that we have." Good and bad? "Science" (you actually mean technology, as opposed to the problem-solving methodology of the scientific method, which was itself the creation of religious men like Gregor Mendel) has given us nuclear weapons, deforestation, napalm, holes in the ozone layer, nicotine-enhanced cigarettes, Zyklon-B, land mines, eugenics, abortion, infecting unknowing black people with syphilis in Tuskegee, and much much more. "Science" can give us human cloning for personal organ farms, animal-human hybrids to help "advance" scientific knowledge, and destroy the citizens of an enemy nation by using genetically designed bio-weapons. "Science" has nothing to tell us about whether we "should" do such things. That is the field of religion and morality. Science covers the domain of observable facts; religion covers the field of meaning. Possessing one without the other is like putting a loaded M4 rifle in the hands of an uneducated toddler. "Without it, we would walk everywhere we went, hunt food with sharpened stones and sticks, and wear animal skins" That sounds like a pretty good outing, there. "We'd have our children at 12 years old and die at 25 years old. 90% of our children would die." As opposed to the approximately 50 million children aborted in the U.S. since 1973, and the 1.21 million abortions which were performed in the United States in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, which is about 3,322 aborted boys and girls per day. Yeah, we are a very civilized society due to our "science." Real science is important and useful, which is why religion and science are children of the same father, why the Church was the creator of the university system, and why millions of scientific advances have been due to the patronage of the Church. Yes, YEC is probably incorrect. Does someone believing it invalidate all scientific knowledge? Probably not. There are equally unlikely and unprovable beliefs held by secularists, like abiogenesis. (This message has been edited by AZMike)

SeattlePioneer, you really shouldn't yank BadenP's chain like that.

The person most likely to sexually abuse your child is.. your child. That is, a sibling. That factors in to the "family" statistics. Not just parents. You also need to include the odd "family" members in modern society, which include mom (or dad's) live-in boyfriend. As Beavah suggested, how do you quantify one type of abuse (sexual contact) as bad but not include physical abuse (not to mention emotional abuse) which often has a sexual component. If someone burns their child because they receive pleasure from the act, how is that different from someone who sodomizes their child because they receive pleasure from the act? Both acts, since they are done to relieve stressors and cause pleasure for the offender, are sexual in the criminal sense of the term. Not all sex crimes involve sodomy, fellatio, or inappropriate touching, for child or adult victims. Which leads us to a more relevant question - many Scouters (most, or all, I would hope) would report another scouter if there was evidence of sexual abuse. How many would report a parent if they saw evidence of non-sexual abuse - repeated instances burns, bruises, emotional symptoms, fear of returning home after a campout, etc.? You know what you should do, and what you morally should do - how many actually would?

Re the family vs strangers issue...No, guys. Family members are more likely to abuse, based on the data. Out of 715,761 cases of abuse (physical and sexual) and neglect of children reported to Child Protective Service (CPS) agencies in each state in 2010 (last year provided), the offenders were broken down as follows (per the annual survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services): Child Daycare Providers: 3,685 (0.4%) Friend and Neighbor: 3,157 (0.4%) Group Home Staff: 1,671 (0.2%) Professional 1,037 (0.1%) Parent: 715,761 (81.2%) Foster Parent: 3,083 (0.3%) Legal Guardian: 2,136 (0.2%) Other Relative: 53,851 (6.1%) Unmarried Partner of Parent: 38,905 (4.4%) The rates of sexual abuse are hard to estimate, based on differing legal definitions of "abuse." (This message has been edited by AZMike)

WasE61 "We know that there are pedophiles among you. We don't know who they are, or how much contact they have with our boys." The single largest group of child molesters, larger than BSA leaders, or priests, or rabbis, or ministers, or swimming coaches, or even teachers, are fathers. Not of the Catholic variety, but biological fathers. I have no idea how many of you are molesting your kids, but I know many of you are. "We know that our boy's cannot defend themselves from you." I know that a child's ability to resist his molester, when he is his or her own father, is the most difficult thing of all, and much harder than resisting physical force or seduction by a molester. You fathers know their children better than anyone else, they depend on you for food and shelter, and you have private, unrestricted access to your victims most of the day. "We also know that, in general, none of you will turn over (to the police) any of your brethren that might be molesting our boys. That when given the choice, you will more than like protect your organization rather than our boys. You've been doing it this way for 100 years." We also know that you fathers have been molesting kids for millennia, and that few members of the family, including mothers and siblings, will go to the police, even if they strongly suspect or even know. That's the level of control you fathers have over your victims. All that is true. I doubt you are a child molester just because you are a father (even as I am a father, and most of the people on this forum are fathers.) You should exercise the same common sense when defaming people just because they volunteered to help your kid in a youth program that you apparently can't be bothered to participate in. Most of us volunteered to help makes ure our kids were in a safe environment. Why can't you do the same?

Eamonn: "I do and have done a lot of training presentations both for work and for Scouting. My approach has been "I know what I'm talking about and I'm not going to waste your time." If all presenters followed those rules (with a corollary of not going over ones allotted time), training would be seen by many in a quite different light.(This message has been edited by AZMike)

It would require a real leap of faith to believe that the universe was created from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.

DeanRx: "Overall - given the terrible circumstances - BSA did the best they thought possible at the time and are standing up and taking responsibility at this point. RC and Penn State are still ducking responsibility." I can't speak for Penn State, but the Catholic Church has required youth safety training for ALL that have contact with children (laity and clergy). While men with same-sex attraction were allowed into the priesthood in some seminaries in the 1960s through 1980s, they are now longer allowed into Holy Orders (which makes sense - if you want to reduce the rate of abuse of young males (the overwhelming problem in the Church) by homosexual acts, then you reduce the number of those who have the desire to have sex with males. That may hurt some activists with political agendas, but holy orders is not a "right." The Church now does annual audits on the status of reports of abuse, which have fallen down to next to none. Denominations that have not taken such actions are seeing the rate of abuse skyrocket, according to the insurance companies. The rate of sexual abuse of children remains high in the education and health care industries, as does the level of organizational cover-up. NO organization has been unscathed by the epidemic of child abuse. The media itself is hardly exempt, as the recent scandal regarding the BBC's cover-up of sexual abuse shows: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/revealed-newsnight-emails-that-accuse-bbc-of-jimmy-savile-coverup-8218971.html

All of this would never have happened if we allowed Boy Scout leaders to marry.

Interesting article and quote: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/19/can-science-spot-a-pedophile-research-zeroes-in-on-brain-abnormalities.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29 "Plante says the new policies and procedures in place at institutions that have been nearly destroyed by sexual deviancethe Catholic Church and even the Boy Scoutsshould serve as a model for child-focused organizations trying to prevent sexual abuse. He says pedophilia can be considered a public-health issue that requires a hybrid of biological, psychological, and social treatments rather than a criminal predilection or a disease easily treated with a pill. "He says the next step in preventing pedophilia will be to focus on kids in youth sports, public schools, and organizations where children are left unsupervised. Plante says, kids in the Boy Scouts, Catholic Church, and in college football will be the safest kids on the planetbut its children everywhere else that remain at risk." A child is more likely to be molested by his brother, his father, stepfather, or his teacher, than a Scout leader, priest, or minister - the public's shortsighted obsession with those groups is dangerous to the greater threats that children face.

And, surprisingly, in the U.K. for once, not the U.S. of A.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219513/Atheist-schoolboy-11-banned-joining-Scouts-refuses-swear-duty-God.html

I still find "Binders of Women" less bizarre than Obama repeatedly referring to Navy "Corpse-Men." Or telling Jon Stewart tonight that 'If four Americans get killed, its not optimal.'" (This message has been edited by AZMike)

It could still go either way, although Romney has pulled ahead in the swing states poll at once. If Obama wins, it will be because of voters like these:

sailingpj: BDPT00, Feel free to ask the guy on that commented on the article to cite his sources. I would rather not link my facebook profile to that article right now. The wikipedia entry has some good sources cited that you may want to check out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Cause The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and National Association of Social Workers stated in 2006: Currently, there is no scientific consensus about the specific factors that cause an individual to become heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexualincluding possible biological, psychological, or social effects of the parents' sexual orientation. However, the available evidence indicates that the vast majority of lesbian and gay adults were raised by heterosexual parents and the vast majority of children raised by lesbian and gay parents eventually grow up to be heterosexual.[2] The Royal College of Psychiatrists stated in 2007: Despite almost a century of psychoanalytic and psychological speculation, there is no substantive evidence to support the suggestion that the nature of parenting or early childhood experiences play any role in the formation of a person's fundamental heterosexual or homosexual orientation. It would appear that sexual orientation is biological in nature, determined by a complex interplay of genetic factors and the early uterine environment. Sexual orientation is therefore not a choice.[4] The American Academy of Pediatrics stated in Pediatrics in 2004: Sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. In recent decades, biologically based theories have been favored by experts. Although there continues to be controversy and uncertainty as to the genesis of the variety of human sexual orientations, there is no scientific evidence that abnormal parenting, sexual abuse, or other adverse life events influence sexual orientation. Current knowledge suggests that sexual orientation is usually established during early childhood.[4][134][135] ------- sailingpj, I would suggest that the reason the DSM, and the psychological/psychiatric community changed its definition of homosexuality as pathology is as much due to the political movements of the 1960s than any actual scientific breakthroughs. See the following article, a transcript of a story that originally appeared on NPR. It is generally supportive of the movement to "destigmatize" homosexuality, but notes that it was driven more by closeted gay psychologists, gay activists, and professional and social pressures than any scientific breakthroughs: "As the APA prepares for the publication of the DSM-V in 2013, I believe its worthwhile to keep this story in mind. Some of the proposed changes seem to have more to do with a desire to remove a stigmatizing label than real scientific evidence." See the article here: http://www.mindofmodernity.com/not-sick-the-1973-removal-of-homosexuality-from-the-dsm

So when all the other pro-homosexual Eagle Scouts have sent their Eagle badges to him, will he then return those badges to BSA out of disgust with the repressive BSA policies, as so many former (?) Eagle Scouts claim to have done, or will he frame them over the grand piano in the living room and say he is now an "Eagle Scout"?

"I'm sure their prejudice resonates in the Southern and Central parts of the United States, but in a modern society it stinks." And I can assure you that the citizens of the southern and central parts of the United States appreciate your prejudices and bigotry.

A new banner ad that I haven't seen before the reboot shows pictures of older women with the tagline, "We don't want younger men...we want YOU!" Given the context that this is a forum devoted to scouting, that's kind of creepy.

If you have instant cold chemical packs and keep your bag in a vehicle in the heat, DEFINITELY keep them inside a heavy-duty zip-loc bag - they often explode in the heat, and can cover the inside of the vehicle with crusty chemicals that will stain upholstery, etc.

I also use one for a movie night in the back yard with lawn chairs, popcorn, etc. If you go to a sign shop and ask for a misprinted large banner they'll usually give them to you for free or for a couple bucks. They make a great projection screen. It's like being in a drive-in back when I was a kid. One summer night I projected "Creature from the Black Lagoon" on the side of the house next to our swimming pool while the kids floated around in inner tubes and watched, loads of spooky fun.