packsaddle

Scalia? Wow, I had no idea.....

Poor Scalia. He singled out one type, presumably the rest are hunky dory in his mind...sort of makes you wonder, doesn't it...? Well, maybe not. Seattle, I guess you would have been a better choice for the rubber chicken (or whatever they served for lunch). For me, it would have depended on the dessert. If they had served ice cream I could have ignored just about everything around me short of nuclear attack (and then I'd try to gulp it down in the final milliseconds).

The one hour thing was the norm for the old forums of long ago. It was accepted by everyone back then. I see how it would be confusing for people to respond to a message and years later find that they had responded to something quite different because of a 'long after' edit. It seems like anyone serious about what they write to the internet ought to be satisfied with it when they hit the 'submit' button. An hour used to be a gracious plenty of time to reconsider what we've written. I should know - I've cringed when I spotted a grammatical error that became enshrined for posterity. So I just try to do better as a result. Or...try to get it right the first time. Edit: I'll go further and state that if a politician decided to try to change something they wrote for public consumption five years after they wrote it (and I suspect a lot of them might like to), most of us would label that as a deceptive action. To me, it could constitute a lie. Fifteen minutes seems too short. An hour seems generous enough.

I agree.

I'm guessing that former Microsoft employees were involved with implementation.

Welcome to the forums, Chief67. That was quite a post for a starter. I hope you'll stick around with more to add on other topics as well.

Internet has been down for a while. But catching up....if there was ever any question about the justification for pulling I&P off the 'front page', so-to-speak, you guys have just provided it. It's almost as bad as having Scalia give a luncheon speech.

OK, I can go with that. It's still going to cost him.

Holy Toledo! Stosh is a liberal!

Stosh will go bankrupt. Moosetracker will take pity and lend him some $$$ with low interest. AZMike will scoff at the newly-formed relationship. Eamonn will express confusion...and the forums will continue to provide the source of pleasure and enjoyment that we all have come to expect and appreciate.

At times, multiple threads in I&P would head up the 'recent posts' and guests might think that scouter.com is all about that stuff mostly and that scouting was secondary. By removing I&P from any mention in 'recent posts' guests will tend to focus on the good stuff instead. That's what was intended by this change. We can still do all the squabbling we want but it won't be 'out there' quite as prominently as it has been in the past. Edit: If you like you can think of the I&P forum as being 'in the closet', and not an 'avowed' part of what we like to think of as scouting forums.

Reluctantly....

NOTICE. In case you missed seeing Merlyn's post in the 'recent posts' panel, the moderators unanimously decided that it would be good to de-emphasize this forum because it tends to detract from...you know...Scouting and could make a bad first impression on newcomers to the forums. This was my original suggestion and if anyone doesn't like it, you can take it up with me. I suggested it as a compromise between those us who tend to allow most anything in I&P and those who wanted to kill the forum altogether for its lack of Scoutlike qualities. We'll try it for a while.

When two or more 'sides' are in conflict, compromise might be the only way to make any progress in many cases. My state has some of the worst highways in the nation because two 'sides' cannot agree on a solution. Neither side is willing to make any kind of compromise. Good leaders for the two sides are evidently willing to sacrifice safety on the highways for the sake of sticking with their 'ideals'. If that is what you think is good leadership, then I stand corrected. In this case, the one side that claims to have compromised was starting from an 'absolute' position from which it was not possible to be more restrictive. Therefore the ONLY direction for any kind of change was in the direction things went. You can call that compromise if you want, or you can refer to it in competitive terms. I did misconstrue what BDPT00 meant by his references and apologize for taking that the wrong way. ONE MORE THING. In case you missed seeing this post in the 'recent posts' panel, the moderators unanimously decided that it would be good to de-emphasize this forum because it tends to detract from...you know...Scouting. This was my original suggestion and if anyone doesn't like it, you can take it up with me. By the way, it was a kind of...compromise.......

I'd say that's their choice and if that's what those COs want to do, then good for them.

BDPT00 raised the concept of 'compromise' along with leadership. I'm just accepting the parameters of his argument. AZMike, I consider the assessment speculative. Nothing has happened yet. Change of some kind is inevitable and I've never seen predictions about the behavior of groups of people that were worth much. To me it would be more reasonable to wait and see. If the dire predictions that I'm reading come to pass then we will all know more than we do now. We may not know what to do about the situation but at least we'll have a better idea of what the situation actually is.

Where is the spirit of compromise in the part of those who oppose these changes? What ideas have they offered as compromise modifications? On the contrary, the opposing view to these changes has failed to do much more than gripe about the changes and make apocalyptic predictions as they wring their hands. THAT is not leadership either.

Responding with yet another complaint, I hope you recognize, is not an effective way to weaken my argument.

So then by all means LEAD. If your ideas and reasoning are sufficient to persuade others then make your case and carry the day. If all you can do is wring your hands and lament the fact that there are people who don't agree, then you have failed in your argument and don't deserve to carry the day. For decades now, all sides of this argument have had the opportunity to craft their arguments and they have had access to the same resources. Whatever the outcome, it will be because one side or the other has done the better job of understanding their opponents' argument as well as their own, and have utlilzed those resources to better advantage. It is a competition of ideas and the better competitor deserves success. So do what the other side did when they were in the minority position. Learn from them. Craft a better argument...or live with the consequences of the lack thereof.

JoeBob, Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology has the largest collection of bird sounds in the world and you can listen to them for free through this website: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=1676http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=1676 Under the advanced search you can search by state or even down to the county level. They have over 160,000 recordings.

Believe it or not, there are freshwater sponges. Fairly common at that but not conspicuous. Also please note that after better wording was found in a training manual I retracted my criticism of the scope, since it was broader than the 'requirement' implied. And I can see the reasoning with regard to the insects. But why ignore them? They're one of the most important groups of animals and by far the largest in terms of numbers of species.

I have heard the "leave if you don't like it" advice many times over the years. I understand the reasoning behind both sides of that particular dichotomy. What I've always marveled at, however, is the fact that some persons will in one paragraph lament the loss of membership and argue that 7% is significant for a loss. And I don't have a problem with any of that. Our pack lost 10% in a night after the members learned from a DE's rant on the subject, that BSA discriminates against gays. 10% of the pack represents only the families who told me their reasons for leaving. The actual decline after that night was larger and I can only speculate on what the reasons were for the others. So declines are important, at least for a middle-sized pack like we had. And because of that importance I'm mystified why in the next paragraph those same persons would invite a large fraction of membership to leave, just because of a disagreement with policy. Does that make any sense at all? How can concern for declining enrollment be reconciled with invitations for large numbers of current members to leave? How would their leaving strengthen the program or the organization at any level? It seems like that approach to disagreement, applied broadly to any disagreement, guarantees decline and a steep one at that. And what would be left? Not much but I suppose they'd be in agreement.

I must have absolutely nothing to do, responding to this thread. The speech was little more than acknowledgement of a reality that is already here. For those who say now, things like "When this happens I'm gone" or sentiments to that respect, I suspect those bags have been packed for a while because 'local option' arrived as soon as local COs realized they could - and quietly began to - ignore the national membership policy. This was the essence of the "avowed" aspect of the policy of years past....National KNEW it had neither control over this, nor could it respond in any kind of decisive manner unless a potential member was "avowed". The policy, as it was formulated even back then, embraced a lie and National knew it. I suspect that most of those who state their intention to leave knew it as well. So when the reality of yesterday finally sees the light of day today or tomorrow, in the form of local option, that will at least bring some honesty to the membership policy. And if that is enough for current members to leave, I'm sorry for them. Eamonn's comment about the reaction of the boys is noteworthy. Those very young men and their female counterparts are the future. They are going to carve their own path and the one that's been carved already that some of us don't like is a path that was not pushed on them by a conspiracy by any minority which somehow attained a miraculous power over the vast majority. They chose that path because they think it is the right one. Anyone whose view has been one of 'moral absolutes' is bound to find conflict with social change, at least those parts which don't fit the 'absolutes'. I can see this. But what it means is that unless an old 'code' was embraced by new generations, social change and the conflicts that come with it were inevitable. Anyone who rejects this reality 'absolutely' will face the same oblivion of thought that most of us will eventually face, perhaps a little more quickly. It would be nice, however, for them to confront the real reasons for their 'conflict', for themselves if not for their fellows. The day after these members leave: the rotation of the planet will be largely the same, the orbit around the sun largely unchanged, sunlight will continue to drive most ecosystems the way it has in the past, and if the monkeys who swarmed over the planet a million or so years ago change their behavior here and there, the planet will continue to operate as a system, and those monkeys will still have the opportunity to choose their paths to some extent for better or worse. Just like it always has been. Peace.

Sputtering......FLAVOR AID! It was Flavor Aid that the people drank at Jonestown. NOT Kool Aid. How many times do I have to correct you guys?