packsaddle

I'll reword it to be more inclusive, "The reason not to blaspheme is the same reason we don't shout ethnic slurs at passing minority Americans on the street." I disagree with this equivalence. One of those actions is directed toward an idea. The other is directed at a person or persons. Blasphemy can be in the eye of the beholder and as I understand it, the charge of blasphemy is sufficiently unclear that it can be applied to speech that might not qualify as blasphemy in the view of others of that same faith, and might not even have been intentional on the part of the speaker.

I guess my question is: why does religion get to corner the market on blasphemy? Nice suggestion, by the way, Gern. But why isn't it blasphemy to lampoon a politician, or the Congress, or the CEO of Bank of America? What is the special status of religion that makes IT the only place for blasphemy? I mean if I publicly denounce a popular scientific idea, say I state that the one-gene-one-enzyme idea is little more than alchemy, why don't I get my tongue cut out for that? Why the hyper-sensitivity of organized religion? A while back I stimulated a discussion about religion as a result of my contention that Satan is a figment of the imagination, not real, just fantasy. I was not surprised to see the indignation that such an icon of Christianity could be questioned openly the way I did. Come on, folks, Satan? Did I blaspheme? I'll say it again. Satan is not real, it doesn't exist, never did, and there is no one who can offer objective evidence to the contrary. Satan is an imaginary thing that for some reason, we feel the need to have in our lives. Satan is the evil version of a childhood imaginary friend except that some of us cling to the idea as 'adults'.

It seems that insults and ridicule are easily considered blasphemy if directed at religion. How about irony, satire, or sarcasm? Teenagers be advised.

Unless someone's tom cat crapped in it, why on earth would anyone clean a backpack? It's only dirt. Let it dry and then shake it out. Come to think of it, I'd even apply that to the cat crap. It's just going to get dirty again. Right? Heck, this strategy even works for shoes, maybe clothes.

I'm in Lisa's situation as well. I kind of like it. If I'm good I can earn in the summer from consulting as much as I make through the rest of the year teaching. Or more. Summer pay is as good as I want to make it. Or I can travel. I have to say that life as an academic is about as good as it can get. We live the life of Riley, whoever that was. I can't figure out why I am surrounded by such a sea of constant complainers. When I was in high school (back in the Carboniferous) most of the teachers had summer jobs that were unrelated to teaching. Many of the men drove Greyhound buses and made more during that time than they did teaching. The women, I don't know, sold Bibles or something, maybe they worked construction. These people were in education because they were dedicated to an ideal...obviously not for the money. But my kids are done so I couldn't care less about year-round school. That freedom is really nice. If summer camps close, big deal. They can just be cut up and sold for vacation home development or something.

Happy Birthday, scoutldr!

I've been reading Merlyn's posts for a long time and I think he's been rather consistent in trying to prevent his tax dollars from supporting a religious organization that discriminates against atheists. In that respect he's might be a concerned taxpayer, but not a prophet.

The difference I noted was that one excludes homosexuals. The other excludes homosexual conduct. Maybe that's too fine a point.

JerseyScout, that sounds like the boys are getting the kind of experience that Beavah would like not to happen. We've only had two such experiences and only one of those was the result of the EBOR. They both were awarded the rank but both left scouting immediately afterward, according to them, permanently. Eisely, it sounds like we have some common experiences. We too have to 'pre' prepare with certain signatures before the EBOR convenes (dictated by Council policy). One thing I have in my favor is that I get to round up most of the EBOR members except for the district guy. This gives me an opportunity to 'fine tune' the makeup to best fit the lad. I follow BSA guidelines, no parents and no leaders, and in fact I often have no one that the boy already knows. However, I try to get people whose attitude is one of honest and sincere give and take in a constructive way, rather than presenting additional tests that must be passed by the boy. Most of the boys come away feeling very positive about their experience and BSA in general.

As a person who's seen it from the other end of the process, I'd like to thank you for what you did, BadenP.

This is the reason I have taken the unofficial position of Eagle coordinator. In addition to making sure the boys have the correct version of forms and understand the deadlines and process, I try to get a feel for what the boy can expect to confront at the EBOR. So far, when I've been able to attend (but not participate) there have been no problems. The only incidents that have occurred in which there were some prejudice or interrogation problems were before I took this on or one time when I was not able to attend the EBOR. In the former cases I acted as the 'victim advocate' and managed to minimize the damage that the adults might have done. In the latter case, the boy passed anyway and I now know I just need to be there every time.

OGE, thanks for bringing this back to life. I've been camping all weekend through a continuous downpour. It was actually wonderful, the sound of the rain coming through my leaky fly, the feeling of hundreds of acorns poking up through the bottom of my tent into my back, the satisfying squish of a wet sleeping bag. But the water was warm enough not to harm anything and I slept and ate well and loved every moment. I do need to get a new rainfly though. I found my original post from this thread, from back in 30 January 2003: "mk9750, I share your concern for your Eagles. My son and several of my old scouts are among that group. However, I do not, under any circumstance, see a return to the draft. Therefore I see any involvement by them as voluntary. I agree with President Bush (nice speech by the way) that if Saddam is not evil, then evil has no meaning. If given the opportunity I would personally extinguish Saddam without hesitation. I would feel guilty afterward. I would live with it. But I share fears that our government has not planned this well. I see the possibility that we could strike quickly and succeed, only to be buried in 'nationbuilding'. I see that we could be doing this just for 'the old man'. I tend to share NJ's and KWC57's hesitation. Something is not 'right' about the way this has developed. If we cleanly eliminated Saddam and his government without losing a single life, our country would still be as vulnerable to terrorism as it is now. And there are plenty of other evil guys out there to fill the gap. Rooster's list is accurate. But it also applies to other countries past and present. Saddam is no Hitler. We don't hit NK because it already has nuke material - dirty hit, too much risk, resolution still possible through diplomacy. Once Iraq gets it, they will graduate to that status as well. They will be in the club like it or not, Saddam or not. The real power of having a nuke comes from not using it, from having it as a threat. And knowing that its use would essentially be 'the end' is the greatest reason not to use it. Saddam is not suicidal. The other weapons, chemical and biological, are just too easy to reproduce by anyone. I will not be surprised if the Anthrax letters, for example, were manufactured inside this country or mailed by a citizen. We are not and never have been 'secure'. Our society is open and most of us (I hope) would not sacrifice the freedoms necessary to close it. Security is, as it always has been, an illusion. I'll live with that too." In retrospect, I just feel deep sadness. I miss littlebillie and NJCubscouter.

I was in the west and around the Aegean. I was attending a conference in Istanbul (great food, by the way) but I have a friend who lives in the southern central part of the country. I'm hoping to get back soon to travel out as far as Nusaybin (the ancient name, Nisibis) because of the Grgarbonizra River which caused the area to be of strategic importance, taken and then retaken by different empires, Justinian's history in particular. The narrow gorge and the road through it was the only way through those mountains at that time and I am interested in the link between the distribution and natural structure of water resources and the history associated with them. There is so, so much to see and learn over there.

Their environmental ideas are often naive and sometimes idiotic. Edited part: As for Ron Paul in particular, I was put off by his statements regarding the 'issue' of evolution. He handled it very poorly and convinced me that he had not thought about it very much but tried to make a statement anyway. If he had merely said, "I don't know much about it", that at least would have been honest and I would be OK with it. But he seemed to try to pander for votes...pretty much like any good politician would do. It put me off.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

One of the interesting things I saw was that their parks have open-air exercise equipment like eliptical trainers, etc. I guess you can get away with that in arid climates. But it was really interesting to see the people using the equipment...on more than a few occasions, women with both arms and legs working away - one in short gym shorts and tank top next to another, covered head to toe...in black. Wow.

According to the Turkish diplomats and political types I met this summer in Turkey, their opposition to our intervention has more to do with their concern over destabilization of the region than for any kind of animosity toward the USA. They support diplomatic solutions and are positioned politically and geographically to act as the mediator (for want of a better term) between conflicting entities. They seemed very friendly toward the USA while I was there but that might have been due to our new President. The Turks are smart and they know the region and the players. I'm hoping to be able to work with them in the future.

I avoid all those places unless necessary. Has nothing to do with any threat alert.

BadenP, that is not a documentary film...there's a little more to it. After Bin Laden and the Taliban defeated the Soviet Union, as you mentioned we just walked away - because our attention turned to Saddam as a potential threat to middle east oil. This threat was real. The Saudis also understood this and we had a long-standing agreement with them since 1945. Where we had used Bin Laden as a proxy to fight the Soviets, we now saw a different threat and the Saudis had two alternatives for their protection: Bin Laden made his pitch to provide the needed protection - he had close ties to the Royal Family, knew the region better than anyone, and he had just defeated the Russians. On the other hand, the USA offered to provide our forces for protection. We offered to base our forces in Saudi Arabia but the Saudis weren't too hot about a permanent foreign military presence on their soil. So Dick Cheney was sent to negotiate an agreement in which we agreed to remove ourselves from Saudi soil once the threat of Saddam was gone. Incidentally, the early statements by GHW Bush were that we needed to take action in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in order to ensure the economic security of our sources of energy. The American people did not support war for oil so over a period of time the rhetoric changed to promoting action in order to advance freedom and democracy or something along those lines. There is a speech in which, for example, GHW Bush described Saddam's troops dumping babies out of hospital incubators in order to cut the heart out of Kuwait. The American people came around and we took action. BUT during 'Gulf 1' we decided not to pursue Saddam all the way to Baghdad but rather to contain him with over a longer term. Our forces therefore would remain in Saudi Arabia as a result and in the eyes of the Islamic world, we failed to live up to the expected withdrawal. These are the events that made Bin Laden our mortal enemy. Now Saddam is gone, 9/11 has happened along with all the rest, and we are still there.

First some perspective. I'm going to temper Beavah's comparison a little although I tend to agree with his basic premise. According to the CIA data, Afghanistan is slightly smaller than Texas. It is a big place but not quite as vast as the picture he painted. That said, I tend to agree that we probably will not devote the resources that would be necessary to 'convert' the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. I doubt that is even possible. When we discovered that Bin Laden was behind 9/11 we had our target: Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and its members. And they were being harbored by the Taliban. To me the mission was and is to destroy Al Qaeda and its members - and the Taliban or anyone else if they stand in the way. After 9/11 we knew where they were and we did a half-ass attempt to get them, thanks to the previous 'Bring-it-on/mission-accomplished' administration. Our enemies escaped into the mountains and into Pakistan where Bin Laden still thumbs his nose and makes his plans to hurt us wherever and whenever he can. Until he and his organization are destroyed, they will continue to strike at our people, our infrastructure and the economic heart of the USA and our friends. You need to take the advice of Dick Cheney and read Bin Laden's book. He is smart. He is a former ally and worked with the CIA to oppose the Soviet Union's invasion. And he is very clear about what he wants and what the goal of his organization is and why he feels that way. I fear that the distraction and diversion of resources by the Iraq debacle has not only withered our world-wide support, but also the resources and perhaps the will of the people of the USA to return to what should have been the primary, the ONLY mission after 9/11, and that was to kill Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and as many of its members as possible. Worse the debacle might have provided the time they needed to make that mission a lot more difficult today than it would have been if we'd done it right back then. If we 'redefine' the original mission so that we can remove our soldiers from harm's way, then there is no reason that Bin Laden and his followers cannot move right back with the Taliban, retake that country, and harm us again, just the way he has pledged his life and the lives of his followers to do. This will not end by our withdrawal. Withdrawal will indeed bring it closer to us by invigorating our enemies. This is a mortal fight. We must refocus our will to fight this to the end. Their end.

"When do we talk turkey...?" We could start right here and right now. I'd be delighted.

OGO, I agree. The language wasn't what bothered me so much though. For me it was just difficult to watch so many layers of neurotic stupidity. It really was painful. I feel the same way about Seinfeld. Sadly, my family liked it. I enjoyed those times alone reading a book.

With so much at stake, so many problems to address, and so little time, why is everyone, President and the public included, so preoccupied with appearances. This is much ado about very little. I wish everyone would get serious about the monumental problems we face. Everyone.

I did. Got the song reference too. Edited part: Hey, top of the page. Woohooo!(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Yes, it does go back to Woodie, I have it on one of his albums as well.

Brings to mind summer camp way back when. The lifeguard would toss a spare brass whistle into the lake in water about 10-12 ft deep. We'd dive, one at a time, for it in water so turbid that there was no light at all at the bottom. Sometimes it would take several attempts and staying down for close to a minute in order to find that whistle. But we always got it back. No one seemed the least bit nervous. Times do change.