packsaddle

"Most adult heterosexual males know that when they find themselves aroused by the gyrations of early or even preteen cheerleaders that they are going down a path that is wrong." Back when THIS guy was, say, 13 years old, there was not only nothing wrong about those thoughts, but those thoughts were evolutionarily unavoidable and strongly adapted to cause me to maximize my evolutionary fitness. What an idiotic idea that I should have just turned away...idiotic and totally unrealistic. You're saying I should have suppressed my heterosexual tendencies? Get real.

Nessmuk has posted the last time on this thread and the last few messages have reminded me of times a few decades ago when different conspiracies were popular around here. And the ACLU was involved with a few of them as well. But back then (and to lesser extent, today) the issues were related to whether or not the "-put minority pejorative here-" were going to 'take over'. To answer OGE's question a little differently and to keep Merlyn from having to deliver another civics lesson, the ACLU takes legal action against "the government" to protect our liberties from illegal governmental actions. As such the ACLU is like the little boy pointing to the naked emperor. The courts and the law merely give the ACLU the ability to protect all of us from that emperor. Regarding the pathetic reference to the second amendment, I'm certain that people like Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Eric Robert Rudolf share the sentiment.

So...what do you bump and how much does LisaBob pay you? Sorry, couldn't resist.

I'm in a second career on the faculty at a university. First career was doing environmental research for the Army and having to explain to dumb heads all over the country that the Army was part of the Federal Government...no, I say to the person on the other end of the line.......the United States Government....of America....that's right. Thankfully, I never killed anyone but I sure had fun stepping around UXO on military bases for a while. THAT sure kept me mentally awake! I'm a biologist by training but I specialize in aquatic resource topics. Now I'm terrorizing college seniors and loving it. For all of you who always had suspicions about university faculty....it's all true! You cannot believe how great this life is. LisaBob, around here there's a popular joke about rats. The medical school has stopped using them as lab animals in favor or Yankees. Reason....Yankees are easier to find and you don't get as emotionally attached to them. Man, that always gets some good knee-slapping eeehaaaaas around here!

bkale, I'm not sure where you're coming from to get to Boone but if you look for Hampton Cove State Natural Area just across the border in Tennessee and not far from Elk Park, you can access the Overmountain Victory Historic Trail. This trail dates back to the Revolution and you can find out a little more about it here: http://www.ovta.org/ Keep in mind that the web site focuses on Kings Mountain and that's not close to Boone. Kings Mountain is down on the SC/NC border. But Hampton Cove State Natural Area touches on that National Historic Trail and the AT is also nearby if you want to really get serious. There is only a parking area for the natural area and the hike up to Yellow Mtn Gap is about 3.6 miles. This Natural Area is new and hasn't been 'discovered' by the huddled masses yet so you are in for a treat. The flip side is that there is no medalion yet for the Overland Victory Trail. But if you go by nearby Roan Mountain State Park they have patches and medalions for the state park and for the Appalachian Trail. The AT has lots of patches and medals. Good luck. When are you going to be there?

Ann Coulter is HOT! But I understand she maintains that slender, fit physique on a steady diet of her own bile. Not sure about the others.

Bob White, Sorry if I misread your post. As far as the oath goes, unless there was some indication to the contrary by BSA, I would weight the elements equally.

Heh, heh, OGE if you'll PM me your address, I'm going to send you a Valentine. You deserve it..you like dark chocolate?

Bob White, There are two ways to view the elements of the oath - in some order of importance or as equally important. In your previous post you wrote, "When I think of a leader being "fit enough to deliver the program" I would rather have the physical fitness needing improvement rather than their mental or moral development lagging behind." To me it reads like a personal opinion about the relative importance of the elements of the oath. Or am I wrong? The part that makes it read that way for me is the "...I would rather have..." part. It really seemed like you were putting physically strong (physical fitness) at a lower priority than the mental or moral elements. In your later response, you evidently do NOT place these elements in some order of importance. And in that we are agreed.

"They have a plate for Masons. Masons don't admit women or atheists. They have a plate for Camp Sertoma, which is a private membership group. Lions Club. Rotary Club. Secular Humanists. Shriners. Sons of Confederate Veterans." True, but if you read the documents establishing those, the funds are used for non-discriminatory charitable purposes, not to support the organizations, at least that's what they claim - I could be wrong. For example, "As a non-profit organization, the Secular Humanists of the Low Country do not receive any portion of the funds generated from the license plate sales." I don't see anything at all describing how the BSA funds will be used. Aren't you interested?

Just noting that your opinion is just that, an opinion, and doesn't make it so. Actually the order in the oath could be the opposite. But as I see it, there being no other BSA indication of priority, they are in no particular order of importance - all of them are equally important. YOU are the one who is arranging the elements of the oath along an order of a personal priority. And, I think that is just fine...I have no problem with the 'local option' approach.

And yet, in the oath it is the first mentioned among the three.

I guess SC is hard up for roads or something that they have so many 'vanity' plates for sale. Here's what I just found, Holy Toledo there are a lot of them!: http://www.scdmvonline.com/DMVNew/plategallery.aspx?q=All But here's the letter for the BSA plate: http://www.scdmvonline.com/DMVNew/forms/pr2-12-08.pdf As the state is turning some of the proceeds over to BSA, I wonder if this is legal? Does SC do anything similar for other religious or discriminatory organizations? When I read the letters for the others so far, the proceeds seem to go to non-discriminatory outlets. I could be wrong.

LisaBob, I have to admit being clueless about these things...how was I supposed to know (unless I read EVERY post) before a few messages back, that FireKat was a woman? I figured your name correctly but I had CalicoPenn figured for a woman for a long time before I figured that one out (sorry Calico) and there have been others. Think about names like Claire and Evelyn. I have regularly made tragic (and personally embarrassing) errors of protocol thinking these guys were women. Worse, most of the time, I don't think about gender as it relates to the ideas. Is that clueless too? Anyway, FireKat, I also have to admit that after reading your self-description,....I'm fairly intrigued. Hope that's not taken as an insult.

The message this thread was spun from was noting that leaders don't have to look like body builders or something along those lines. I'm 6'2" and 34-35" waist. But as for appearance...are we allowed to use the terms, "geek" or "dweeb"? I've been endowed with long legs, long arms, disproportional to my torso. My wife calls me an orangutan (actually more like gibbon). She's probably not too far off, but they're probably cuter. But the question has almost nothing to do with appearance. And it is a good question that relates to program and delivery. This unit attempts to have a well-rounded, fun, active outdoor component. Some years we do better than others. But while I have a personal idea about BSA, this unit, program, etc., I also see that the 'local option' approach could also produce units that have virtually no outdoor component. So in some ways, 'local option' is an issue that could have unexpected consequences for areas of the program that we never thought about - personal fitness and outdoor skills being a couple of them.

I think I understand what SWScouter is trying to say. The cooking this unit does is highly variable. One style is to create multiple layers of ground beef with cheese and Doritos. That, and leaving all the grease of the (not lean) ground beef in the concoction. That kind of fat-heavy meal actually was good for mountain men at one time...whose lifestyle needed those huge caloric intakes to stay even. But today this style of cooking sets an unhealthy example for the boys who are tending more and more to be couch potatoes. When I suggest something a bit less heavy, I'm outvoted by the boys and the leaders. To me the key is the ability to choose moderation over self-indulgence. It's kind of like the difference between a long-term outlook versus short-term gain.

SSScout, about that back-burner thing. As long as you have young children you definitely need a big insurance policy and vehicles that have four wheels. But things are about to change for me. One of my biggest obligations is nearly done and I can smell the waterhole. This summer I think I'm going to get back out there and if I live long enough I'm going to enjoy cruising to visit all you guys. Probably on a wing of some sort. Probably not new. The shopping alone is going to be just wonderful.

SA, not to disagree with you but to add a comment, this unit has several leaders who, for different reasons, cannot do the more strenuous activities. I think that there IS an element of prejudice with regard to obesity. I think this prejudice might be demonstrated when we are sympathetic to the person whose knees have degenerated to the point they can't backpack...when, at the same time, we are less sympathetic to the person who declines due to their weight. In this case, it is possible that we're judging the overweight person unfairly. We're definitely not doing it on a basis that is comparable to our judgement of the person with bad knees.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Hey guys, I'm sure you're just getting physics mixed up with 'physiology' or something. But if you really do mean 'mass' without regard to anything else, there really is a lot more to it and Gern mentioned one factor, Skeptic also: our metabolism varies both from person to person AND with age for most persons. There IS a genetic component to metabolism. But while I agree that prejudice is hurtful, I also think the genetic component is unimportant to the question of 'physically strong'. Case in point: I'm 6'2" at my 6th decade and I'm just under 200# (34-35" waist). I have always eaten pretty much anything and as much as I want. I know SMs who are the same height, same eating habits approximately, and are twice my weight. Activity isn't the only factor explaining the difference. I suspect that if we did the study, a lot more of what I take in...how to say it...also comes back out - compared to those other guys. (This isn't necessarily in solid form, but also in water or carbon dioxide) But those other guys who tend to gain, they're more efficient than I am at converting biomass into more of themselves. Evolutionarily, they'd have the advantage over me if we were all attempting to reproduce while competing for the same limited food sources. However, thanks to technology and fossil energy sources, these limitations have been relaxed and we are free to conspicuously consume and procreate/recreate as much as we decide to. Eeeehaaaa! As a result, we are now confronted with decisions that have only arisen recently in our evolutionary history. I grant that if you eat less, you'll have less to incorporate into biomass. But the same is true if your body merely 'ignores' part of what you take in or if your body burns it at a greater rate. Of course, if not burned or incorporated, it will be accounted for in the 'end', heh, heh. When I eat as much as a guy twice my weight, the difference in our weight, however, may be more than the difference in how much we, repectively, 'burn'. But there will always be such differences and none of this addresses the question of 'physically strong'. It merely is a biological restatement of the fact that life is not fair. Edited part: Oops, hit that send button too soon.(This message has been edited by packsaddle)

Gwd_scouter, I remember being excited about voting for president. I almost experienced joy knowing I was voting for a man of such stature, honor, and intelligence. I had wanted to vote for Barry Goldwater but I was too young, so I campaigned for him. But a little later, I got my chance to vote for the real deal and I voted...for Richard Nixon. He then instituted wage and price controls, ended the gold standard, bombed Laos and Cambodia, and all the rest. And today he would be a monument to virtue compared to this rotten bunch. I'm with LisaBob on this one.

As Rush Limbaugh says, it's ALL about money.

Wow, I can't believe I just read through all these. I think Merlyn is correct. LPC clearly withdrew once the issue was raised. And although we'll never know what the thoughts were for the SE, if this had involved some shady action by Enron instead of BSA, we'd probably agree with Merlyn and there would only be a page or two of responses. LPC probably knew the law and if they didn't they're clueless to the point of incompetence. LPC therefore shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place, knowing they couldn't meet the non-discrimination requirement. But they did it anyway and having done so, they managed to further damage the stature of BSA in the view of outsiders as well as more than a few of us. THAT just makes this already sad case even worse. LPC didn't exactly cover itself or BSA with honor. Folks, if we remain blind to BSA's own failings and refuse to admit to problems that are clear and real, things are only going to get worse. The 'outside' world sees these things with very different perspectives. While there may now be a sense of surprise or outrage at these kinds of occurrences, that at least is because of an external expectation that BSA should be better than this. Our denial with regard to these problems can very quickly change BSA to an object of public ridicule, even for the good things. Once lost, regaining honor will be a very steep climb.

One point that has been made in the past is that if BSA was evenhanded about their membership requirements, then perhaps the "physically strong" part would carry as much 'weight' (so-to-speak) as the "morally straight" part. Or is this the case already? Ahem, that would also mean we need to pay attention to the "mentally awake" part?

What's with Limbaugh and others saying that McCain is 'liberal'. I saw Coulter this morning and she pledged to vote for Clinton over McCain, that Clinton is more conservative. WTH is going on?

What Trevorum said the first time, 'NO' (and I didn't use the CAPS LOCK KEY, EITHER, NOR RIGHT NOW, NEITHER) FireKat, to answer your question, I've run my plagiarism checker on many of the posts in these forums over the years and some of us seem to more prone to the...ahem..behavior, than others. But in this format, while his cutting and pasting might cause me to fail him on an essay it probably won't lead to legal action.