G2SS a suicide pill?

[Armymutt]

1 minute ago, 5thGenTexan said:

I use a ferro rod with a dry cotton ball and vaseline cotton ball for my fires.

I light the stove and a charcoal chimney with a flick a flame thingy.

I try to teach mine to use natural sources of tinder and we use the flame wands to light that.  My favorite is reindeer moss, which grows well on the edges of the pine forests here.  Our fire rings are very deep and very small, which makes it really awkward trying to use much else to start a fire.  Not enough enough room to do decent DO cooking without pulling coals out of the fire ring.    Then there was that one dad in another pack we got jammed in with during Cuboree.  He had something that looked like an incendiary grenade.  I try to teach mine to make small fires.

[InquisitiveScouter]

6 hours ago, Armymutt said:

No one has been able to answer the question of why BSA thinks that Scouts today are less capable than their peers 100 years ago.  The organization would have died out if the same rules were in place, yet this seems of little consequence.  Why can't a patrol go camping?  Page 18 of the 9th edition of the Boy Scout Handbook says, "The goal of a patrol should be to be so well trained in camping that it can take off on its own overnights."  Why are we assuming youth have become enfeebled in the past 36 years?  

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

Guess where we are now? 😜

 

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

Guess where we are now? 😜

Great quote.  Strongly agree.  

I'm sitting out the G2SS discussion as I've been in too many.  Times change.  Laws and liabilities change.  G2SS is a sign of the times.  

At the same time, I've thought a lot about this topic.  My heros were John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart.  Many of my values started there.  ... I think we can teach youth to be strong without violating G2SS and taking excessive risks.  

[qwazse]

7 hours ago, fred8033 said:

Great quote.  Strongly agree.  

I'm sitting out the G2SS discussion as I've been in too many.  Times change.  Laws and liabilities change.  G2SS is a sign of the times.  

At the same time, I've thought a lot about this topic.  My heros were John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart.  Many of my values started there.  ... I think we can teach youth to be strong without violating G2SS and taking excessive risks.  

Excessive risks for what?

What is the negative outcome for the scout when he/she

• takes aim at a target depicting a creature,
• throws a ball at fellow scout in a catch-or-evade challenge,
• deploys a super-soaker instead of a mobile heat-stroke abatement device,
• attends a political rally in uniform,
• shares a tent with someone of the opposite sex,
• is one-on-one with a trained scouter, or
• spends an hour on the road to camp?

What is the rate of negative outcome from the activity (per time involved therein) relative to:

• the rate of positive outcomes as a result of the activity,
• the rate of the same negative outcome when scouts or other youth do not do the activity.

Under what conditions (e.g. NCS supervised, ethics training, resilience building, etc …) are those rates altered?

The G2SS comes off as a bunch of disjointed pronouncements because it doesn’t present outcomes and admit if certain relative risks are unknown.

[mrjohns2]

11 hours ago, qwazse said:

The G2SS comes off as a bunch of disjointed pronouncements because it doesn’t present outcomes and admit if certain relative risks are unknown.

I don’t find it very different than our site safe practices in an industrial manufacturing facility. This isn’t a document giving the reasons, background, or stats. It is a document of what you must do or not do.  Normally safety rules are written in the blood of those who came before. 
 

The biggest difference is that some of the G2SS is that mix about 90% safety rules with 10% policy/philosophical rules. The squirt guns and animal targets are examples. 
 

I comply and move on. 

[TMSM]

On 11/19/2021 at 10:28 AM, Jameson76 said:

We continue with dodgeball (or extreme catch) and vegetable cannons.  But we're sort of rogue sometimes

We still play dodgeball, the PLC meets by themselves and patrols have meetings outside of the troop meetings. We also play laser tag a for our Christmas meeting. 

[fred8033]

14 hours ago, qwazse said:

Excessive risks for what?

What is the negative outcome for the scout when he/she

• takes aim at a target depicting a creature,
• throws a ball at fellow scout in a catch-or-evade challenge,
• deploys a super-soaker instead of a mobile heat-stroke abatement device,
• attends a political rally in uniform,
• shares a tent with someone of the opposite sex,
• is one-on-one with a trained scouter, or
• spends an hour on the road to camp?

What is the rate of negative outcome from the activity (per time involved therein) relative to:

• the rate of positive outcomes as a result of the activity,
• the rate of the same negative outcome when scouts or other youth do not do the activity.

Under what conditions (e.g. NCS supervised, ethics training, resilience building, etc …) are those rates altered?

The G2SS comes off as a bunch of disjointed pronouncements because it doesn’t present outcomes and admit if certain relative risks are unknown.

Don't use me as an excuse to post a diatribe.  

[yknot]

12 hours ago, TMSM said:

We still play dodgeball, the PLC meets by themselves and patrols have meetings outside of the troop meetings. We also play laser tag a for our Christmas meeting. 

Any of us can do that but the reason you don't want to is that if someone gets hurt while doing something that is banned by the BSA and could be considered negligent, you risk not being covered by insurance. You are not really rebelling against anything, you are just shifting some of the liability from BSA to yourself personally.  

[mrjohns2]

14 hours ago, TMSM said:

We still play dodgeball

People who say dodgeball isn't dangerous, never played with rubber kickballs, when in 5th grade, against Jerry Planack (the biggest kid in grade school and high school). He would have a ball, get up to the line when you were stooping down to get a ball, and whale that ball into your ear or nose. Man, it hurt. 

[johnsch322]

12 minutes ago, mrjohns2 said:

People who say dodgeball isn't dangerous, never played with rubber kickballs, when in 5th grade, against Jerry Planack (the biggest kid in grade school and high school). He would have a ball, get up to the line when you were stooping down to get a ball, and whale that ball into your ear or nose. Man, it hurt. 

Broke and dislocated my little finger in elementary school.  We were playing dodgeball with a red schoolyard ball.

Went to my Cub Scout meeting after school and the Den mother was horrified by my finger sticking out sideways from my hand.  When my mother picked me up I told her I just needed to soak it and it would be OK. I got a one night stay in the hospital and a big cast in Wiesbaden Germany.

Edited November 26, 2021 by johnsch322

[5thGenTexan]

Dodgeball?  Pfftt.  

Here are Scouts playing Mumbly Peg.  Now that can get you hurt.

 

[mrjohns2]

We used to play a game called "can't boogie with the bogeyman". On the very thin concrete on the church basement floor, we would put down this big rope ring. Then, we woud say go and try to throw everyone out. Like a wrestle mainia kind of thing. Many scouts got hurt over a span of weeks. Our leaders said enough and that they would plan the games for awhile and choose fun, but safe ones. 

The next week we played the game where everyone takes off their shoes and puts them in a big pile. Then you go 50 yards away and they say go. The first to get their shoes on and back to the starting line wins. Everyone ran at the shoes and made a big pile. Carlos Talbot was at the bottom and was squished. He came out with a broken arm. I don't recall what we played the next week. 

[T2Eagle]

As a native Philadelphian I introduced "Buck Buck"* to my midwestern scouts.

In hindsight maybe not my finest hour as SM.

*one group of players [climbing] on the backs of a second group in order to build as large a pile as possible or to cause the supporting players to collapse."

Edited November 27, 2021 by T2Eagle

[elitts]

On 11/24/2021 at 4:10 PM, 5thGenTexan said:

I can get a charcoal chimney just fine with some paper.   Probably faster than lighter fluid.

I wont even let my Webelos and AOL start a fire with a match.  When I do fires in camp, I dont even use a match.  

Its a sore spot for me to see lighter fluid in the world.  😁

I mean, I get it lit fine.  I just get frustrated because by the time the whole stack of briquettes is going good, the ones at the bottom are half burned up.  so then I have half size briquettes that make it harder to keep a constant specific temperature in an oven.

On 11/24/2021 at 4:45 PM, Armymutt said:

I try to teach mine to use natural sources of tinder and we use the flame wands to light that.  My favorite is reindeer moss, which grows well on the edges of the pine forests here.  Our fire rings are very deep and very small, which makes it really awkward trying to use much else to start a fire.  Not enough enough room to do decent DO cooking without pulling coals out of the fire ring.    Then there was that one dad in another pack we got jammed in with during Cuboree.  He had something that looked like an incendiary grenade.  I try to teach mine to make small fires.

Yeah, I am starting to have a burning hatred of the new  two foot tall "fire rings" with the 6" thick concrete sides that are worthless for doing basically anything except standing next to and warming your hands.

[RememberSchiff]

10 hours ago, T2Eagle said:

As a native Philadelphian I introduced "Buck Buck"* to my midwestern scouts.

In hindsight maybe not my finest hour as SM.

*one group of players [climbing] on the backs of a second group in order to build as large a pile as possible or to cause the supporting players to collapse."

Games like viruses evolve variants.

Back in the day, the "Buck Buck" we played (in South Jersey) had Team One form a chain of interlocked bent over players (bucks). First bent over with arms around a tree and second player's head locked between legs. Second player had third player's head locked between his legs and so on. 

Team Two  formed a line of standing bucks. The first would run "Buck-Buck #1"  and leap on the backs of the Team TWO and try to hold on.  Buck-Buck #2 followed and so on.  The goal was to break Team One chain by bringing it down. Selecting players based on their strength was key for Team One and for distance leaping ability for Team Two.

If Team One held all Team One player who held on, Team One won that round. If Team One collapsed under the Team Two barrage, Team Two won the round.

At camporees, after losing to Troop 154 in official patrol competitions on Saturday, we rebounded in unofficial patrol competitions of questionable safety that night - Buck-Buck,  knife throwing, snipe hunt. Scoutmasters were at CrackerBarrel playing poker...late. 

Earlier in this topic,  the rules of Gaga were explained, which are different from the game variant I have seen here which resembles arena dodgeball.

My $0.02,

Edited November 27, 2021 by RememberSchiff
this was back in the day