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Showing content with the highest reputation on 04/11/21 in Posts

  1. I had a 40 year career in Occupational Safety and Health with extensive experience in designing, running and auditing industrial respiratory protection programs. I can say unequivocally that 90% of the mask wearing practices and materials I see in public are absolutely worthless. Masks with gaps, not covering mouth AND nose, ineffective filter materials, improper size of mask, facial hair, and other factors would all be OSHA violations. I would focus more on frequent handwashing, social distancing, and awareness training, which will be much more effective.
    2 points
  2. Covid has given kids more time to work on stuff. They need things to avoid the boredom! I know a kid who took his Covid downtime and applied it to working on Eagle.
    2 points
  3. Simply put, a statement was made by @David COthat grooming was "psycho-babble". Does anyone else here think grooming scouts for sexual assault is "psycho-babble"? I want to be very, very clear to any scouts who are reading this: I BELIEVE GROOMING HAPPENS. SEXUAL ABUSE IS NOT YOUR FAULT.
    1 point
  4. Conceding up front that I don't know what kind of profits HA bases currently throw off, it seems unlikely that they're exceptionally lucrative. Nothing in BSA's past 20 years of finances would suggest that they were reaping millions let alone billions from those operations. No sale has to be so quick that they wouldn't get fair market value for the properties, and either paying out or having those monies invested by and on behalf of the trust seems like a better bet than hoping an organization that's adverse to your interests, is steadily shrinking in membership, and has not demonstrated
    1 point
  5. Nope. I send scouts wanting the badge to a counselor who is more than happy to verify his activities via Email. None of my scouts have asked for exceptions on account of the pandemic.
    1 point
  6. Don’t worry about the DEI badge. It is stalled in committee. We should hear by the end of next month if it is available. I can’t imagine it becoming required for another 6 months. Even so, he has to knock out a lot before even considering if he has to move one of his elective badges toward an insta-palm.
    1 point
  7. Small update in case anyone is interested. He has decided on pitching a bluebird house building project to the local nature center. He has volunteered with bird watching and nature observers at this location, who are very enthusiastic. He has the name of the naturalist at the center and needs to make contact. He has an Eagle coach (who is new as an eagle coach but is an eagle scout). Little bit by bit. He also finished one of the needed merit badges (Cit in Comm). Has 2 more Eagle MBs lined up for summer camp (Cooking and Personal Ftness). Completion of those should put him at 9 badge
    1 point
  8. I think these are the "Key 3". IIRC, an early estimate of the claims was in the 8500 range. If that was an accurate number we would be looking at $60,000 per claimant plus all the insurance. Maybe that's a number that would get somewhere. I think BSA started this process thinking they could control it. Pay up about 1/3 of their assets, pass the benefits and challenges of collecting insurance onto the claimants, and come out the other side more or less intact. I suspect that the idea of losing a HA base just never occurred to anyone, and they are now facing the probability of losing e
    1 point
  9. I am pretty much in the “highly interested, but pretty much in the dark” camp, but I will hazard some thoughts. 1) They were completely taken off guard by the number of claims, throwing the entire strategy, whatever it was, into a swirling dive; 2) Pre-filling, they had a notion of what they would contribute to the trust and it was blown out of the water by the claims. Ditto for the Ad Hoc Committee of LCs, though less so as to the AHC other than the highly exposed Councils; 3) There is great consternation and disagreement within National about putting up High Adventure Bases an
    1 point
  10. The IVF existed because law enforcement had no such mechanism. If all BSA did was notify the police, any number of things could have happened, but none of them would have included registering these perpetrators nationally. At the time, the most likely lawsuit would have been from those ineligible volunteers who would sue for libel, should the list be made public. The thought of the FBI tracking a hundred thousand citizens KGB-style would not sit well with anyone in the 70s. That BSA undertook this, with great difficulty, on its own is a credit to its tenacity. It is also betrays a bit of
    1 point
  11. "If these details are accurate" is an important qualifier. Part of the reason I called those particular organizations out is that they directly compete with the BSA, and I don't believe that they actually charter BSA units, or have done so in the past 70 years. (The 1918 Boy Scout Handbook lists the YMCA or YMHA as a possible CO, and a few of the Merit Badges in the 1948 one cross-reference 4H literature as an alternate way to complete the badge. BSA units and Councils do still visit and rent YMCA facilities as general paying customers. I completed the First Class swim check and/or the swimmin
    1 point
  12. The World Scout Committee announced Rabbi Peter Hyman of Temple B’nai Israel in Easton, Md as the recipient of the Bronze Wolf Award, the highest Scouting award. "Hyman became the 377th individual and the first rabbi to have been honored and one of a handful of Jewish recipients worldwide. He is the first Jewish recipient of the Bronze Wolf Award since Alain Silberstein of France, the executive secretary of the International Forum of Jewish Scouts, who was named in 2016. The rabbi was selected to receive the award for his work encouraging interfaith dialogue as the first chairman of
    1 point
  13. "Also 402 for "YMCA", 167 for "Boys and Girls Club" , 89 for "Boy Scouts of America", 9 for "Police Athletic League", 5 for "United Way", 5 for "Red Cross". So, it appears that based on this both the Y and the Boys and Girls clubs in theory should be on the hook too? I do not understand if these details are accurate why we are not seeing something related to the other groups. I do not want them damaged either, but why should BSA take the full impact?
    1 point
  14. It would be a whole lot easier to solve this problem if those deciding the value of eagle understood that eagle is nothing but a tool to achieve a higher goal. "So, your resume says you're an eagle scout. Tell me some stories of how that has taught you something useful." A nice, open question. If they talk about specific skills they've been tested on that tells the value of eagle to that applicant. If they talk about taking younger scouts under their wing and helping them out, it tells a very different value. As my son told me, eagle will get you another look, but it's not worth anything if yo
    1 point
  15. Scoutmaster here with a 14 year old Life Scout/SPL who is just starting to work on identifying a project. I am seeing motivated Scouts push towards completing their Eagle requirements prior to starting high school or in their freshman/sophomore year, largely due to the academic pressure of the school, and their desire to take on additional extra curricular activities. I have been pleased to see many of those scouts continue to be active after completing Eagle. The meeting attendance is down for this group, but they are attending campouts or weekend activities. Our Troop does not
    1 point
  16. Sorry about that folks... we had some gremlins running wild in the server... should be resolved, and I will try to monitor more closely!
    1 point
  17. Yeah. I've seen that. We left a troop because of how another leader was treating my son's friend when it was really that the leader did not like the dad. It was their way to get rid of the dad. It damaged the son. Still makes me screaming mad today. An absolutely great comment. Scouting is supposed to be one part of a rich childhood. For us adult volunteers, we often get pulled in deep and it takes a lot of our personal time. I wonder if we could apply an analogy here. Supposed you and your wife talked about being extremely tight with money all the time when the k
    1 point
  18. Sadly I have seen the schools NOT prepare the Scouts for the Cits. I was working on Cit Nation with a group in my car after doing Washington DC. 3/5 had Civics in high school, and 1 was taking civics in HS. ONLY THE 5TH GRADE HOMESCHOOLED WEBELOS COULD ANSWER ANY OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR CIT NATION! (emphasis, not shouting)
    1 point
  19. Yes, we've had a lot of scouts get caught up doing things for say, local governments, where the process can take months or longer vs. working with a private foundation/charity/beneficiary where things can be moved on fairly quickly. An issue for Eagle candidates nearing their 18th. They don't need the stress.
    1 point
  20. I was asked to be be a Camping mB counselor for a Merit Badge U. The director said it would be focused on first year scouts with little/no experience. She asked me if I wanted a 2hr or 4hr morning session for them to get the badge. After explaining that I would be happy to do an "intro to camping mB" session but that camping mB for new scouts could not be done in that time frame. She then asked if another session in the afternoon would suffice for them to get the blue card signed off. Grrrr.
    0 points
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