Fat Old Guy

Moi-lin, I've never seen anything from BSA that vilifies atheists. However, many members of BSA do see you for the godless destroyers that you are and we take comfort in the thought that when you die you will discover that there is a hell.

The BSA activity shirt and troop activity shirts (there ain't no such thing as a "Class b shirt") are uniforms just as dungarees are a uniform in the Navy. Consequently, you salute.

Hunt, which god do you consider to be a false god and why?

Moi-lin, as a pedantic liberal you should know that it is your obligation to point out errors in anything that you quote so that your readers know that you didn't err in copying it. Since you didn't identify the error, you must not have known that there was an error which means that you're stupid or that you don't read things that you're quoting which would also mean that you're stupid. Bye now, cartoon boy. Go home to your husband.

The article said, "Black is no longer useful on the uniform because it is not a color commonly found in nature. The drawback to black is that its color immediately catches the eye, he added. " Does that mean that black was once useful and once black was removed from nature it ceased to be useful? I don't know about the rest of you but I really don't like pockets on my sleeves. I hope that BSA doesn't go that way.

"What I get from this is the COR is taking the Scout's mother's word that he has completed all the requirements???" I'm a counselor for the Sports merit badge but I don't go watch every scout play in their chosen sports.

"But there's no Venture Scout Cookies! :-( " Cookie making! What a great focus for a Venturing Crew! BTW, being the pedant that I am, I need to point out that there is no such thing as a Venture Scout. Youth members of Venturing are called Venturers.

"I guess we have no option but to just go with the flow." Nah, you could join Venturing :-) BSA doesn't care if you photocopy any of their publications.

God save us from overprotective mothers. Well, make that overprotective parents. I've know many over protective fathers. Does this mom let her kid skateboard? Has she considered how the other Scouts will treat her son after his father has dragged him away from the event? I would think that the kid would be better off getting in place and then chickening out than having his "daddy" rescue him. As for the wacky mom and swimming, does your camp have the cordoned off areas for non-swimmers, beginners, and swimmers? You'd have to be asleep to drown in the every non-swimmer or beginner area that I've seen.

Moi-lin, I know what an ellipsis is but that has nothing to do with your misplaced commas. If you knew that the comma didn't belong, you should have indicated that to show that the original quote was wrong. Obviously, you don't know much about anything which is a common problem among liberals. Suppose that you tell us what a fact is? Is "1+1=2" a fact?

ed asked, "So if the Scout completed none of the requirements for a merit badge and has a signed blue card from registered MB counselor for the badge did he earn it?" In Bob White's world yes. Then again, Bobo may have a valid point. I just read a blue card (again) and found that the counselor isn't certifying that the requirements were met but that it was "demonstrated to my satisfaction" that the requirements were met. What satisfies me may not satisfy you. So while one counselor is satisfied with a work of art from a woodcarver, another may be satisfied by the Scout simply saying "hello."

Organizations that change their direction and focus to attract people that wouldn't ordinairily join are in grave danger of losing their identity. The Porsche Club of America has a great publication about Porsches. If you don't like fast cars, in particular Porsches, then your won't like the magazine. If the PCA started publishing articles about Mazdas on a regular basis along with articles on cooking with tofu, they'd start to lose the core of their membership. The same is true of Scouting, when you start tampering with the program to bring in kids who wouldn't have joined anyway, you risk losing the kids who wanted to be there in the first place and the new kids, who are likely to be trend followers, will drift away leaving a shattered organization. My daughter's troop is a mixed age troop. There are five girls who just earned their Silver award and became Senior Girl Scouts. These five girls go camping, hiking, caving, rafting in addition to playing soccer and one travels the world with a youth orchestra (I think that she plays the fiddle). The problem with many, far too many, teens is that adults have programmed their lives. These teens don't know how to do things for themselves. This includes everything from playing games to going to college. I am amazed at the number of parents that I heard complaining about college applications. My cohorts and I had to do our own college research and complete our own applications. I hear teens complaining about having nothing to do. I live within 15 minutes of three state parks with lakes and meadows and woods. I've suggested to them that they get a buck of chicken, a cooler of soda, a frisbee or football, and a few girls and go have a picnic. The response? "Nah, that's lame. We want to do something fun, like go to King's Dominion." I see the problem in my Boy Scout troop. The individual patrols won't plan a patrol outing for love or money. There is one adult who DRAGS her son's patrols on patrol outings but that's too much like Cub Scouts for me. The solution? Don't know but I felt the need to rant. I'll now go back into my cage.

My daughter is a Junior Girl Scout.

"3. The responsibility for merit badges rests solely with the merit badge counselor (article X, clause 13 of the Advancement by-laws)" Once again a reference to those secret BSA publications. We mere mortals don't have access to those special publications. I asked at our Scout Center if there was a copy of the By-Laws that I could peruse and you would have thought that I had announced that I had a gun on an airplane. We mere mortals have to use the poorly written publications like the Advancement Policy and Procedures Manual. IT says that a merit badge cannot be taken away once it is earned. Fair enough. The question reamins, "what is earned?" If the counselor signs the card which certifies that the requirements were met and he knows that they were not met, that is fraud. I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV but I believe that fraudulent documents are not binding.

Without know you it is nearly impossible to say what the problem is. I will make some general comments and pose some questions based on my observations of teens applying for jobs. Did you show up on time for your interview? Was your hair combed? Was your face clean? Were your clothes neat, shoelaces tied and shirt tucked in? Employers, especially those whose businesses involve dealing with the general public tend to be conservative in many of their attitudes so they tend to shy away from tatoos, facial piercings, and bizarre hairstyles. Did you speak clearly and distinctly or did you mumble? Did you answer questions in standard English or did you pepper your answers with slang and phrases like "he was like . . ." or "you know"? Finding a job is a sales effort. You are trying to convince the employer to buy your time from you.

Moi-lin typed, "I pledge allegiance to . . . one Nation, under God." Moi-lin, when you can't get the facts straight it proves that you are a nitwit. Read the pledge and check your commas.

Ed, With the exception of welfare, just about any system that boosts the economic power of anyone is trickle down. The government buys a plane, Lockheed-Boeing-Douglas pays the workers who go and buy a refrigerator and the refrigrerator salesman can buy a car. It all flows downhill. As for starwars, it may not have been implemented but the benefits of that research benefit us all. Not to mention that the Soviets went bankrupt trying to keep up with us. Ronnie did a good job.

I looked this up long ago but couldn't post it (could it be the outsourced software?). This is the khaki entry from the Oxford English Dictionary khaki a and n A. adj. a. Dust-coloured; dull brownish yellow, drab. b. (attrib. use of B.) Made of khaki cloth. 1863 Cornh. Mag. Jan. 45 As to dress.. he [Capt. Cureton] confined himself to causing their clothes to be dyed khakee, or mud-colour. 1869 E. A. PARKES Pract. Hygiene (ed. 3) 395 The comfortable gray or dust-coloured native Khakee cloth. 1884 J. COLBORNE Hicks Pasha 2 We had to provide ourselves with..Karkee jackets. 1884 Health Exhib. Catal. 35/2 The new Khaki cloth, the material adopted by the War Office for the troops on active service. 1890 WATT Dict. Econ. Prod. India IV. 566 It is needless to attempt an enumeration of all the Khaki dyes of India. 1898 B. BURLEIGH Sirdar & Khalifa ix. 128 The Kharkie trousers of the Lincolns and Warwicks. 1900 Daily News 24 Mar. 6/5 Stockings, gloves, sunshades, all are to be khaki. B. n. A fabric of this colour now largely employed in the British army for field-uniforms. Originally of stout twilled cotton (khaki drill), but more recently made also of wool (khaki bedford, k. serge). Also (usu. pl.), a uniform or garment made from this fabric. In India, khaki was used for uniforms by the Guide Corps under Lumsden and Hodson in 1848, by the troops in the Mutiny of 1857, in the Afghan campaigns of 1878-80, etc. It was worn in the Sudan Wars of 1883-98, and esp. by the British troops in South Africa in 1899-. (Quots. 1857-59 may mean simply the colour: cf. dressed in white.) 1857 H. B. EDWARDES Let. 21 July in Lumsden & Elsmie Lumsden of Guides (1899) 200 The whole of the troops here are dressed in khkee. 1859 SIR J. MURRAY Disp. 27 Apr. in Delhi Gaz. 23 June, The Infantry were dressed in khakee. 1879 E. S. BRIDGES Round the World in 6 Months 203 The troops here are dressed in khaki..It is a kind of strong brown holland, and appears to me to be made of flax. 1883 Times 11 July 7 Marksmen..in the case of some of the Indian team, in the light serviceable dust-coloured khakee. 1886 YULE s.v., The original khakee was a stout cotton cloth, but the colour was also used in broad~cloth. 1892 Pall Mall G. 25 Apr. 7/1 Khaki is not showy enough except when it is new and well made up, and if constantly worn it tends to promote slovenliness. 1899 S. CRANE in Cornh. Mag. Dec. 749 In came Casper, thin, yellow, and in soiled khaki. 1936 Amer. Speech XI. 50 Unless he learns..to restrict the use of khaki to cotton uniforms of that shade..he is still a John [viz. a recruit]. 1956 Ibid. XXXI. 192 A marine's uniform wardrobe consists of greens, blues, khakis. 1956 H. GOLD Man who was not with It (1965) xviii. 157 Once I sat wearing nothing but a pair of shiny starched new khakis. 1961 Harper's Mag. Oct. 43/2 The only clothing I owned was four pairs of khakis, three sweat shirts, a tweed jacket. 1970 T. COE Wax Apple (1973) i. 8 He was short and wiry, dressed in khakis and T-shirt. b. Used for a soldier clothed in khaki. 1899 LUMSDEN & ELSMIE Lumsden of Guides 85 There used to be a good deal of rivalry between the Guides and the 1st Punjab Rifles..the former were styled Khkis from their dust-coloured clothing. Mod. Newspr., Before daylight the Khakis were at them again.

Never said that 1965 was old, it is just the oldest OA handbook that I have. I'm so old that even my wrinkles have wrinkles.

I know that 1965 isn't the early days but in my '65 OA handbook it says that the sash is worn so the arrow points at the right should. No difference for any type.

khaki khaki (kk, kk) noun 1. Color. A light olive brown to moderate or light yellowish brown. 2. a. A sturdy cloth of this color. b. khakis. A uniform made of this cloth. Excerpted from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

"The funds raised by such a group would be taxable" Not really. When you form an organization, you have a choice and you can elect to be a non-profit corporation which is not the same as charitable organization. Non-profits file tax returns but don't pay taxes. How do I know this? I've been on the board of three different non-profit corporations.

Do you mean the purple shirt from the World Jamboree?

Girl Scouts is okay. They do things differently and they have a ton of paperwork but it's an okay program. GSUSA allows girls to camping without a parent at a very young age, unlike BSA. Girl Scouts are allowed to cook on an open fire long before Boy Scouts may. Much is dependant on how the troop leader does things. Shop around.

"Sorry Jason but you can't start "your own" troop. " You could start an organization called "Supporters of Scouting in East Awfulgosh" and the organization can charter a troop.