KC9DDI

To be honest, I find these discussions on "natural born" leaders to be a bit irritating. What do we actually mean by "natural born?" Just based on the wording, I'd consider a "natural born" leader to be a leader based on something that they are naturally born with. The Queen of England would be a "natural born" leader, because her entire claim to leadership is based on whom she was born to. And I suppose some people are born with some natural talent or aptitude for leadership, much like some people are just born with an above-average aptitude for math, languages, music or athletics

Personally, I don't really care for the idea. Then again, I'm not sure I care for the idea of of the Toten/Firemen Chit cards either. (But that might be because every time I try to type "chit," the first letter ends up being an "s"). I can see some validity to having a "certification program" for sharp things and fire due to the safety risks involved. But I'm not sure how you would justify a similar program for electronics? Where do you draw the line - cell phones, MP3 players, cameras, flashlights, wrist watches...? I suppose a kazoo or harmonica could be used inappropriately -

I agree with BD - part of our job is to model and teach courtesy and respect. Blanket bans are not the way to do that.

I think that copyright law doesn't come in to play here - if it did, Half Price Books, Good Will and St. Vincent de Paul thrift stores would all need to stop selling second-hand books! Be careful what you wish for - do you really want some private corporation (like the BSA) to have the power to tell you what you may or may not legally do with the things you purchase? Would you want your automobile dealer to prohibit you from selling your car, or to prohibit you from having it serviced by a competitor? And have those ridiculous prohibitions legally enforceable? The BSA does not have

Yep, how dare a business not give their products and services away for free! In all seriousness, my previous council did provide one set of the Eagle badge and medal, and maybe a parent or mentor pin. It was paid for from the FOS fund. My troop traditionally supplemented that with the blue Eagle neckerchief, and a plaque. We also had a tradition where an Eagle neckerchief slide was passed from one Eagle to the next, which I thought was pretty cool. Some of the parents would work on getting a collection of congratulatory letters from celebrities, and usually one of the US Capitol f

Boy Scouts? Do more backpacking. If they want to carry all that extra weight, in addition to the food and supplies they actually need, then let 'em have it.

Personally, I can't stand the leaders who are dressed like South American generals. They are likely more in it for themselves than for the boys. Kind of reminds me of that old saying, "Don't judge a man by the content of his character, but by the color of his pants." In all seriousness, I too am a bit amused by the guy whose uniform makes him look like an admiral in the Portuguese navy, but that has no bearing on the guy's motivation, focus and commitment to the program and the youth. It probably just means he doesn't have much fashion sense.

Beav - That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Once they declare you not suitable for BSA, then destroy everything. All you need from that point fwd is a name. Why? It would seem to me that if they're going to deny you membership, they'd need a reason beyond "your name is on this list."

You could do what Packsaddle mentioned, or maybe just say something to the Scout Shop manager like "Water seems to make the colors in the flag bleed. Could you maybe pass that along to someone in quality control?" Friendly, courteous, kind, etc etc.

If National had an "ideal" scout in mind, as a true representative of the program, which scout would it be? Why does that have to affect your own unit's program? It seems like we're giving National a bit too much credit. Unit-level folks have a much bigger impact on an individual Scout's experience in the program. Can National be blamed for units running watered-down programs? I agree that National has been moving away from outdoor adventure in some ways in recent years. But that doesn't limit your troop's ability to take on a challenging outdoor program, develop a strong pat

Are you proposing creating one course that "counts" for both ILSC and ILST? Or doing a one-day thing where ILST is done in the morning, and ILSC in the afternoon (for example). Or running ILSC in one room, while ILST is being run in another room at the same time?

Beav - Respectfully, you're extrapolating invalid conclusions from the data and recommendations presented. To compare this to CPR again - Less than half of lay responders perform CPR effectively (http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/274/24/1922.short). However, we still teach lay people to do CPR because the benefits still outweigh the risks. In out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, even with rapid access to EMS and hospitals, survival rates are abysmal (http://ohsonline.com/articles/2009/12/05/report-outofhospital-cardiac-arrest-survival-rate-unchanged-in-30-years.aspx). But yet, we st

Beav - We're not talking about policy. We're talking about the best way to treat life threatening injuries. Needle decompression is a skill taught in every paramedic program that I am aware of. We don't teach that MOI is fundamental to treatment, though admittedly many professional responders make inappropraite treatment decisions based only on MOI. MOI can sometimes be fundamental to assessment - but treatment depends on assessment, not MOI. So let's take a look at your list of reasons for NOT using tourniquets: Applied when not indicated? Possibly, but what harm did th

Beav - Your digression on the differences between civilian and military EMS is not relevant to how we treat immediate life threats, and only serves to confuse people unnecessarily. Life threatening bleeding is life threatening bleeding, it doesn't matter if it was caused by a machine gun or a boat propeller or a beer bottle. Mechanism of injury, MCI triage, and incident rates don't matter, especially at a basic first aid level, where the goal is to teach how to identify and effectively treat imminent life threats, like severe hemorrhage. Even worrying about re-attachment is a red herrin

Sure Beav, here's one good one. I don't know if the full version is freely available, but the abstract offers some pretty compelling information: http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2008&issue=02001&article=00008&type=abstract There were good reasons for the instructional policy change to strongly discourage their use in civilian responder courses. What exactly were those reasons? I reckon there's also a difference between in-town/frontcountry use where transit times are short, and wilderness/backcountry/sidecountry use where transit times

Again, actual evidence from actual cases where tourniquets have been applied (many of which were in combat situations) show that the benefits of tourniquets FAR OUTWEIGH the risks. This strong evidence is probably why more and more organizations are training for it. Like anything else in first aid (or anything else in Scouting), it's a skill that must be learned and practiced to be done correctly. That's not a reason to not teach tourniquet use - instead, it's a reason to teach it correctly.

Gunny - There are times when a tourniquet should be the "first line" intervention - like when bleeding is so profuse that the patient will bleed out while you're playing around with pressure points and elevation. Again, actual evidence shows that tourniquets do much more good than harm in these cases, even if you "err" on the side of applying a tourniquet. Yes, there absolutely is a training element that is required to identify the types of injuries where a tourniquet should be applied early. But it is not correct to teach that a tourniquet should ALWAYS be a last resort.

My opinion of (what I think was) the latest edition of the FB was that it contained only a very high-level overview of Scoutcraft, and contained very little detailed information beyond what was already in the handbook, or that you would have picked up naturally after camping a couple times. I did some googling, and it looks like National actually has the fieldbook online in PDF form at http://fieldbook.scouting.org . At random, I took a peek at Chapter 11, "Gearing Up" - http://fieldbook.scouting.org/filestore/fieldbook/pdf/33104-11.pdf -- here's what I found: - Heavy on full- a

Yup, tourniquets are back for severe, uncontrollable arterial bleeding. Evidence has shown they do much more good than harm, so please don't be afraid to teach their use. Starting a couple years ago, civilian ambulances started being issued the same tourniquets used by military medics

Heh - I purchased one of the final versions of the Fieldbook. It contained absolutely nothing of value.

Learned something new about the lightning detectors, very cool, and good to know. I've tried setting up my cell phone for weather alerts, but have never been able to make it work as reliably as a weather radio. Another problem with using a cell phone for this purpose is battery life. Even if you do have coverage, it's likely to be very weak coverage in most rural areas. And the battery use increases dramatically when trying to maintain a weak cell connection - especially when trying to use data communications that these weather alert programs require. Weather radios, on the ot

There's several reasons why a Scout might chose to be a Lone Scout, rather than joining a regular unit. Limited access to a regular troop is just one reason. I'm not sure that this is the appropriate type of thing for an Eagle Board to question? The type of program that a Scout registers in is up to him and his parents, and subject to approval by the council. Would you ask a Scout "Why did you register with Troop 123 instead of Troop 456?" Probably not, right? So why question why the Scout chose to be a Lone Scout? That said, this doesn't mean that you have to lower your standar

Yep, Lone Scouts are a legitimate program, and I'm pretty sure there's still references to it in the Boy Scout Handbook. Google is your friend - searching for Lone Scouts returns several resources directly from the BSA, right in the top 5 results. Including the Lone Scout Friend & Counselor Guidebook, which explains the program in detail. Lone Scouts is a different program from a traditional pack, troop or crew, and the youth-adult dynamics will be different. There's also a variety of reasons why a scout may be a Lone Scout, rather than a member of a traditional unit. It may b

About lightning detectors... Maybe it's just the geographic area that I'm in (the Great Plains) but I'm not sure I've ever been "surprised" by cloud-to-ground lightning, and I'm not sure I see the need for a lightning detector. In every case I can remember of camping through severe weather, I think I've gotten fair warning that lightning may be close (hearing thunder several minutes before the storm hits, looking west and seeing scary black clouds billowing, etc). I'm just curious - are the weather patterns in other areas of the country such that you might not get adequate warning o