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Prairie_Scouter

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About Prairie_Scouter

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    IL
  1. Interestingly, Tang existed before the manned space program began, but because it was used on many of the flights, folks started to believe that it was created by NASA. Weirdly, some home tips sites say that Tang makes a good dishwasher detergent because of its high citric acid content. NASA used to publish an annual journal called Spinoff that detailed all of the technologies that came out of, or were enhanced by, the U.S. space program. Manned exploration has always been a debated topic. Some things in exploration can only be done by humans. One of the Mars rovers is stuck in san
  2. As Trev says, it depends on what question you ask, but the surveys I've seen, including the one quoted above, show small majorities do not favor gay rights, but hardly in overwhelming numbers. As far as explaining why gay rights have mostly lost in votes taken, there's actually some pretty solid reasoning on why that's so. Gay rights is an issue that only resonates with a small number of voters in a way that's strong enough to get them off their butts to vote. Those against gay rights typically have done a much better job in these local elections to get their voters out. In a country
  3. So, glad to see some things don't change. Before I had to go away for awhile, we were debating these same things; Guess I haven't missed much :-). tominrichmond, Welcome (and I guess, welcome back to me). This is certainly an interesting topic, but I don't know that you'd get everyone to agree that it's just plain "common sense" that BSA wouldn't allow gays. The fault in your argument is accepting as fact the idea that gays are natually attracted to young boys. There's no evidence of this, any more than there is evidence that just because I happen to like women, I'd be attracted to 12
  4. Hey wait. My post said I sent my response on Saturday night. Holy smoke, I just lost half my weekend
  5. Did my homework. Are we being graded?
  6. LisaBob, I think it's pretty safe to say that you've insulted a lot of self-respecting weasels out there. Re: Ollie North. Broke the law, lied about it, got off on a technicality. Now, makes big bucks making speeches about integrity to his believers. No wonder young people today are dissillusioned about the hypocrisy of their leaders (the same as many of us were when we were that age).
  7. I have to agree with acco40 on this one. Seems like a pretty cut and dry issue. The city says you can have a free berth if you comply with their non-discrimination rules. Otherwise, you just pay the going rate like everyone else. They didn't say the Scouts couldn't berth there. The city is not impinging on the BSA's rights in any way, shape, or form.
  8. I'll bet the Iroquois Nation was really happy that they helped us jump start our country, seeing that we repaid that kindness by killing off most of them later. I suspect that from a political perspective, it'll never really matter what the true history is behind the founding of the country. In these days, when elections are won by those with the most money in order to spin their story for the media, truth or fact doesn't really matter that much. Unless we get a more moderate administration in place at both the federal and state levels, I fear that it's only a matter of time until
  9. We shouldn't for the tiniest fraction of a second look for some sort of blame to be assigned to any of these victims. Doesn't matter whether they reported it 10 seconds after it happened, or 10 years. If you want to see reasons for not reporting it right away, all you have to do is look at the story. While at camp, they were virtually held prisoner by adult leaders how looked the other way while the abuse went on. When word finally got out, the boys were harassed at their school to the point that they had to leave school. What adult authority figure were they supposed to go to? How i
  10. Perhaps our overseas brothers are concerned because they see the BSA straying from what they see as the correct intent and philosophy of Scouting today? "The BSA feels strongly that their values are paramount to their success." I'm afraid that I took a little more pragmatic view of things, in this case that BSA feels strongly that whatever grows their membership and keeps funds rolling in is paramount to their success. Just think, for example, if the urban legend is actually true that the LDS members threatened to take their 400,000 members and leave if BSA didn't take a more conse
  11. And, boy, won't we all be surprised when we find out that the one truth faith was actually formed on a planet circling Alpha Centauri and unfortunately it hasn't found its way to the little backwater solar systems that include places like Earth. You know, I just have this feeling that in the end, whoever or whatever the higher being or beings end up being, they're going to pay us a visit and say "nice try, but man, did you guys ever get it wrong. Where did you guys come up with all this "my religion is better stuff", and whoever said it was ok to kill in my/our name, huh?".
  12. Hi Newbie, I agree with much of what you say. However, I think that the heart of the matter isn't just having a belief in God as a prerequisite for membership. The text that goes along with that implies that you can't be as good a person, or citizen, if you don't have a belief in God. That, now, is just an opinion that can't be substantiated. I think it'd be better if we judged a person based on their actions (in a Scouting environment) and not just what they believed in from a religious standpoint. If the conservative Christian views continue to hold sway in Scouting, how far away a
  13. I think that whole issue of gays in Scouting is really overblown in relation to the possible impact of allowing gays in leadership or scout positions. The arguments about safety and such are really just vapor. I've seen absolutely no studies linking gays to child abuse at any higher levels than in the general community, and I think that there are none. Personally, I think that these arguments are just a smoke screen. The issue of gays in Scouting is largely a religious issue that is not shared, I think, among all religious sects represented in Scouting. It's a religious issue, not a Scouti
  14. Part of the problem is just keeping track of who's who in the Middle East. You've got the Taliban, dreaded enemy, except that we helped to get them set up in Afghanistan. And then, of course, you've got Iraq, who is/was an enemy. Or was that Iran? No, wait, that was before. Somebody's a friend, we happily sell them our weapons, and lo and behold, they use them on us a couple of years later. One of the neo-conservatives that was at one time a part of Bush's "think tank" is publishing a book about how their policies were basically a good idea that got out of hand. Should be an interest
  15. International weapons inspectors roamed Iraq for years, and our own inspectors have had the run of the country for 3 years now. Along with intelligence gathering and everything else at our disposal, don't you think we'd have come up with SOMETHING by now if there was something to find? Missiles, warheads, and the payloads are not the easiest things to hide, after all. They have volatile fuels, and some of the biologic and chemical payloads are volatile as well. Maybe Iraq has their own version of Area 51 that is shielded from our view using alien technology? Or, maybe there's just nothing to
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