vol_scouter

CAFE standards should be abolished. Let consumers decide the efficiency and gas mileage of their automobiles. If the government wants to change the gas mileage or efficiency of the autos, then increase the tax on gasoline. The Big 3 respond to their market. The GM electric car did not sell well. Their cars now have as better gas mileage than their competitors but the public WANTS to buy foreign cars. Part of the problem I have with a direct bailout is that the government wants some control. It makes since to say that the money is not to be used for bonuses and raises especially for

packsaddle, I generally agree with much that you say. However, the federal government employed MIT (in the late 1980's I believe) to do a study on why German and Japanese companies were dominating the marketplace. The results have much to do with the loss of most of our manufacturing. The study concluded that the biggest problem was the structure of the American stock market. The stock markets here are only interested in short term profits. Germany and Japan had a longer vision for their countries (I do not clearly recall how but I think that in general the analysts valued long

Beevah, As you, I always try to buy goods from American companies. I have looked at foreign car companies before. The attitude of the sales force has been that they are doing me a favor by selling me their car rather than I am helping them by buying the car. Needless to say that any interest in their product was killed by their attitude. A Toyota dealer said that I could only test drive their convertible after I had decided to purchase it!! I bought a Sebring convertible that was a great car. I agree with you to some extent. My concern is that when competing with China

My solution would be a little different. I do not support a direct bail out for the Big 3. However, I agree with others that we make precious little and cannot afford to lose the auto industry. Our country is not capable today of building a large scale nuclear plant. We could not fight a WWII kind of war any longer because we do not have the infra-structure. So I would propose some sort of a hybrid bail out where the Big 3 are allowed to go into chapter 11 bankruptcy. This would allow restructuring contracts and debt. In the meantime, the government could assure the public that the corp

NJCubScouter, I understand your frustration in the outcome of the Florida vote. It was a sad comment all of the way around. I was not aware of any statewide recount but I will not argue with you on that topic. There were certainly a lot of disagreement on the method of interpreting the votes. Gore made a clever decision to ask to recount only some heavily democrat areas rather than the whole state. It is ironic that recounting the entire state may have provided him the result that he desired. As to the SCOTUS decision, how can you interpret telling the state court to fol

Beevah is right, both parties and several presidents from both parties are the cause of this debacle. It is also due to my generation, the baby boomers, who are the greediest, most egocentric, and selfish generation in the history of this once great country. Our parents generation was the greatest, we are the worst. The things that the young baby boomers decried - corporate greed etc.- have become our trademark. Unfortunately, much of the price of the foolishness of baby boomers will be born by their children and grand children which is only to be expected for such a self-centered group.

NJCubScouter, The votes were recounted more once including the New York Times. None of the recounts resulted with a Gore victory. Before you bring it up the SCOTUS merely instructed the Florida Supreme court to follow Florida state law and not to make up laws as they go. As to counting ALL of the votes, most states do not count absentee ballots for the POTUS unless the vote difference between the two is less than the total number of absentee votes. So ALL of the votes have not been counted for years. Bush has been a poor president and a disappointment to all. However, having su

Merlyn, The economic models are poor at best. So I would certainly trust climate models more than economic models. The Kyoto protocols would rapidly change the energy use in this country. If you buy consensus opinion on global warming then you should buy consensus economic opinion as to enactment of the Kyoto protocols. Even most democrats do not support Kyoto. Clinton did not push for enactment of Kyoto and commented that the protocols would be economically ruinous. Certainly, if the most pessimistic global warming proponents are correct, moving aggressively to a less 'carbon b

Merlyn, That is correct, climatologists try to make predictions and compare their predictions to what the climate actually does. I agree that in my book, that is science. I was just pointing out that the definition you were applying to GW would not allow climatologists to be scientists. So GW's definition is a valid one. Scientists would all prefer to perform controlled experiments but astronomers and climatologists among others can merely observe and make observations. If they can mathematically model their science, they can sometimes make testable predictions with their models

Merlyn, The climatologists use computers to solve coupled non-linear second order differential equations to model the weather. Their predictions are reasonably accurate for a few days but beyond are not much better than the Farmer's Almanac. They do not conduct controlled experiments because they cannot control weather variables. By your definition of science, the climatologists are not doing science - they are collecting data and making observations. I believe that they are scientists who are working in a difficult field that is in its' infancy. It is neither certain nor clear t

Merlyn, Many of the world's top scientists did not believe that atoms existed at the turn of the 20th century. Einstein's paper on Brownian motion convinced most that the atomic theory was correct. The Greek idea was that any given material, i.e. element, could be divided just so many times before a smallest subdivision was reached. It is similar to the atomic theory but not the same either. GW has the gist of the scientific method. He only leaves out control of the experimental conditions.

Merlyn, GW may have picked a poor example but he is right that science has accepted explanations and facts that were eventually found to not be correct. Global warming due to the effect of man is not a proven theory at this time. There is a consensus opinion in favor of that point of view. However, a consensus opinion is what is done when the evidence does not make the conclusion clear. Part of the problem is that determining the global temperature is difficult to define and to measure looking for an average change of a degree centigrade or so. The measurements are not adequate at

The movie was based on the book: "God and My Country", by MacKinlay Kantor, The Curtis Publishing Company, 1954, Library of Congress Card Catalog number: 54-5543. As is often the case with a Walt disney film, the movie bears little semblance to the book. The book is great and speaks to the importance of the program as well as painting a realistic portrait with some failures as well as successes. I highly recommend the book though some tissues might be needed at the end. Addall has an excellent search engine for out of print books.

I agree - there are no outdated skills. I would bring back Morse code and make swimming a required MB. Tracking would be good to bring back as well.

Buck Toms is my council's camp. It has ~700 acres on Watts Bar Lake. The weather is 80's - 90's in the days with often 60's at night. Usually, there are late afternoon rains though recent years have seen a severe drought. The lake is a TVA lake and is part of a navigable system from the Mississippi to Knoxville where the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers forms the Tennessee river. Nice waterfront on a cove. New campfire amphitheater overlooking the lake. relatively new mess hall. We like to have visiting troops and have several each year. We also have a primiti

Lisabob, The airlines seem to routinely file for bankruptcy without massive lay offs. I do not want the big 3 to fail but they would break all union contracts with bankruptcy. They cannot continue to make cars in union shops with considerable legacy debt and compete with non-union Japanese cars with young workforces. My experience has been that the big 3 get a bad rap for quality and, unlike many countries, most Americans are not loyal to American brands. As to the quality, I watched a PBS car show ~10 years ago. I had a new Jeep Grand Cherokee and they were testing the same car.

In general, I oppose a bailout as well. We should have listened to the House Republicans on the bank bailout - return to the prior accounting laws and let the market adjust itself (which seems to be happening anyway). That said, I am very concerned about the loss of heavy industry. We are able to make less and less. The US cannot manufacture a large nuclear power plant - we do not have the industrial capability! Our competitors such as China and Japan can. China is planning on building 45 nuclear plants in the few years. With the democrats and Obama opposing nuclear power, we a

Packsaddle, No, that was not good. The news media does a poor job of finding out what is going on. That is because they have a large component of entertainment and most are ideological. That said, who do you want to judge who is lying? You clearly supported Obama. Would you want someone from the religious right to be judging Obama ads? Many ads were distortions of the truth (as were many of McCain's) and could therefore be called a lie because it wasn't 100% true. No matter how well intentioned, no one can be fair and unbiased in the judging process. Dirty tricks have unfortun

Packsaddle, Although the economy, the war, health care, etc. are all important issues, the are all meaningless if we allow our fundamental rights to be eroded. Only Fox news on TV provides some semblance of balance in its' reporting but much of the coverage is fluff. Radio often provides the only dissenting view of the main stream media who consistently lean to the left. Silencing those voices is a serious attack on our freedom. Obama has just announced that lying should not be allowed in elections! That is the very speech that is protected!! Who is to decide what is a lie? Clea

Air America would only have to carry those shows if they receive complaints from the public. In general, liberal talk shows have much smaller audiences than conservative shows. So the radio stations under the fairness doctrine dropped all talk shows to avoid the problems - both responding to complaints and being forced to carry less profitable shows to meet the doctrine. The result of the fairness doctrine is to squelch dissenting voices. It does not serve the public interest which should be to openly examine as many points of view as possible. The best way to marginalize subversive orga

Knots are one of the most important elements in the early parts of scouting. All boys see knots as easy until they attempt to tie one only to fail! FAIL at something. Our society tries avoid failing for children even though it is an essential part of life. They fail but with some effort can rather quickly learn. That is valuable in that the youth fails then learns to succeed. If the troop is doing its job, the youth will be retested in a week or two and will likely tie some knots but fail at others. This teaches the importance of practice. These things are all valuable especially in the

Rythos, Those are intersting numbers but what do they mean? I have no idea of the average foreclosures in your unspecified time period. I would assume that it is more but by what percentage? So often numbers are thrown around that sound good or bad but contain meaning only when in context. My understanding is that the actual foreclosures are moderately increased (I just did the same thing by using a non-specific term). Most of the foreclosures are said to be persons who in years past would have never qualified for loans. Our congress is corrupt since they forced this upon the ba

gwd-scouter, I think that you are right about likely retirements in the next four years. One of the news stations was talking about this and said that Scalia is in his 70's. He might be replaced if he developed health problems or if Obama is president for 8 years. That would also significantly change the court for years to come.

First, I do agree that Dobson is doing some fear mongering. Clearly Obama will appoint activist judges who would likely overturn the BSA case. So while fear mongering, it is grounded and would likely happen at some point in the future. What is both sad and frightening to me is that Christians are being labeled as extremists. By saying that there are certain things that are wrong, Christians are being reviled. These are the same values that have given us freedom and prosperity. These values have allowed this country to expand man's knowledge, help to abolish slavery, free millions of

Beavah, I had a few slides on lightning strikes presented to a Wilderness Medical Society (WMS) course. I will try to find them. The WMS has a great set of slides on CD. Here is their description: The Wilderness Medical Society developed an educational lecture series on 11 wilderness medicine topics: Accidental Hypothermia, Biodiversity Loss, Traveler's Diarrhea, Field Water Disinfection, Frostbite, Hazardous Marine Life, High Altitude Medicine, Orthopedic Trauma, Wilderness Dermatology, Venomous Snakebite Management,and Wild Animal Attacks. For our special Spring promotion, w