wjturner

SSScout, I like it, but I have to ask. If it was period first aid and baseball, did they do period (American) Morse code instead of the modern ITU Morse code that did not exist then? :-)

Wow. The precision of that schedule reminds me of camp...boot camp that is!

Some people around here won't believe it, but I agree, too. Camp should not primarily be about advancement.(This message has been edited by wjturner)

For the most part you are preaching to the choir here. However, I do find your information about flags in a parade very interesting because it is most definitely not what the military currently does. For example, we always marched the colors to the right of multiple flags and never alone in advance, just like you see in any multi-branch military color guard on TV. Maybe it's just a military verses civilian thing.

Thanks, Stosh, for the history lesson. I heard from some of my friends about the reenactment. It sounds like you know your stuff better than most of the reenactors I've seen. You certainly gave more detail than I have in my previous posts, but I think some of your remarks are better aimed at others. (E.g., I was not the one claiming a company had a flag. I said regiment.) I stand corrected about them being in the center in 1860, but then again, that remark was in response to someone saying it was on the right, and as you point out, there was only one flag, and it was almost in the center of the regiment, as opposed to on the right.

I agree wholeheartedly with you about civilians not needing to emulate the military, but then that wasn't my point, either. By the way, have you ever commanded a real military color guard, or are you just a civilian emulating the military? :-)

Thank you for the kind reminder, OldGreyEagle. I will endeavor to behave myself better.

BP, that is fresh! You can assume what you want about me (as wrong as you are, but that is really not important here). I would rather you pay attention to my actual criticism. I didn't say those were acceptable numbers. (In fact, I think they are far from acceptable, even more so now that you give even more severe numbers this time.) You said he was off with his 99%-1% split, but you didn't present enough information to back it up. Just one extra number would have done it.

Actually, I think you have at least two other (better) lines of argument, one of which you have hit on in this petty response to me: It really doesn't matter what the split is because any (positive) number is unacceptable. And if you find yourself in that situation, you really won't be worried about either the actual number or the proportion.

As someone who makes a living working with numbers, I love how people abuse them. As a friend of mine loves to say, 75% of all statistics are made up. :-) In the past few hours we have what appears to be a made-up statistic (Really? 99%?) being rebuked with numbers that are meaningless without more context (Twelve out of how many? That could be far above or below 1%. We cannot tell!). If you really want to convince someone with your numbers, try to put a little more work into it. As my wife says, figures never lie, but they will confess to anything if you torture them enough.

Thanks, allangr1024. To paraphrase a friend of mine, if there's a rule, you know someone did something stupid to get it made.

Interesting. As I said, I've served on military color guards that were not armed. Technically, I guess you would call them flag details, but that's not what they *were* called. Oh, well. This is all a digression anyway. The question was about when people started holding the flag that way, and my comment that started this whole digression (for which I am *very* sorry) was that it is not a new thing and has a very practical reason in actually protecting the flag. If you want to argue semantics, fine, but that was not my point.(This message has been edited by wjturner)

Calm down, jblake. Nobody I know is suggesting arming BS color guards. Heck, a lot of the time military color guards aren't armed. If you want to go back to 1860, there was only one flag carried in a regiment (a company did not have any colors), so there was no "to the right". It was, and is, in the middle, both to mark a location and to protect it. I invite you to watch a military unit conduct a real formation, not just a parade.

If you are truly worried about borrowing things from the military, well, I hope you don't dig too deeply into the history of scouting. ;-)

Add to that, BadenP, here as in almost everywhere in life, policies rarely follow the intelligent/logical way to do things, especially when they are created by committees. Too many cooks, etc.

And of course everyone always follows BSA policy. (Just like all successful experiments are continued.)

bnelon, I find your comment about a successful experiment funny! I am not so naive as to believe there is always a one-to-one correspondence between successful experiments and continued policies. However, I was also never arguing it was a successful experiment, only that in my very limited experience, it did not appear to have the particular disadvantages offered earlier against it in this forum, but then as I've seen someone say recently, all scouting is local. I think your argument here is much better than those about gossiping scouts. I think it is probably a far saner idea to have *all* BORs be staffed by committee members rather than change the composition after a few ranks.

Thanks, bnelon, that's exactly what I was wondering. (Although I'm not quite old enough to have been a scout in the '70s!) Interestingly, I know our BORs for T-2-1 in the 80s never had an adult on them, and I never knew one of the older scouts to gossip about what happened at a BOR. The one being reviewed, sure, but not the reviewers.

Thanks, Eagle92. I was wondering if that was when it happened. I couldn't remember if I sat in on one after that or not.

Pardon my asking, but I haven't been active for a while. When did the rules change to have adults conduct all BORs? As Eagle92 said, I sat in on many as a youth in my day.

As someone who has served on (and commanded) military color guards, we were always taught to carry a folded flag with crossed arms against the chest. The guard is, after all, there to *guard* the colors. The color bearer, in particular, has the responsibility to keep it safe. Others are there to protect him.

Eagle92 is correct about carrying the colors on a staff, but this sounds like a folded flag.

I was on the other side as a youth. I did my Ordeal and Brotherhood with my dad. On the other hand, my younger brother did his the year before we did and helped with ours. I then was given the Vigil Honor the year before him, so I got to return the favor.