ianwilkins

7 hours ago, skeptic said:

I had been standing staring at the night sky, a stellar explosion looming out of the dark void, as the moon was not yet trespassing on the night.  They stood there a moment, then one asked me how I could believe in God, noting some of the common misunderstandings seekers have about the evil in the world and why it happens if God is in control.  So, I asked them what then they would attribute that immensity above us to.

Physics?

37 minutes ago, qwazse said:

We had another issue about bad behavior in one of the youth shower houses, because adults were not "allowed" to enter them.

I have a few stories about the shower on *that* camp too. My poor English Roses when faced with a shower room full of spanish girls with next to nothing on and no personal space issues. I tried to be sympathetic and stifle the giggles.

11 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

OK, question on this.   We are camping on a beach in the summer.  Has anyone built a hammock stand by making a pioneering project?  

Yes. Though the beach might scupper our design that we more or less copied off the internet.

If you wanted 6 people to hammock, six posts, set out in a hexagon, bashed into the ground at an angle (60o ish?) pointing out from the centre of the hexagon, rope strung around the top to join each pole together. Each pole had two guy lines pulling the top rope taught, and stopping the posts flipping into the middle when any weight is put on the hammocks.

It doesn't need everyone to be in at once, if one person gets in the force is just spread around. You can use the top rope to put a tarp over if you need one.

Like I said though, on a beach, it might be scuppered by the pegs not staying in the ground, as there's quite a lot of force on the guys.

I have seen things that do away with any need for guy lines which might work better. A tripod each end as a stand, then a pole hung from the centre of each tripod, and the hammock hung from the horizontal pole...

You could add tripods in a circle so you only need the same number of tripods as sleepers.

In sand you may need to tie the bottoms of the legs together, or put more poles on, to stop the tripod spreading.

8 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

Careful....you will end up with a YPT time out imposed upon you

You'll have to extradite me first!

36 minutes ago, Jameson76 said:

While we're at it, don't forget staying on museum ships.  You have Scouts of all ages bunking right beside each other and adults all in the same area.  Horrors

We went on an international trip a few years back which has passed into unit legend. We spent a couple of nights on a visit to an island and sleeping accomodation was a gym floor. There was about 300 of us. Explorer Scouts from Spain, UK, France, and a few other places, all aged 14-18, male and female, and their leaders. You know those pictures you see when there's a natural disaster and a bunch of people get evacuated to a local school? Yeah, just like that. UK rules are that leaders and young people have separate sleeping areas. That is not, apparently, the spanish way. Fun, looking back at it, but at the time...

10 hours ago, MikeS72 said:

I had to google 'yurt'.  In 55 years of scouting I have never been anywhere that had them.  My first thought when I saw the pictures was 'Oh, Genghis Khan!'

Indeed.

One of my ex-Explorer Scouts made them for a living for a while, not sure if he made a living from it though. Did think about renting one off him, but one more of those things you never quite get around to.

And to add to your lexicon, we have 4 or 5 "lavvu", ours are 8 person tents that are octagonal, with one central pole, but we call them tepees because we got bored of everyone saying "you what?" when we said "lavvu". They're great because they pack down very small, one person can easily carry a tent for 8 people. Ideal for campsite camps not far off the beaten track.

21 minutes ago, David CO said:

Correct.  I would also add the fact that the people giving the grant money did not intend for it to go to the council.  You should use it for the purpose the grant was intended.  It would be dishonest to do otherwise.

Hi, I'd like to apply for grant funding of $2000

What do you want the money for?

We'd like to give it to the local BSA Scout Council.

We'll pass thanks.

18 hours ago, qwazse said:

Obfuscation starts at the top. Do you all realize that this decade's membership stats are buried in an annual report ... in .pdf format?

It would be no trouble to list those stats in a single page in a plain text table by year -- current year on top row.

Yup, every year since 2012* I take the UK membership stats found on page 46/54 of the annual report pdf and put them in a google spreadsheet, probably takes no more than a couple of hours, and that could probably be streamlined if I was keen as the layout requires a fair bit of formulae tweaking. Usually something interesting to be pulled out of the stats. When I did the 2019 numbers I posted it to the UK equivalent of here, and it triggered 6 pages of replies, some of which may even have been related to the membership stats in the spreadsheet.

* and it goes back to the late 90s thanks to someone else starting the thing, I just took over and moved it to a google sheet. Standing on the shoulders of giants, as ever.

Anyone else think that was going to go:

Fear....

....is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. - Yoda

On 1/14/2020 at 11:47 PM, le Voyageur said:

The vet turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!" she cried, "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead!"

I'm not surprised she was in shock, that was a hefty bill.

(I'll see myself out)

Tallest tower: Spaghetti, marshmallows/jelly babies. Or 20 sheets of paper and sticky tape.

Strongest bridge: Dried pasta lasagna sheets and cannelloni, sticky tape.

Lego building communication game: Instructions at one end of the den, pieces at the other, one cub is builder, the rest of the cubs relay instructions to them.

Jambowlree: Go ten pin bowling with them. Take part in an international competition (http://www.jambowlree.org)

On 1/2/2020 at 1:08 AM, TAHAWK said:

'untapped pools of domestic oil are finite and dwindling," - Exxon bloke

That first part cannot be anything but true at any time, as it seems unlikely that there is infinite domestic oil.

Maybe we'll all have hydrogen in our flying cars and hoverboards thanks to this clever lass and chums...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50841104

Sounds like your magazine is much like our UK one, well, in the reaction it provokes, flicked through by the frontline, eyebrows raised, maybe a tut, or an eyeroll, then put away/recycled. We look on in wonder at the achingly PC troops and packs, with their wonderful diversity and their happiness to do things that just wouldn't work for my lot and me. There's no grit. All is shiny. We had our problems but we overcame. Good for you but I can't even summon the energy to tidy the spare room where there's an ever growing pile of scout detritus. Never see that in the magazine!

Easy to knock down though, harder to build. 

(for info...https://scouts.org.uk/scouting-magazine)

12 hours ago, qwazse said:

Also, it was hard enough sorting out that what I called "mint tea" was what your countrymen called "tea with mint". (That was after traumatizing them by making sun tea in my clear water bottle.)

We have peppermint tea, in teabags, easily available. Though my only experience of it was on a scout camp, where someone made me a proper cuppa, and another leader a peppermint tea, and as the light wasn't so good, I accidentally took the peppermint tea and added milk. It was grim.

That stuff in brackets, I'm lost mate, as lost as a Portuguese scout trying a Worcestershire sauce crisp, sorry, chip. *Sun* tea? Never heard of it. In a water bottle? [makes sceptical face] 

16 minutes ago, mds3d said:

This wasn't a "lapse in judgement." This is Sexual Battery under Georgia law.  Kick him out. Send him to a judge.

 

Your wish is granted...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/deplorable-boy-scouts-of-america-cuts-ties-with-rear-slapping-runner

10 hours ago, qwazse said:

Right, because nobody else is ever going to have a UK scouter drop by camp to update you on one of your scout's Totin' chip fails ...

Absolutely. I mean, they'd need a translator for a start. Chip? That's a crisp right? Or french fries? 

5 minutes ago, qwazse said:

If someone is getting all high and mighty about this or any other behavior of our volunteers the reply should be, "If you can do better, here's an adult application."

"Oh no, I couldn't possibly, I err ummm no, I , well, no I don't have time to do that, full time job, kids, house, you know..." 🙄

Whatever happened to "turn the other cheek"?

I'm joking. JOKING! 

I know, it's very serious, sorry.

He didn't really think that through did he? 

16 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

 

I don't even know where to start with that lot. Do you really think I should take seriously a text that describes our national religion as an "officially sponsored religious franchise"? It's a libertarian magazine, of course its opinion pieces are going to suggest that tightening up laws is nonsense. Anyway, honestly? The church is not the force it was. That they all signed a letter asking to take the pointy bits off of knives, doesn't mean it'll be enshrined in law tomorrow, doesn't mean politicians will take any notice. Too busy trying to get elected and leave/stay in the EU.

It's setting up a straw man. Let's take a fact in the first paragraph, that the murder rate in London exceeded that of New York City? Why pick New York City? Is it because they're both iconic? Or because it handily comes firmly in the bottom third of homicide rates in US cities*? Is it fair to compare those two? Oh, wait, wikipedia to the rescue again, more murders in London for one month. Woo.** When you actually look over a period of time, London is safer than an already pretty safe New York. 

If you want to take that opinion piece seriously, best of British to you, but I don't recognise the UK it depicts, maybe I'm just lucky***.

I'm assuming two people getting stabbed to death in London only made the news because there was great footage of the perp getting tusked, and the magic words "islamic terrorist".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London

*** I am lucky.

53 minutes ago, walk in the woods said:

Thank you very much but I'll carry whatever it pleases me to carry, in the manner of a free man.

That's nice dear . I wasn't trying to stop you carrying anything. Just correcting you all thinking we're banning pointy things. I'm sure you all think we're mad, subjugated, oppressed, or something, but it doesn't feel like that, though I don't suppose it would.

8 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

... or pointed sticks.  😵

 

It's the UK folks.  Parliament has been considering banning all pointed knives.  Any policeman - a national police service - can stop you and ask why you are carrying a multi-tool that includes a cutting tool.  1775, and all that.

"It's the UK folks" - what's that shorthand for? Genuinely interested, not getting snarky. I mean, I'm assuming you mean "It's the UK folks, where all the civilised people stayed" but...

A quick google suggests lots of people have suggested to the government that they discuss it, but I can't find anywhere where it's actually been discussed in parliament. I mean, as far as I can work out, not much useful has been discussed in parliament since the 2016 moment of madness (Br***t). Anyhoo, there's a government petition site and more or less anything that gets more than 100,000 votes will be discussed in some form in parliament. And discussion is one thing, being made UK law is quite another.

And yes, if the police have reason to believe you want to use *anything* as an offensive weapon, you might have explaining to do. And yes, that includes your multitool.

Basic laws on knives
It’s illegal to:

sell a knife to anyone under 18, unless it has a folding blade 3 inches long (7.62 cm) or less
carry a knife in public without good reason, unless it has a folding blade with a cutting edge 3 inches long or less
carry, buy or sell any type of banned knife
use any knife in a threatening way (even a legal knife)
Scotland
In Scotland, 16 to 18 year olds are allowed to buy cutlery and kitchen knives.

Lock knives
Lock knives are not classed as folding knives and are illegal to carry in public without good reason. Lock knives:

have blades that can be locked and refolded only by pressing a button
can include multi-tool knives - tools that also contain other devices such as a screwdriver or can opener

From: https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

16 minutes ago, mrkstvns said:

A Boy Scout in the UK drew the unwanted attention of local police investigating online weapons purchases.  The scout had ordered 3 "flick knives" from a Chinese web site, all too happy to ship to the UK. Story:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/scout-illegal-knives-police-trafford-17350475 

 

Oops!

Yep, we have certain types of knives that are not legal in the UK. Flick knives, butterfly knives, stuff like that.

This week we did some whittling with our Explorer Scouts, using sheath knives that are completely legal in the UK*, making some christmas tree ornaments. It was a good evening, of course, it was me that cut myself a bit, they were fine.

* legal in the sense that it's legal to possess them, but carrying them around without good reason might get you in an uncomfortable conversation with the police. The rules are complicated. I have a couple of lovely opinel folding lock knives, I would not carry them about generally, but I'd take them camping without a second thought. Hope they're legal!

6 minutes ago, qwazse said:

You're giving me World Jamboree Flashbacks to apologizing to a British SM for one of our scouts upsetting one of hers by indiscriminately flicking open his knife.

File under: How to not impress that fine young lady.

And I thought all the laydeez loved a bad boy.

22 hours ago, Eagledad said:

Thanks, I'm looking forward to their comments.

I hope I'm not being self serving because I am cooking the turkey. They better like it.😎

 

In my limited and outdated experience, the German student will be happy with the large amounts of meat to consume.

28 minutes ago, RememberSchiff said:

    - historical figures and events after War of 1812

Presumably, depending on whether said figures/events were on the winning side or not.