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Pselb

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Everything posted by Pselb

  1. @Eagle1993 It's called Fuzzy Logic. Scoop up a handful of sand. You now have a "handful of sand". Take off a grain. Do you still have a "handful of sand"? Deep doing that and at what point does it NOT become a "handful of sand"? If the Boy Scouts keep making changes at what point is it no longer BOY Scouts of America? From what is being discussed on the forum the question becomes more and more relevant.
  2. And everyone jumped on the band wagon of the current circus and lo and behold, after all the changes, it ain't a circus anymore..... And when all the dust clears, one will quickly realize that what's left isn't Boy Scouts anymore.
  3. What started out as a simple outside observation seems to have taken on a life of its own. However, in spite of the many commenters trying to patch the hole in the hull of a sinking ship, the observation holds true. While I don't spend much time on the forum sorting through the thousands of comments, there all seems to be a general wave of reaction of "trying to fix" what wasn't broken. I'll use my original analogy of General Motors. For years they were a proud member of the Big Three car companies in America. They could do no wrong and they knew it. They were riding high. But the
  4. If an organization doesn't have the resources to run the program, why does it think it has the right to continue? Businesses go out of business every day. Organizations close down all the time. Churches stand vacant all around the country. It's the cycle of life. Things come and go. Why in the world does BSA think it is exempt from such things anymore than General Motors thought itself to be too big to fail at one time. Maybe with the emphasis on adult involvement, adult volunteerism, etc. the boys think it's dorky and not fun and too expensive, could it be said that the organization is
  5. Yep, that's it. Thanks. I figured there was a trick to it, way to simple for some of us who overthink everything.
  6. Okay, time for a dumb question. I've been lurking for some time now and recently gotten a bit active, I notice I get that little bell at the top of the forum page that lets me know of things going on that are focused at me. If I get quoted, no problem. When I quote others, I'm sure they get the same bell notification, but how does one get those highlighted names to make notifications appear to just that person. I noticed my name gets highlighted and I get notified, but how do I do it the other way and someone else gets highlighted and notified? I know this should be under the technical
  7. I will not jump the gun, but my son might. If there is an all-male option on the table it will be taken into consideration. If not, the choice will be made for him. As parents, we offered up the Cub Scout program to him because WE thought the idea of a boys' group would be a good thing for him. At least it got him away from his two sisters for a while. He's enjoyed it and continues to want to go back for each meeting and some of the other activities. As the program changes and he matures, that might change. I have no crystal ball at this point. As parents, we will support him in
  8. If given a choice between multiple options, I believe that my son's choices would be all-male scout camps, co-ed church, and co-ed YMCA type camps. As the only all-male alternative has gone away, it no longer provides a different experience than the other two. At this point, I'm thinking my son would opt for the church's Bible camp. It's outdoors, program focused and all-male off the table and all-male is no longer a choice issue and drops off the options list as it has in all other aspects in today's society. If there were other all-male options out there and it was important to him, it w
  9. While my son is only at the Cub Scout level, he is enjoying the program as it has been for the past 3 years he has attended. It is a good opportunity for him to build social skills outside of home-schooling. However, with that being said, the co-ed option might be a bit of a problem in that he is out-numbered 2 to 1 with his siblings at home. Now much of that can be easily chalked up to sibling rivalry, but I don't think it is a big draw to continue that experience outside the home. While my wife and I draw the line at blood and bruises, it is still a struggle at times. While it is good f
  10. I see it every day in my classroom. In class it's co-ed, but the guys have his strange tendency to migrate to the sports world of all-male teams because it's "cool" to be a guy. Students who have issues of boy/girl (co-ed) outside of class who don't get involved in sports have a tendency to do the old LAN-Gamer gatherings type of activities. The gals who don't do the segregated sports get more involved in the shopping and sleepover types of activities. And for most of the others, they continue to do the co-ed activities outside of class. Taking that one step further beyond the reac
  11. "Adventure" is what you make out of any life experience. Most aren't planned and not many of them expensive. On our family trip to Yellowstone, it was quite an adventure. They had warned us about the bears and such. But what they didn't say was that at night in certain campgrounds, the buffalo like to bed down for the night among the campsites. We didn't put 2 and 2 together when we felt lucky to find an open campsite. As a matter of fact the campground still had plenty of sites later in the afternoon. I guess that meant there was that much more room for the buffalo. It is unfortunate
  12. When it comes to safety, it is assumed that it falls under the category of common sense. The problem with that statement is that it is based on an assumption and that sense is common. And we all know what the true meaning of the word "assume" means. if safety was not an issue, why do organizations like OSHA even exist? How in the world do people who do motivational safety seminars make a living at it? For those who don't think safety is worth knowing as much as possible about it, make sure your insurance policy is up-to-date, have a good lawyer on retention, and keep
  13. Wouldn't a girl with any sense, who wants to go to this thing World Jamboree, just join the older co-ed program and avoid the hassle of breaking the glass sealing of an all boys' program first? Sounds a bit weak as an excuse for all the maladies that seem to be going around lately. But then I'm not savvy to all the fine points of how all this works.
  14. Well, they could have done it at the Centennial year, they could have done it at any time regardless of what is going on at the time and the reaction would be the same, but the coincidental excuse would be the only thing different. And no, they could have probably picked a better time to do it "worse". There's been just about any time from inception until now that the could have done worse. If you were going on a long trip, when would be the best time to have an accident? Well, everyone I've ever talked to never planned on even having one, but it happens. ...and when it does it does
  15. Is it the cause or the symptom? It could just be that the world around them is changing so much so fast that they are making rash decisions in a panic to catch up.
  16. Maybe he spent too much time around the campfire as a kid.
  17. Or maybe a couple of camps work together to alternate so the kids get more variety of camps to pick from depending on which week they can go. Or the camps alternate boy weeks with girl weeks. I for one don't go back to the same state parks and camp in the same campsite every summer on the same week, (but alas, it's the same family that tags along.) It never occurred to me to even do that. There's got to be alternatives that deviate a bit from the same old story that might be interesting for the kids. A teacher that teaches one grade and does the same field trip every year for 15 years
  18. Maybe as a simple solution, if the boys and girls are going to have separate programs in separate groups, why would it not follow that summer camps run separate weeks? Then you don't have to worry about not having enough toilets.
  19. But that's the way it has been for every other step in human history. The strong and powerful makes up the rules as they go along. Name one point in time that that wasn't the case. So why would BSA be any different than the rest of the world?
  20. Okay, I'm a history teacher and let's try this on to see if it fits. At one point sports was an all-male activity. The first Olympics didn't have any females. So over the past "few" years, that has changed. And it did so incrementally. I suppose there was some hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth when women first began to compete in a "few" more genteel competitions. Then some crept in even before the BC/AD timeline. Over time more and more were added on an ever increasing pace until we reach today. But then along with women's sports, women's involvement in technology, industry and a
  21. A few years back when I was in college, my roommate was gay. I am a conservative Christian. Major worlds apart. It was a rocky start, but we both worked it out to the point where we actually became good friends in spite of our differences. The time we finally realized it was when we were going on some trip someplace. He was driving and I was navigating. This was before GPS and Google Maps, so I had the old paper map out trying to figure out how to get to where we needed to be. We came to an intersection that was not clearly marked on the map and he yelled, "Which way? Which way?" I i
  22. Maybe Charles Lutwidge Dodgson had something to do with it?
  23. Wow, I step away for a few minutes to do my day job and a ton of stuff happens. Okay, I'm going to put my outside observer glasses on an pose a few ideas. 1) This thing called national has made changes to the program. It is ASSUMED that this was to make things better, either in numbers of scouts or cash flow, take your pick. Both sides have speculated for either, or, or both. 2) This is followed closely by the rank and file with a whole ton of ASSUMPTIONS as to what is going to happen and who's going to quit, what all the problems are going to be, how the structure of the prog
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