CalicoPenn

We live in a sound bite world - say "Free Tuition" and you can get yourself lots of votes amongst a certain crowd. The media, because they're essentially stupid, ask just one question - how will it be paid for - and think they've done there job. Bandy about some transaction tax scheme (and basically stealing the idea from folks proposing it to pay for universal health care) and everyone moves along - fixated on free tuition and a new tax to pay for it. No one ever applies any critical thinking skills to it. No one stops to wonder why we should transfer the State's responsibility to fund

A cure for Alzheimer's? (Sorry - couldn't resist). To answer the question seriously - I had a hard time wrapping my head around the question - I thought it was backwards. I've always thought it is the old that owe the young when it comes to remembering - to tell and/or write down our stories, to save important pieces of the family history, to pass it down when it became too much, to encourage the young to be interested in history, if even just family or local history. When my family went on trips, my father pulled over for every historical marker - if we passed it by, he made it a

Just to clarify something - JASM is a youth POR - once you son turns 18, it's ASM or nothing if he remains in the Troop - he would no longer be eligible to be a JASM.

If this were at summer camp, chances are fair to good that the nature lodge wold have just the right tool for that - a soil boring tool. But it's not so what is the work around - do you have any homes or buildings being built near you where the basement has just been dug? You might be able to get a look before they poor the slab and foundation walls. Do you have any active quaries near you? Give them a call - I find that if you're polite to them they're often more than happy to show off to a Scout. Do you have a community college or a university with geology classes? Get in touch with

A Venturing Crew (as a youth) is a good idea, if you have one in the area and he's interested. Is he in the OA? OA members are youth members until they're 21 - at least in OA (in a Troop, he would still be an adult). Transitioning to ASM can be difficult, especially if the Troop is boy-led. Going on campouts can be especially difficult at first - unless the other adult leaders participate when the football (either one) or the frisbee is pulled out, if the Scouts decide to spend some time kicking the football around for a bit, he sits out - he's no longer part of those reindeer games and

He's leaving the Troop in a month - Have a final SMC about the Scout Oath and Law IF you were clear from the get go that parents don't sign off on ranks - if that was not made clear to the Scout and the Mom, lesson learned. Either way, treat it as a lesson learned and just move on - don't waste any more brain power of youth power on this.

Comparing NGO's for their effectiveness to the government, while tempting, isn't really all that helpful because not only does the government operate under different constraints and rules, agencies within government operate under different rules and constraints than other agencies within the government. What we need to figure out is which governmental agency more closely corresponds to which NGO and then compare them. For instance, you make a good point about organizations that can raise funds with little cost to them using only 7%-10% of the funds raised for administration - and this is

How about subtle bluntness - wear a t-shirt under your uniform shirt with a special phrase - when a parent crosses the line - flash them with the shirt. The message on the shirt? Keep Out Of It and Let Them Carry On

Can you imagine a minutes long introduction to all the main characters in a television show these days? Quite a dedicated single father to be Scoutmaster of the local Troop before his son is in it - I'm guessing those 3 years was the Scoutmaster of the Troop. Rather convenient to move the meeting place to the ranch after the son is eligible to join. Peter Graves was a Boy Scout but not an Eagle Scout as far as I can tell - his character wears an Eagle Scout badge in the show. I don't think that was a used uniform - that looked brand new, with all the patches sewed on from suppl

Just curious as you dont mention where you're from - did he discuss this with his counselor before he set out a bird house? I ask because for most of the country, setting out a bird house a month ago is just a little early for birds to start using it and a good counselor would have been able to explain that. In the Chicago area, the birds most likely to use bird houses - wrens, tree swallows, bluebirds - have only just started showing up in the last few days and are still setting up their territories. Starlings have just recently dispersed from winter flocking and are only just setting u

I think folks already know I'm not a politically conservative creature - run more towards centrism and moderate though since classical conservatism seems to have given way to far right conservatism, I'm probably considered a liberal leftist (though I prefer Moderate Socialist Libertarian Conservative Progressive Communist Liberal Centrist myself). So just getting that out of the way. Let's remember that when it comes to that list of big ticket items - the two largest - Social Security and Medicare also have their own separate taxes to fund them so if we cut them, we also cut those taxe

This sounds like a lot of fun - and a great solution to a funding dilemma. I'd suggest that you choose either milk jugs or two-liter bottles so everyone starts from the same point - if folks create "open deck" boats (cut out a portion of the side of a bottle), they might sink instead of float if dropped from a bridge and land wrong - something to keep in mind as you talk about designs. I'd be really interested to see if anyone comes up with a Winnie the Pooh design - this sounds like a big version of "Pooh Sticks" to me (know anyone in the area that has a Winnie the Pooh costume?).

Looks like a great project But let's not try to use it to prod adults to put even more roadblocks on the path to Eagle because they're challenging their Scouts to think creatively and big. I've seen small projects that had just as big of an impact on the community that other Scouters complain about.

I've realized that what's really sad is that we're all (me included) lamenting that the Scout took the reward for doing a good turn but aren't mentioning that returning the wallet was the Scout-like thing to do. Have we all grown cynical over time?

I agree on checking with the Council - just based on your description, the young man certainly sounds like he qualifies for the special needs exemptions to participate in Scouts. I'd forgive him the "forgery" and the lying - I don't think that's really important here. What is important is how much you can help in this situation - if he's already "graduated" High School, then Scouts could give him some much needed activity. You and your unit may not be capable of working with this lad and that's quite alright - but don't just turn your back on him - contact you DE as suggested - there

Yeah - our Troop doesn't allow Crocs - and I won't be caught dead being seen with anyone wearing Crocs - not because they're bad for hiking (and they are that) but because they are the ugliest dang things anyone can ever put on their feet - and that includes those 5-toed running things.

Thor gave the lad the cash that was in the wallet and the $10K from Shutterfly appears to be in the form of a College Scholarship. I agree with the sentiments here - it would have been better had the Scout handed the cash back to Hemsworth and told him to donate it to the charity of Hemsworth's choice (while slyly suggesting his local Scout Council) and had he asked Ellen to give that Shutterfly college money to someone else. But the age of Chivalry has been dead for, well, ages - even for Boy Scouts. It doesn't help that too many Troops have adult leaders who use Scout Spirit as some

Yeah - been there - don't make me demonstrate one of the 76 ways I know to inflict serious damage to someone with a drinking straw...

Is that what passes for a fine young man these days?

Stosh is where I'm at as well - though chances are pretty good that I'm going to make my way to the end of the line at some point rather quickly - and quite deliberately (though I'd still expect the last Scout to be the sweeper) - it's just the position I've always put myself in on hikes, or birdwatching walks, or etc. - comes from my time leading day camp, summer camp, elderhostel, etc. nature hikes - I always led from behind to let the participants make the discoveries. It seems to me that the question should really be about dealing with those "fast" scouts - what's the point of racing d

I don't know about that - REI and Erewhon sells all kinds of "trendy" shoes in their "Hiking Department" including Teva Sandals and water shoes. I like your first thought better - if you can see skin (and please - no socks - never wear socks with sandals - and the real answer should be leave the sandals to women unless you're a "granola-head" (aka "hippie") (and no, I don't consider flip-flops to be sandals), you're wearing a sandal.

I think to begin, my answer would be to contact the council that runs the camp you're headed to and ask them - I don't know if there is someone you can e-mail what you've put here, but I'd hate to think you'd be sent out to go buy new boots if you got to camp and they said no based on the advice given here. Saying that, I'm not 100% convinced that the reason for the ban is no open toe (and frankly, I would ban all men from wearing open-toed anything - no one wants to see our gnarly toes). I like the look of those sneaks but unless it's a steel toe, its not going to provide all that much m

Here's something I think would be an interesting experiment. Run a couple of Kim's Game. Lay out a table with about 12 or 15 items on it and cover it with a sheet - Remove the cover for 30 seconds and then cover it up and have the Scouts list all of the items they could identify. Here's how to make it interesting. Do it with two sets of objects. For the first one, include modern gadgets you know the Scouts will be able to identify like cell phones, ear buds, a remote control, a CD (or DVD), a thumb (or flash) drive, etc. For the second set, include things that may be outdated

And this is frankly why "zero tolerance" or as you put it elsewhere, "primary jurisdiction" policies are amongst the dumbest policies any school district can come up with, and is frankly quite insulting to the professional staff of school districts - the Superintendents, Principles and Teachers at the schools. When a kid brings a squirt gun to school, is there any good reason why the teacher and/or principle should not be allowed to deal with it instead of automatically sending it on to the School Board? Ever looked at the comments when stories like a 5 year old boy is suspended and has t

Really? A parent trying to "be prepared" is an idiot? Is that the kind of things they teach School Board members? To think of parents as being idiots? And for what - a standard table knife? You know the ones - the ones that look like a knife and are good mostly for spreading butter or cutting soft food items like cake but aren't usually sharp enough to cut meat? Frankly, the idiots are the school board members that demand this kind of foolishness.