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Callooh! Callay!1428010939

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Everything posted by Callooh! Callay!1428010939

  1. Even if you don't need IOLS for the specific training content, there are other reasons to consider taking it. I went to IOLS to "check the block" but I didn't think I "needed" it. Camping and the outdoors I knew from personal and professional experience. Training, educating, and developing leadership (for adults, not kids, but some things transfer) I knew from professional experience. Scouting policies I knew what I could read - and it's all available for us to read. But I kept my mouth shut about all that and went into IOLS with open ears and eyes. As it turned out, I was gl
  2. "It says a lot about you." Yes, it says that grandstanding moral exhibitionism is not among my selfish reasons for being involved in scouting. I'll let my moral betters bask in the warm glow of their own saintliness. Meanwhile I'll help Scouts other than my sons and help fellow Scouters, not because I'm saintly, but because I happen to be in the neighborhood for my own selfish reasons and doing scouting things anyway. "are you anything other than a busy body parent??????" Well yes I am. And thank you for adding "busy body parent" to the list of accolades fellow participants i
  3. As we examine the "greater experience equals greater prestige" equation... let's recall that some 20 year veterans don't actually have 20 years' experience; they have one year's experience that they've repeated 20 times. Anyway... prestige? schmestige! You can have it. I'm in for completely selfish reasons but prestige ain't among them. I'm in it for my sons. My ability and willingness to help others along the way are considerable, but nevertheless incidental.
  4. "The best things in life are free. But you can give them to the birds and bees."
  5. The earlier Eamonn comments sound very sound to me, as does the Basementdweller "BS" comment (assuming here that "BS" meant "bovine scat" rather than "Boy Scouts"). Shaking down parents and volunteers is shameful. We should be embarrassed for those that do it. But we shouldn't be shy about telling them "No." And when they become insistent, persistent, and expectant we should proportionally become more emphatic up to the point of telling them "Not only no, but really... NO!"
  6. "An eligible boat will be made ineligible if the owner adds a sail or motor of any size..." hmmm.... I see a money making opportunity here... I want the govt contract to install, service, and monitor tracking devices to ensure that these vessels are always rowed or paddled upstream - to ensure no one is just riding with the current.
  7. "I can only assume" --------- Are you sure there are no other options? "I know you're obsessed with your rants against "helicopter Scouters," but you might try actually studying the Scouting program first." --------- Rants? Please sir, those were treatises... dissertations... expositions. Rants? What a hurtful charge. "How would you like a boy who skipped breakfast and got sick just before the troop started some big expensive event????? So because of this young mans poor choice the entire group suffers. Some of this stuff can be pretty expensive." ----------- I would be displea
  8. OH.... pardon me, please. I should have posted this in issues and politics.
  9. Every time you go to a boat show or marine supply store, you see it... the suffering on the faces of folks who see all these wonderful marine products on offer, but their health insurance will not cover the costs of vital equipment. So they continue with backbreaking work like raising the anchor without a windlass. We don't talk about it much, but I'm sure we all know people whose boats don't have roller furling... not even for the jib! There are folks out there sailing with horribly outdated navigation equipment, and plenty with no autohelm... imagine having to have somebody man the tille
  10. Where has all the zeal for "boy leadership" and "patrol method" gone? Now helicopter scouters want to micro-manage the boys' camping experience right down to their diet? And even enlist the aid of helicopter parents to interfere with this wonderful opportunity for boys to learn from their dietary mistakes?
  11. "Eengonyama?" No Thanks. "Waka Waka" is more appealing. Not because it was FIFA's 2010 World Cup South Africa official song (soccer? ...yawn) but because Shakira can surely convey some happy optimistic go-to-it-ism:
  12. quoted from above: "Yet...they are doing the very same thing they cry out against. Definition of HYPOCRITE 1: a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2: a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings hypocrite adjective And I think even the hippos and hipocrits will agree with this!" end quote and begin prattle: Hippos might agree with the definition but discount both the validity and the significance of the observation. Strolling along the Nile one happy day, I spied a hippo. Warily I navigated past muddy
  13. "So, correct me if I am wrong." You are certainly wrong in at least some of what you say when you suggest that all this is "pretty much the definition of arrogant, hippocritical, and obnoxious behavior" One grows weary of folks hurling charges of being "hippocritical" at others. It's a great word... etymologically fascinating, and very innovative. But you've misused it here. So here is the requested correction: Hippocritical: Essential to being a hippopotamus. Example: Arteodactylism, being semi-aquatic, and being herbivorous, are all hippocritical qualities; an animal th
  14. "need" ? No. It's got it's pros and cons. Apparently the pros outweigh the cons in the judgment of many. But we don't "need" it.
  15. Yes. Do breathe deep and step back... from the advice of self-styled grizzled veterans who emphasize their judgment over BSA policy and regale you with tips based on their vast experience. Grizzled vets they may be, but there are 20-year veterans with 20 years of experience, and there are 20-year veterans who've had the same 1 year of experience 20 times. Both kinds know how to pose as a grizzled vet offering sage advice. We don't need to question their intentions or motivations. They may be well intentioned pillars of their communities. But YOU are your son's father. Learn wh
  16. I agree with all in Shortridge's observation and don't begrudge the 6% the opportunity to enjoy the largeness of this large event that seems too large to enjoy for many of us. Still just a little dismayed at the packaging. The more interesting thing is of course the focus on everyone else - like the idea B. Humphries came up with - it'd be interesting to see a survey of Scouts themselves at a patrol level alone the lines of "OK patrol, you're not going to Jambo but hypothetically speaking the cost of it and travel to it is in your possession and you must use is for scouting - what
  17. The Jamboree 2013 website looks like a drive to round up a herd of cool-cattle whose avatar is Joe Look-How-Awesomely-Cool-I-Am on an all terrain skateboard. That's the most prominent image on the Jamboree homepage - cool skate board dude superimposed over what looks like a rock concert at night. Wish it away. Say it's just couple photos that I'm over-interpreting. But those are THE photos carefully selected, arranged, and placed specifically to convey the first impression of what the organizers want folks to know is the spirit of the thing. And the words... "Are you in?" - centered a
  18. Maybe we could liken BSA's current structure to a constitutional republic... Big BSA sets the basic "constitution" but COs charter units with their unique local cultures and strong elements of self government within the basic framework set by that "constitution." We don't need a dictatorship of Big BSA owning everything. We don't need a pure democracy in which some majority of Scouters could override Big BSA's "constitutional" protection of the right of one unit to be a little different from another as long as it's within the basic "constitutional" framework. Units are
  19. In this forum we read a lot of disagreement over issues ranging from trivial to relatively significant. But on this important issue, it's nice to see near unanimity of opinion in that it is serious and demands swift action. What's described in the OP is beyond an adolescent fit of pique over life's ups and down. And it's outside the realm of juvenile hijinks gotten out of hand. It seems unlikely that this behavior came out of the blue. If this was not surprising from this boy, one wonders how and why he was still with the troop. And one wonders why other boys would not tak
  20. Star Bellied!? Please sir, let's not be gauche. Hatch Bellied, if you please.
  21. Did they follow YPT and Guide to Safe Scouting Guidelines? Did they do the tour planning worksheet/tour permit? If they did, the OP question is irrelevant because it was a Boy Scout campout, even if it was also a family campout. If they didn't, then the OP question is an interesting one.
  22. "There are more of us than there are of you. pretty soon we will judge you for NOT having them." Ah yes. Things change, but the hoi polloi always have ways of identifying elites, and always fantasize about a comeuppance.
  23. Scouts must be registered and YPT and safety considerations must be addressed. Those are tedious, but valid concerns. Records must be recorded and administration administered. Blue Cards are part of a system to help do that and Scouts are courteous and helpful when they make that recording and administering easier. But beyond those considerations, when an SM starts considering whether he personally "approves" the scout as being "ready" for an MB, or judges him to be "mature" enough, or thinks its the "right time" for that Scout to start the MB.... we may hear the whop-whop-who
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