walk in the woods

From the 2014 calendar

Well, I posited that the girls were dressed equally modestly so why is there any difference at all? It's just a logo on a visor. You're just drawing the same line in a different place. What makes your line any better than mine? Only that you are substituting your values in place of mine.

So, let me turn it around. If it was Playboy that wanted to send some girls to work at Cub Camp, dressed exactly like the girls from Hooters, exchanging only the logos on their jackets and visors, would you all be equally accepting?

Apples and Oranges from my perspective. Hooters uses sexuality as the primary tool for selling food and beverages. At least my personal experience with theater is for the most part they use sexuality as part of the story telling. In addition, watching and talking to the dancers on stage is different than inviting them staff camp. And, your daughters troop wasn't representative of the overall brand.

I disagree, a logo represents a company and carries the values espoused by said company. That's why companies have them. They want you to see the graphic and immediately recognize their business and their values. When one organization puts their own logo on a par with another organization there is an implicit acceptance of the other. This is why sporting goods vendors leave athletes that get in legal or other trouble. They don't want their company brand associated with the behavior of said athlete. What you do and don't drink, when or why, is immaterial to the debate. What a trucker puts on his or her truck is immaterial to what organizations the BSA associates with directly. Regardless of how you feel about the girls, the restaurant or their work at the camp, the BSA muddied its logo and therefore its values by being directly involved with Hooters.

I disagree, they were all wearing Hooter's logowear, so they were in work clothes, representing the establishment. It doesn't matter if they are wearing orange hot pants or hooters visors, the brand carries the image and the image is sex. Like I said above, it's the equivalent of a Budweiser-branded water station. As long as it only had water it would be ok by your logic. Again, the brand projects the image. The BSA has an image of teaching kids to make moral and ethical decisions. The AL/VFW have an image of Veteran still serving America. Hooters has an image of using sex to sell wings. One of these things is not like the others......

Well, I can't speak for the VFW but the AL has a mission similar to the BSA. More importantly, the rules of the BSA are well defined when it comes to alcohol and gambling. This particular event using the Hooter's girls as staff, in their corporate logo wear, would be the equivalent of having a Budweiser sponsored water station.

Well, they all build on one another don't they.

Drinking and smoking are banned from scouting events, cursing is highly discouraged.

No doubt. FWIW, this particular station is pretty mild, but these are the kind of unintended consequences that happen. These DJ's spin is what was on the air in the heart of our membership strength, 1000 miles from Denver.

Well, regardless of our opinions and values, my local (Chicago Western Suburbs) classic rock radio station DJs ran with the story this morning. Let's just say it wasn't the BSAs best advertising.

I have concerns about JTE, but, the recruiting, retention, and advancement metrics are or should be a reflection of the service a unit is providing. That said, JTE isn't the only tool. The Board of Review is another tool to use to ask scouts about the service a unit is providing and should be used in conjunction with JTE, along with scoutmaster conferences. One can't simply look at JTE in isolation from the rest of the program. Put JTE in play with some standard CMM or continuous improvement models and you get a reasonable set of management tools for a committee and COR to base an initial review of their program. They are simply frameworks for evaluation. I wonder if some folks are challenged by JTE because it forces some introspection on the work they are actually accomplishing?????

- IT Systems should automatically calculate the metrics that can be calculated (membership, advancement, service hours at a minimum). The extra work required to generate the metrics will ultimately drive people away from the form. People are already entering much of the information online, produce a dashboard to display it back. - Metrics could be made more meaningful. For example, the number of weekend campouts and number of services hours is fairly meaningless. Which is more quality an 100 member unit with 20 boys on each camping trip or a 30 member unit with 15 boys on each trip? A percentage of boy-nights camping and boy-hours in service would be better. Imperfect but better. - Mostly though, in my experience, people need to quit micro-managing the tool. IMNSHO, scouts shouldn't know or care about JTE or what it stands for. Most adults shouldn't either. Review the measures/metrics every quarter or so with the unit key 3 and adjust the business process as needed.

Richard may have a point but it's not clear that it's been proven. The article he referenced says: So if we just round to 30 years of sales that's 300,000 units/year. The article also points out: So that's 8 injuries over 18 years or roughly 1/2 a person injury/year spread out over 300,000 new units plus how ever many previously sold units still in use. I'm willing to believe the toys are unsafe and should be banned, but, what's the accident rate, how does it compare with other things we do in the program, etc. The article also says: So why not allow them in Cub Scouts?

I think we call it Venturing . Silliness aside, yes, I'm totally in with that idea. I think it's basically unworkable to have a program that meets the needs equally of inner-city, suburban and rural youth. I live in a rural area. If I told a 16-year old boy who's been farming with his dad and the FFA for 4 years that he can't drive a tractor on camp staff because he's too young, he'll laugh me out of the room. Kids that are interested in the outdoors have probably been to deer camp with their dad a number of times before the BSA let's them camp and they already have their own private firearms. The BSA shooting ranges are below their skills out of the gate. But, I would never cut any of them loose in the mountains because they've never had to survive anywhere when they weren't at the top of the food chain! My parents are ok with laser tag and paint ball and letting their 11-year old sons run lawn mowers and power tools. That said, it does require the hierarchy to trust the "boots on the ground."

I'm not convinced it's the government's duty but they've certainly taken on the responsibility. Assuming that part of the equation isn't going to change, something like the negative income tax might simplify the process by eliminating bureaucrats (e.g. no need for the SSA, medicare administrators, medicaid administrators, food stamp administrators, housing authorities, ACA bundlers, etc.). FWIW, Hayek also supported a basic income although I've never ready anything explaining exactly why. I'd argue that the minimum wage laws should go away if a negative income tax scheme was implemented. It's an academic argument though because the bureaucratic branch of government would never let it happen. It would put too many of them out of power.

$4T in annual spending and $18T in debt, gotta change something ! .

So, my answer is all of it . So per CPs example, I used to be a Democrat but they abandon me, the GOP is as straight up crazy as the new Democrats, so I find myself identifying with the Libertarians more and more. Military: Let's institute the "you're rich enough to take care of yourself rule." Let's finish pulling our troops, aircraft and equipment out of Europe. The Europeans are quite capable of expending the funds to defend themselves and deal with the newly resurgent Russia. They could even use their bureaucrats in Brussels to form a pan-European uniformed fighting force. We can quite capably deploy as required but in general, let that side of NATO deal with that side of the world and we can focus on the Pacific/China side. Japan and South Korea are basically rich enough to take care of themselves as well but less likely to be able to take over their own defense as quickly as Europe. Besides, we need a larger counterbalance against China. SS/Medicare/Medicad: Eliminate them, along with SNAP, WIC, ACA, minimum wage laws, and every other social welfare program; replaced with a national minimum income. If $15/hour is the right minimum wage then maybe $30k/year is the right guarantee. Phase out the guarantee when individual/family earnings rise above minimum (e.g. wages and guarantee can't exceed say $45k). Get the Gov't out of all those programs and let markets figure out the rest. I don't really like the idea of a national minimum income but it seems like it could be run by 7 people with a small database, and, I'd rather just give people money and the freedom to spend it as they see fit, rather than bureaucracies. Privatization: I like CP's idea about privatizing the TSA, I think it's a model that could be expanded. I'm good with private resupply missions to the ISS and expanding that function with NASA. Somebody mentioned the FAA as a critical government resource but what I read is our FAA makes Luddites look like technogeeks. Other countries are reportedly already down the privatization path, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaredmeyer/2016/02/16/free-the-skies-privatizing-air-traffic-control/#64b3fe8546ac. The end of that article also suggests privatizing the USPS, Amtrak, and TVA. I'd sign on to all those. School vouchers: Same argument as minimum guaranteed income. Stopping giving taxes to education bureaucracies. Rather, give the parents $8000/kid/year indexed to geographic cost of living and the requirement to get the kid educated to a given standard. Then get out of the way of the markets to fix education. Replace physical schools with virtual classrooms, etc. Lot's of models that don't involve a sage on a stage. End the War on xxxxxx (Drugs, Poverty, whatever). Consolidate all the "Special Law Enforcement Units" that aren't a part of Homeland Security. There's no need for armed agents outside the FBI or ICE.

Been a while since I worked on this but check with your training folk. There used to be a Webelos specific version of OLS that was separate from the Boy Scout Leader IOLS. I don't know if the former is still required for Webelos Den camping or if the latter now covers the requirements for both. Beyond that, be familiar with the Tenderfoot to First Class skills as mentioned, be open minded to making some new friends, and be open to learning from your peers.

My money says BSA will be co-ed before the 2019 World Jamboree. Wouldn't surprise me to hear it announced at the NAM next spring. Just remember I'm married so "My money" is such a big deal.

All of the above. My district runs a Klondike Derby, Spring and Fall camporee every year. We've never had groups fundraising at District events, Council events are another story. - Have a theme, we've done E-prep with local firefighters working with the scouts on rope rescues and local police/K9 units for example. - MBs might be ok if they are of the odder/harder to find variety. We did an Aviation themed camporee in conjunction with a local airport, air museum and some private pilots. We typically don't try to get all the requirements done but maybe a few of the harder to arrange requirements. - Troops are responsible for their troops (tour plans, med forms, permission slips, etc.). Have a local first aid station staffed by somebody with some sort of credentials. - We've done a variety of meals from catered to dutch oven potlucks to dump soup. Most often units are on their own for meals - For a while we had competitions for scouts to design the event patch but that seems to have dropped off lately. - We're a fairly small district but site variety is a challenge even for events with only 150 - 200 people. - Think about some sort of lost-scout protocol. Feedback from our most recent Klondike included a suggestion from the scouts to have more one-on-one competition between patrols as opposed to scoring competitions on individual events.

OK. I'll be the heretic, parlour scout and/or paper eagle, which ever pejorative you prefer. I think all the backpacking, trail and camping meals should be totally removed from the Cooking MB and moved into the Backpacking, Hiking and Camping MBs (isn't there also a cooking requirement in Fishing MB?). The Cooking MB should be focused on food safety, the different skills, methods and options for cooking in the home, and maybe expanded to commercial/large-scale kitchens. In theory, the scouts are learning at least some camp cooking skills on the T21 trail that can be expanded in the other outdoor oriented merit badges, allowing cooking to be come more of a life-skills/career oriented MB.

Lots of questions hinted at in the previous replies. How many boys need advancement, what is the age demographic of the twelve, how frequently do they miss camp outs and meetings, how close are they as a patrol, etc. All that said, your ASM's idea isn't all bad. Keep the boys as a single patrol if that's where they are comfortable for now. If you've got the gear coach them into creating three cooking stations and use it as chance to teach multiple cooking techniques (e.g. one dutch oven station, one open fire station, one propane two-burner station). Have the boys plan each station with enough food for 3 or 4 people and make each meal a pot luck of meal preparation options. Use three sets of buddy pairs for the first camp out and three sets of buddy pairs for the second camp out. Let the boys sort out who cooks with who. Every scout gets a chance to cook with each of the techniques and you might get your natural patrol split in the process. FWIW, I wouldn't split 12 scouts into 2 patrols unless you're getting at least 10 boys on every camp out.

I'll have to disagree and offer up three words in my defense: Apple Computer Incorporated. Apple fired Jobs right after the release of the macintosh. It wasn't a successful product based on sales but Jobs had a vision of what it could be. After he was fired he formed a company called NeXt to keep working on his vision of macintosh. Fast forward to 1997, Apple is largely bankrupt having been through multiple CEO managers (managers that meet your definition to a tee). Jobs is hired back and in the next 10 years changes multiple industries. He replace the Apple mac with the NeXt, changed music through not just the iPod but building a consumer platform for the iPod. Add in the iPad and iPhone and Apple is now one of the largest companies by market capitalization in the world. By most accounts I've read Mr. Jobs wasn't a cuddly kind of guy but rather driven. He surrounded himself with people who bought into his vision of the future and he lead them to achieve their shared vision. Through his leadership he created markets where they didn't exist. By any measure they were wildly successful. Now, I suppose one could argue that was all a management exercise but I'll disagree. Sometimes a leader has to stop the boat and convince people to row in a different direction. To put in perspective how fast that all happened under his leadership, the first iPhone wasn't released until late June 2007. Then Senator Obama had announced his candidacy for President a scant 4 months earlier. If you owned a smart-phone back then it was either a Palm (U.S. Robotics/3Com) or a Blackberry. If you owned a cell phone it was most likely a Motorola. What do Palm, Blackberry and Motorola all have in common? They're all dead or dying largely because of a lack of vision for the future. They owned the portable phone market and saw it torn from their hands by Apple and later Google. We could have a similar conversation about Bezos and how he turned a small e-commerce retail operation into a retail/logistics/cloud platform provider business. Mostly he used his powers of persuasion to drive change. When other companies were guarding infrastructure as proprietary he was selling access to his infrastructure to his competitors! That's vision. Finally, at least for this post, I have to chuckle a little. In fact you Stosh are practicing visionary leadership. You posited a vision of what leadership could/shoud be in your opening post. In the posts that follow you've been working very hard to persuade us to buy into your vision . So, are you practicing leadership or management?

http://www.nps.gov/subjects/bears/safety.htm