walk in the woods

25 minutes ago, desertrat77 said:

Far few resources...sacred cows will be sacrificed...."  = Adios, Philmont.  It's been good to know you.  Probably Sea Base and Northern Tier too.

Question is, who is buying?  Can surrounding ranches sell enough more cattle to finance the land acquisition?  Or outfit enough more BWCAW crews to buy the extra bases?  Sea Base is easier for me to see a purchaser.  This will be a fire sale.

8 minutes ago, desertrat77 said:

 

I'd like to know who sat on these committees.  If they were all pros or highly-place volunteers, I don't have much hope for the results.  If the BSA was serious about this initiative, it would have brought in independent business and civic leaders who had no stake or connection with the BSA. 

He described the make up in the video.  I heard gold tabs.

41 minutes ago, T2Eagle said:

It's doubtful that any FOS money ends up going towards a settlement in any meaningful way.  In the vast majority of councils FOS is part of the current operating budget, it comes in and goes out the same year.  What's going to go into the settlement is endowments and sales of real property.

Money is fungible.

1 minute ago, desertrat77 said:

After long consideration, I've written my last FOS check.  From now on any time or treasure I donate, as humble as it may be, will be in support of local units only.

That's the beauty of the Council Service Fee, they are selling it by eliminating the Family FOS campaign.  Not FOS mind you, just the campaign.  Oh, and the fees for tent camping at council property, which were double the local state parks.

1 hour ago, carebear3895 said:

The big talk right now is fees going up to $66 in August. Honestly, they could've raised it 1 cent and you will see an exodus just based on principle. 

This will be hard to swallow with the $60 service fee my council has implemented.  In two years the annual dues will have increased from $36 to $72 to $126?!?!?!

2 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

Residential camping properties that are big revenue losers will be extreme revenue losers this year, because there will be no camp fees coming in. 

Or, like my council, they'll implement the $60/youth member/year ($36/year for adults) service fee in an attempt to cover the losses. 

2 hours ago, Sentinel947 said:

People would never lie to their doctors/health providers about their compliance with medical advice/the law! Would they? 😄

66%?  I suppose it's possible to believe 66% of the residents of NYC are liars is an explanation.  Another is that the stay at home orders are a farce.

4 hours ago, qwazse said:

Okay social distance warriors ... there's wisdom and there's zealotry.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

Looks like it has been cancelled.

https://oa-bsa.org/article/noac-2020-update?fbclid=IwAR3Ne9oJ7-y-CAOIoGfkkzwJEFHDPJd1y5cuvubBcno-HquwEm7HDk4rBxg

29 minutes ago, PACAN said:

I saw where virtual camp outs will count toward OA camping requirements.  

Apparently so, https://oa-bsa.org/coronavirus/temporary-camping-night-policy-due-covid-19

Sorry, this image crossed my path today.  Thought of this thread.  Ok, not really sorry!🤣

13 minutes ago, 5thGenTexan said:

Where does rock and fossil collecting fall within Leave No Trace?

Exhibit A:  

4. Leave What You Find

Allow others a sense of discovery, and preserve the past. Leave rocks, plants, animals, archaeological artifacts, and other objects as you find them. Examine but do not touch cultural or historical structures and artifacts. It may be illegal to remove artifacts.

 

Exhibit B:  

(5) Collect 10 different fossil plants or animals OR (with your counselor’s assistance) identify 15 different fossil plants or animals. Record in a notebook where you obtained (found, bought, traded) each one. Classify each specimen to the best of your ability, and explain how each one might have survived and obtained food. Tell what else you can learn from these fossils.  (Geology MB Handbook)

 

I majored in Geography, concentrating in Earth Science.  Not collecting rocks goes against my nature.  If it goes against LNT, then whatever, I won't do it in Scouting activities. However, we have a really good river bed site nearby known for shark teeth, other marine fossils, and arrow heads.  It would be a really fun Cub Scout outing.  However its really hard to not tell Cub Scout aged kids they can't pick up stuff

I suppose it depends.  I took my son to a local limestone quarry that held regular fossils days with the help of some local geologists.  Those were keepers because they were just going to get ground into gravel.  There's some state land in NE Illinois that allows fossil hunting.  If you're talking about private land I think it's up to the land owner to answer.  My farming family had interesting arrowhead collections.

Zoom uses data centers around the globe, just like Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.  Regardless, they are addressing the concerns https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/13/coming-april-18-control-your-zoom-data-routing/. 

And in the Bay Area tentatively

https://missionpeakscouts.com/possible-merge-of-sfbac-mdsc-alameda-council/

Utah council mergers, not unexpected I suppose.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/03/10/boy-scout-councils-utah/

BWCAW closed until at least May.

https://knsiradio.com/news/local-news/bwca-be-closed-visitors-until-early-may?sc_ref=facebook

3 hours ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

I think this is setting a precedent that will cause issues in the future. I am willing to bet people wil want this to become the norm, not the exception.

Yep.  There's nothing so permanent as a temporary program.

9 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

We don’t want 20 different sets of Eagle requirements, for instance.  

This begs the question by assuming there's a need for a national standard.  The US and EU are roughly the same physical size, similar populations sizes, similar economic sizes.  Do UK scouts coordinate their advancement program or their supply chain with German Scouts?  Why does scouting in Alabama have to be the same as scouting in NYC or DC?  If we're worried about consistency, have a Congress of US Scouting organizations once a year to recommend resolutions for the individual scouting organization to consider.  End national, spin off the HA bases as independent businesses, give the super councils a 3 year charter for a geographic area and then let them compete for units.  The BSA is a monopoly and demonstrates all the ills of being a monopoly.  The solution is competition.

1 hour ago, desertrat77 said:

@RememberSchiff, thanks for being lead blocker on this research!

Those domains are definitely of "undetermined" value.  Many are near duplicates.  Just as many are obscure.  Most of them probably aren't worth anything close to what the BSA paid/pays for them.  Just a jumble of stuff.  All over the map.

 

Domains are cheap generally, and they assert some level of defense over a trademark.  Maybe more importantly registration of a domain prevents someone else from registering it and doing something unscoutlike with it. Better to own the registration on scouting.xxx, .sex, .adult,  and .porn than to leave it to chance.  There were something like 600 TLDs the last I cared to look, so it takes a few registrations.  

On 4/7/2020 at 12:23 PM, qwazse said:

Frankly, the wisest public policy would be to require all youth to attend a camp for 3 weeks.

This dude agrees with @qwazse as well.

10 hours ago, Cburkhardt said:

PACAN:  The new national structure will probably be skeletal.  A reasonable prediction would be 15-20 geographic territories, many dominated by a large well-regarded council.  Perhaps there will be one national professional scouter in each territory to provide program consulting and serve as a monitor for compliance with advancement, YPT and other critical policies.  No regions, areas and other structures.  Maybe a volunteer committee and commissioner staff to provide services.  It might develop to where the dominant council provides management and direction necessary to the nearby councils -- which might become "field service" councils.  This will happen when many post-virus councils financially implode and can no longer fund personnel or camp maintenance.  In the Midwest I could see councils like St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and Indianapolis perform those functions.  The "national" organization might be a confederation of these geographies and might focus on program, supply, high adventure and similar matters.  There is no longer cash to fuel the numbers or functions of the previous national professional staff.  After the virus and bankruptcy have their impacts, they will mostly not return.     

Question is, why would we need National at all in this scenario?  If we end up with 20 geographic territories with single councils, we'll be basically in the same situation as the EU with it's national border territories and scouting organizations.  WOSM would need to lose it's nationalist bent for membership and adapt to the new US reality to accept the various council organizations, assuming the new US Scouting organizations even cared to be in WOSM.  Ultimately, it might playout similarly to the break up of AT&T in the 80s.  But in this case Units could choose their provider and be free to switch to the one who best meets their needs.

Not sure the half salute as a greeting would be a great look for youth in brown shirts.

The zoom blog linked above has the critical info

Quote

So, a couple of reminders on using Zoom to host public events:

• When you share your meeting link on social media or other public forums, that makes your event … extremely public. ANYONE with the link can join your meeting.
• Avoid using your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) to host public events. Your PMI is basically one continuous meeting and you don’t want randos crashing your personal virtual space after the party’s over. Learn about meeting IDs and how to generate a random meeting ID (at the 0:27 mark) in this video tutorial.
• Familiarize yourself with Zoom’s settings and features so you understand how to protect your virtual space when you need to. For example, the Waiting Room is an unbelievably helpful feature for hosts to control who comes and goes. (More on that below.)

I'd even be wary of settings up recurring meetings for the same reasons.  You can also set up meetings so everybody comes in with video and sound off and can disallow join before host and/or require registration.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, I suspect the ads are user context specific.  Mine are about data security and bulk used golf balls.  Stuff I've searched on lately.  

21 hours ago, swilliams said:

It will be a tougher call going forward, imho, to cancel bigger scout events at both local and regional levels.

If Broadway, MLB, NBA, PGA, LPGA, NCAA etc. all stay shutdown, and Universities and businesses are still working remote, BSA (and other youth serving programs) won't have a choice about closing summer camps and regional events.  The political pressure will just be too great.