Author: (author unknown)

Many of the requirements to advance from Scout to First Class can be done any place at any time. A few work much better during the summer than winter. Repeating the Scout Oath or describing a cyberbully can be done at a troop meeting in December, but identifying 10 native plants is much more difficult in January than June for most parts of the country.

I encourage scouts to accomplish the following ‘summer’ requirements as soon as possible so they aren’t stuck in their advancement trail waiting to do one requirement over the winter.

• Tenderfoot #3 – assist in preparing and cooking a meal
• Tenderfoot #11 – identify poisonous plants
• Second Class #1b – five-mile hike with map and compass
• Second Class #3g – plan and cook a meal
• Second Class #6 – identify 10 wild animals
• Second Class #8 – swimming and water rescue skills
• First Class #1 – find direction without a compass
• First Class #2 – one-mile orienteering course
• First Class #4e – serve as patrol cook
• First Class #6 – identify 10 native plants
• First Class #9 – swimming and water rescue skills

The cooking requirements can be very difficult and discouraging when the temperature is below freezing. Animals are more abundant and active in summer. It’s more enjoyable to be hiking in nice weather rather than through a foot of snow.

It’s ‘possible’ to do all the requirements except one at any time of the year, but planning ahead can make it more enjoyable. I believe enjoying the outing is more important than advancing.

That one requirement that I don’t think can be done at any time is identifying poisonous plants. When the plants have died off and are covered with snow, it can’t be done. I’ve heard of letting scouts point to a picture of poison ivy. I’ve heard of letting them just describe what poison ivy looks like. This doesn’t seem to meet the goal of the requirement to me, which I feel is to be able to recognize and avoid these plants in the wild.

Have you any ways to let scouts identify poisonous plants when they are not actively growing and visible?

Scout On

Press GO, walk away, and come back to a beautiful cut lawn. Its the Three Laws Safe way to mow your lawn and play video games simultaneously. If you have a busy schedule, allergies, a disability, or youre just lazy and dont want to hire a landscaping service, youre going to love the Robomower. Press GO, walk a $1,999.99 – $2,799.99

Shared by David

Wish I could see this show!

The Cars are back together with a new album and short tour planned for the U.S. Sadly, none of the dates are even remotely near the headquarters of Stuck in the ’80s. But we’re in luck because Travis Greenwood caught their show Tuesday night in Seattle. Read his review below, and catch more of Travis’ writings at It Goes to 11 at Founditemclothing.com, the website for tees from the reel world.

“Is there anybody here that doesn’t know this is our first show in 24 years?” mused Cars’ keyboardist Greg Hawkes between songs Tuesday night at Seattle’s cavernous Showbox Sodo. The question, posed rhetorically but voiced with a hint of genuine inquisitiveness, was met with thunderous approval from an adoring, sold-out audience — drawn almost equally between children of the late ’70s/early ’80s and a younger generation of enthusiasts that had come of age in the years after the band went defunct — eager to welcome their New Wave heroes back into the fold.

Not that the quartet would disappoint. Its signature sound — a blend of crunchy, power pop riffs braided to synth-y accents — and original line-up largely intact (sans bassist Benjamin Orr, who passed in 2000), the group toggled between its deep catalog of party faves (Good Times Roll, My Best Friend’s Girl, You Might Think) and selections (Blue Tip, Hits Me, Keep on Knocking) from 2011’s Move Like This, their first studio recordings since 1987’s Door to Door. The legacy material registered the loudest ovations over the course of the band’s 80-minute set, but the newer tracks, imbued with twitchy, alt.-rock textures, were also well received, providing a welcome buffer against what could have otherwise been a self-congratulatory exercise in nostalgia overload.

And the love, it should be noted, was reciprocal. The band’s individual members, pushing into their 50s and 60s all, were surprisingly gracious and thankful, stopping occasionally to smile, wave and chit-chat with the audience. Even Ric Ocasek, the band’s notoriously aloof frontman, seemed to be enjoying himself, a fact not lost on the hardcore fans in the venue. Adorned in black Ray-bans and a shaggy, rock star hair cut, he loomed over the stage as the lanky progeny of Skeletor and Lou Reed.

The band chose not to replace Orr on this tour, forcing Hawkes and Ocasek to juggle extra responsibilities on a few songs. This led to a speed bump on Moving in Stereo, when the players couldn’t quite sync their parts, all of which prompted this mulligan from a bashful Ocasek: “Do you mind if we do that one again?” Finding their proper gear once more, the band closed out their performance with an improved, spot-on rendition, proof that the good times really can roll again. Retreating backstage for a quick pause, The Cars encored with Sad Song, the first single from WLT, and a perfectly perfunctory version of Just What I Needed, a seemingly perfect coda to the evening’s festivities.

THE CARS 2011 SET LIST: 

• Good Times Roll
• Blue Tip
• Since You’re Gone
• Up & Down
• My Best Friend’s Girl
• Hits Me
• Touch & Go
• I’m In Touch With Your World
• Keep On Knocking
• You Might Think
• Drag On Forever
• Free
• I’m Not The One
• Heartbeat City
• Let’s Go
• Moving In Stereo
• Moving In Stereo (Redux)

Encores:

• Sad Song
• Just What You Needed

Shared by David

Too good to be true? LOL

Out of the blue, Debbie (Yes, it’s okay to call me Debbie again) Gibson and Tiffany (Just Tiffany, thanks) have announced plans to tour together this summer.

Food courts at malls around the country are no doubt celebrating and setting up folding chairs. (Stay tuned for locations and dates … and delicious corn dogs.)

“We want to journey through the ’80s and all the artists who influenced us,” Tiffany told the New York Post. (No official word out of Debbie’s camp yet, but this news is too weird to be false.)

Debbie has a pretty strong catalog of hits in the late '80s to draw on. Tiffany? Well, there's always the possibility of a 12-inch dance remix of I Think We’re Alone Now. (Actually, look for lots of covers, Tiffany told the Post, including tunes by Stevie Nicks, Reba McIntyre and Guns N’ Roses.)

Shared by David

I need to check my calendar!

The Cars have announced their first tour in nearly a quarter century, a 10-city journey that will reunite the surviving members of the band: frontman Ric Ocasek, guitarist Elliot Easton, drummer David Robinson and keyboardist Greg Hawkes. Bassist Benjamin Orr, who died in 2000, will have his duties taken over jointly by his bandmates.

Also in the news: Their new album Move Like This will be released May 10, according the must-read website Slicing Up Eyeballs. (More news is expected Monday, says Eyeballs. What could it be? Webcast? TV appearances?)

Here are the tour dates: 

The Cars tour dates:

• May 10: Showbox SoDo, Seattle, WA
• May 12: Palladium, Los Angeles, CA
• May 13: Fox Theater, Oakland, CA
• May 15: The Fillmore, Denver, CO
• May 17: First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
• May 18: Riviera Theatre, Chicago, IL
• May 20: Sound Academy, Toronto, ON
• May 23: 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
• May 25: Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY
• May 26: House of Blues, Boston, MA

Shared by David

HUH!?!?

Pac-Man as a reality TV show? It's an idea so profanely stupid that it has to be true. Hollywood, it seems, has become the shock jocks of the 21st century, concocting atrocity after atrocity until we squeal for mercy.

According to Deadline.com, Merv Griffin Entertainment has teamed with game maker Namco Bandai Games America, which owns the Pac-Man brand, to develop an unscripted series based on the video game.

The Pac-Man show is envisioned as a “big, crazy Wipeout-type event with a lot of energy,” said Merv Griffin’s president of TV Roy Bank. “The idea we have is to take what Pac-Man is and bring it to life, to bring what is essentially the world’s biggest game of tag to television.”

In other words, Bank has never played a game of Pac-Man in his life.

Pac-Man has been on TV before; anyone remember the Saturday morning cartoon in the early '80s? Hanna-Barbera produced it beginning in 1982. In 1984, it joined the Rubik, The Amazing Cube Hour. Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds.

Because Pac-Man celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, I suppose it made an obvious target for TV. But a reality show? I wouldn't sweat it. This has all the marks of a trial balloon. And this sucker is going to pop long before it sees the light of day.

Shared by David

OK… made me chuckle… don’t judge.

A turtle was crossing the road when two snails mugged him.  The police showed up and asked the turtle what happened.  “I don’t know,” the turtle replied. “It all happened so fast.”

Shared by David

OMG… Next thing they’ll tell the kids is, “It’s just our little secret, just don’t tell mom and dad.”

TSA regional security director James Marchand advises parents whose kids are upset by TSA groping to make a game of it, a suggestion that alarmed sex-abuse prevention experts, since “Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is ‘one of the most common ways’ that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact.” (via Reddit)

Shared by David

I so agree with this guy. Too bad more managers don’t think this way. When I was in the military I used to sneak off and go home for the afternoon, even burn vacation days, just to get a lot of work done I couldn’t do at work.

Jason Fried has a radical theory of working: that the office isn’t a good place to do it. In the following video, he lays out the main problems (he calls them the M&Ms) and offers three suggestions to make work work.