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History of technology is an interest of mine. Pottery is at least 10,000 years old, Wheels about 4,000. The main reason pottery is so old is obviousness. Build a cooking firepit on clay soil, and you just invented pottery. You only have to notice the bowl holds water the next time it rains. From there, it is a short step to doing it on purpose: http://usscouts.org/scoutcraft...

You do realize that they do prohibit non-christians from joining, right?

You do realize that you are completely utterly and unequivocally 180 degrees opposed to the truth, Fox News and the Gallup poll wrong don't you?

But since I'm usually wrong on everything - where are your citations? Mind you, I think that the Boy scouts organization is a bunch of fine asshats, but they do not, and as long as I have ever known them, have not prohibited non-Christians to join. When I was in scouts a gazillion years ago, they had merit badges that were involved in different religions. They are an organization that requires a belief in God, but are not tied to one particular religion They have Jewish Boy scouts, Muslim Boy Scouts, Hindu Boy Scouts, Souts form all over the world, and of many religions.

Here are my citations:

http://usscouts.org/scoutduty/sd2gc06.asp

From this page http://usscouts.org/scoutduty/sd2gc05.asp

Scouting encourages a Scout to recognize an obligation or duty to God, but does not define what a belief in God is or define what constitutes a religious organization. As Scout leaders we must be careful not to favor one faith over another. In conducting Scouting activities, we must be sensitive to the need to encourage all Scouts to grow in their own religious beliefs and faiths. Remember that Scouts have a "Duty to God."

As I see it, my belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster qualifies me. May we all be touched by his noodly appendage! Which of course in the Catholic Church means something completely different.

You do realize that they do prohibit non-christians from joining, right?

You do realize that you are completely utterly and unequivocally 180 degrees opposed to the truth, Fox News and the Gallup poll wrong don't you?

But since I'm usually wrong on everything - where are your citations? Mind you, I think that the Boy scouts organization is a bunch of fine asshats, but they do not, and as long as I have ever known them, have not prohibited non-Christians to join. When I was in scouts a gazillion years ago, they had merit badges that were involved in different religions. They are an organization that requires a belief in God, but are not tied to one particular religion They have Jewish Boy scouts, Muslim Boy Scouts, Hindu Boy Scouts, Souts form all over the world, and of many religions.

Here are my citations:

http://usscouts.org/scoutduty/sd2gc06.asp

From this page http://usscouts.org/scoutduty/sd2gc05.asp

Scouting encourages a Scout to recognize an obligation or duty to God, but does not define what a belief in God is or define what constitutes a religious organization. As Scout leaders we must be careful not to favor one faith over another. In conducting Scouting activities, we must be sensitive to the need to encourage all Scouts to grow in their own religious beliefs and faiths. Remember that Scouts have a "Duty to God."

As I see it, my belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster qualifies me. May we all be touched by his noodly appendage! Which of course in the Catholic Church means something completely different.

Don't you still have to build a shelter and spend the night in it? The badges have all gotten much,much easier since 1911, but I'd be surprised if they've dropped they requirement for WS.

As a general rule, there aren't religious limitations on membership, except possibly atheism. (I'm not sure what the details are on that.) That being said, I'm not sure what the story is in terms of the chartering organization--if a baptist church only wants baptists in the troop, I'm not sure if they can do that. However, you should be able to clear it up pretty easily with a call to your local council, or to National. There are certainly scouting awards in many faiths, including Buddhism.

Islam: http://usscouts.org/scoutduty/sd2gc40.asp

Buddhist: http://bcascout.webs.com/

I never stayed in scouts long enough to go there, but always wanted to. Made me want to search for a map ... and I found this doozy. Be prepared to be blown away:

http://usscouts.org/images/philmont/guide.gif

I doubt they'd ever let a Muslim or a Buddhist in as a troop leader, for example.

You do realize that not knowing what you're talking about really destroys your argument, right?

Still are:

http://www.usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/religious.asp

Note there's even an award for the Hindu and Islam religions.

As someone else pointed out, http://www.usscouts.org/advance/boyscout/religious.asp lists the official religious awards and includes Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, et al.

I remember a requirement for the computers merit badge was to explain why it is wrong to make copies of games and commercial software. I wasn't fooled for a moment that the argument of piracy destroying software was valid, so I said something along the lines of paying for software that makes your business operate makes more sense than gaming companies losing over casual piracy.

My friends and I would distribute games where everyone pays for the games they individually contribute. We just end up buying more games and learning about games we wouldn't have known about while buying future games from the same publisher/developer. Our kid money didn't carry the same weight as adults with full-time jobs (and less time to play as many games as we did), so it only made sense to pool together to maximize our gaming dollar. Despite the technical occurrences of piracy, all the money that sierra, lucasarts, bullfrog, interplay, electronic arts, sega, and nintendo (to name but a few) got from us certainly didn't hurt them any.

For my two cents, I don't think that the BSA's homosexual discrimination policy is particularly brave.

Care to comment on the following?

Religious Awards for Boy Scouts

This would seem to indicate quite the number of religious groups "playing nice" with Scouting. Including the Unitarian-Universalists.

The "Computers" merit badge requirements were updated in 2005. The new requirements are here. You were looking at the 1993 requirements -- which unfortunately was the last revision before 2005.

The merit badge system is not really well-suited to rapidly-changing subjects. After all, kids working on advancement requirements have to know in advance what they have to do. It's not fair to them to change requirements frequently. Fortunately, most of the merit badges are in subjects that don't change all that rapidy -- camping, hiking, swimming, first aid, etc.

Then again as Woodbadger pointed out about, this copyright thing is not actually a merit badge.

And yes, as an Eagle Scout, I can confirm that Envinronmental Science is the "hardest" -- at least in that it requires the most writing.

1. Why it is not permissible to accept a free copy of a copyrighted computer game or program from a friend
2. The restrictions and limitations of downloading music from the Internet
3. Why copyright laws exist

It seems to me that this might conflict with the Environmental Science merit badge. After all, we all know that a lack of pirates is the main reason for global warming. Boy Scouts should be punished for not being pirates, and being a pirate should be a prerequisite to earning the Environmental Science merit badge.

Yes, I realize the article is not about a merit badge, and that environmental science is different than environmentalism

This article is inaccurate. A Council (local office) of the BSA cannot create their own Merit Badge. This is some local program to educate the Scouts, but whatever award they earn is not "official", and would not help them earn a rank advancement or anything like that.

Here is a list of the current Merit Badges, along with the requirements to earn each one.

If you are so inclined, consider volunteering at your local Council as a "Merit Badge Counselor". If you have expertise in a particular area covered by a Merit Badge, you may be a counselor. A scout may not earn a badge unless a counselor verifies that the scout has completed all of the requirements. So if a scout cannot find a counselor for a particular badge, they have no way of earning it.

For more information, see this training page, this guide and the application form.

This article is inaccurate. A Council (local office) of the BSA cannot create their own Merit Badge. This is some local program to educate the Scouts, but whatever award they earn is not "official", and would not help them earn a rank advancement or anything like that.

Here is a list of the current Merit Badges, along with the requirements to earn each one.

If you are so inclined, consider volunteering at your local Council as a "Merit Badge Counselor". If you have expertise in a particular area covered by a Merit Badge, you may be a counselor. A scout may not earn a badge unless a counselor verifies that the scout has completed all of the requirements. So if a scout cannot find a counselor for a particular badge, they have no way of earning it.

For more information, see this training page, this guide and the application form.

Well - as long as you're happy with the new US motto:

America: still more rights then North Korea

Aw, shucks! The US is WAY better than that!

In the Index of Economic Freedom 2006 , the US ranks 9th in the world, tied with Australia and New Zealand. North Korea ranks 157th. That is a noticable gap.

Plus, I think you have the motto wrong. It is "In God We Trust"

Of course, it is as easy to be mistaken about these issues as it is about the legality of the NSA surveillance program, which actually has a strong legal foundation.

It is *amazingly* accurate.

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Funny, most scouts I knew were geeks and nerds like myself, and were agnostic or athiest. Whatever they were indoctrinating us with, the belief in god part didnt stick (although alot of other stuff did, like a love for the outdoors, respect for other people, etc) As for accepting public money, did you notice that that money has "in god we trust" written all over it? Get rid of that first, then we can start worrying about the boy scouts. Theyre nondenominational, accept nearly all religions. As long as you arent going "hail satan" at every meeting, even the verboten religions they dont really care about. As far as i know, the boy sccouts are a nonprofit, not a religion. They are a religious based nonprofit, but im sure that there are plenty of religion based nonprofits that get money from the public. Christian childrens fund comes to mind immediately. Hereis a list of the religious emblems that can be earned in scouting, note all the major religions, catholicism, branches of christianity, bhuddism, hinduism, islam and judaeism are all represented, and even several obscure ones like zoroastrian are included.

According to this page, Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corp., attained the rank of Life in the Boy Scouts.

According to this page, William H. Gates, Bill Gates' father and the "William Gates" relevant to the Preston-Gates law firm linked in the slashblurb (note that said lawfirm is now slashdotted), is an Eagle Scout and served as a board member on the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts of America from 1985 to 1990.