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Boy Scouts Introduce Merit Badge For Not Pirating
The_Slaughter writes "The MPAA has recruited the boy scouts of America to do their dirty work. Scouts will now be able to learn a merit badge for anti-piracy related activities, including creating public service announcements urging others not to steal movies or music. No word yet on if that includes helping the MPAA file lawsuits against 80-year-old grandmothers."
The article is a little short on details. In Boy Scouts, the official things you work towards are Merit Badges, which are determined by the National Boy Scouts of America organization. The L.A. council/district/whatever doesn't, as far as I know, have the authority to create a new Merit Badge.
What this article makes it sound like is that it's just a patch. Anybody and their uncle can make up a patch and make up their own requirements for it. We had patches made for activities only our troop would do. It sounds like this is just one of those, which if so, is no reason for anyone to get worked up about it. Sure, they're trying to brainwash Scouts, but there's nothing official or magical about it.
The two or three scout parents I know are the kind of old fashioned, independent thinking, screw-the-post-modernists sort of people whom you'd want to have around in case of actual emergency. Can't speak for their sons, whom I have not met.
Succumbing to the moral dry-rot so rampant in contemporary America is something we have to eschew individually.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Communist? Do you even have any idea what communism means? In a communist state, the MPAA wouldn't even be able to exist. The MPAA is about as capitalistic as it is possible to get.
Technoli
As has already been pointed out, this is NOT a Merit badge, it is a patch. Anyone can create a patch and offer them to anyone. It has nothing to do with whether the LA Boy Scouts want to earn the patch or not.
Also for the comment about a merit badge for 'learning how to think'. That is really the whole point of scouting - to give young men the skills they need for adulthood, including thinking.
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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.
You needed to grow up in the former USSR to get the joke. The communist party often spread its message through organized youth groups such as pioneers & rewarded those kids with various awards for their political activities.
It's local to LA, about 52,000 scouts, according to the MPAA press release
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
As a (former) Scout, I can pretty much be sure that's the case. The badge requirements for the Computers merit badge look as if they were written in about 1992 last I checked (before electronic mail was shortened to email...), so I never even really considered to bother with it, though that site says they were revised in 2004. The article was incredibly thin on details, though I'd be interested to find out a bit more. Like what the thing is called. Something tells me that "Respecting Copyrights" isn't going to fit between Archery and Citizenship in the Nation, but then again I earned Dentistry and Space Exploration without the use of a dental pick or spacesuit.
I'd just like to know how many people would have any interest in earning the thing. I'm thinking that, aside from those 'have to earn them all' types, there will be very, very few.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
http://www.usscouts.org/mb/mb036.html
Little known fact, thanks to the overzealous media and the Republican Congress, but Clinton did not lie under oath, and did not commit perjury.
Perjury means (a) knowingly (b) making a false statement (c) about material facts (d) while under oath. It's not perjury if you honestly believe what you're saying is true, or if your lie is irrelevant to the issue you're under oath about. Moreover, the Supreme Court has ruled that it's OK for "a wily witness [to] succeed in derailing the questioner--so long as the witness speaks the literal truth."
The judge who found Clinton in contempt of court said she did so because he made misleading statements and did not fully participate in the discovery phase of the trial. But she did say specifically that it wasn't perjury. The most often cited example for "lying under oath" is the "did you have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky" question. Clinton asked the judge to define 'sexual relations', which she did - as intercourse. He didn't have intercourse, so he truthfully (while misleadingly) said "no". That's not a lie, and it's not perjury. However, it is interfering with discovery, and why he was found in contempt.
The more you know! [star]
As an Eagle Scout, I can certainly confirm that. Outside of the 'fluff' badges, many are quite involved. In particular, I remember Environmental Science, Backpacking and Emergency Preparedness as being fairly difficult.
I am an Eagle scout, troop 171. I also spent time in troop 343.
I loved boy scouts. I really had a good time. I was in it all the way from cub scouts, up till my 18th birthday. I still use a lot of the knowledge I gained in scouting - aside from the camping skills, I learned how to camp, and how to tie knots (which comes in handy more often than you'd think), and a number of other skills. The leadership experience was also very important in building me into the person I am today.
However, before I sound like an advertisement for scouts, the point where it started turning down hill was when they introduced "Family Life" merit badge. I think it was while I was a scout - it wasn't in my handbook, but you had to get it to get your Eagle. We all kind of looked at it like it was just an excuse to have the parents do part of the dirty work - part of the merit badge is having "the talk" (both the sex one and the drugs one) with your parents. I look back now and see that it's the religious influence that was probably slipping talks about responsible abstinence and sexuality into a club which otherwise dealt with how to build a good fire, or which boot and sock configuration would avoid the blisters, or how to splint a finger or put your arm in a sling. It comes from the fact that most of the top scouts decision makers now are Mormons. I think something like 2 out of every 5 scouts, maybe more, are mormons. The mormon church has in part co-opted scouts to be part of it's youth program. There's nothing wrong with Mormons, of course, but organized, denomination-specific christianity should not be an integral part of a scout program.
I'm also very dissapointed with the boy scouts' dual standard of government status. I was never a part of a troop that met in a public building (both my troops, and my pack, were church-affiliates), but some boy scout troops meet in schools, for free. Well, the deal is if you use government property for free, you need to conform to government regulations, which includes anti-discriminatory regulations. However, when the scouts want to keep the gays out, they claim private organization status. You can't have your Jamboree at Fort A.P. hill, and rent a government base (and use a lot of government labor) for free one minute, and the next minute, say that homosexuals can't be scouts. Or that people who don't believe in God can't be scouts (not "a god" or "any god" or "a higher power", but "The GOD(tm)").
Thankfully, if there is a saving grace for boy scouts, it's that individually, on a troop level, most of the crap is ignored. I've never been near a troop that forced any religion on anymore, or that wussified scouting on purpose. Our weekly meetings were either talking about the camping trip that just happened, or planning that awesome cold-weather backpacking trip next month. We ran obsticle courses, we learned first aid, we had discussions of good citizenship and community envolvement. We did service projects - we fixed homeless shelters' food pantries, we made handicapped ramps for churches, we cleared overgrowth for city parks. To me that's what scouting is about.
I think what we have here is a case of individual scouting practices on a troop level probably will forego the crap that people are worried about - it's the top level that is out of line here. Also, let me point out that this story is about boy scouts of Los Angeles, and I don't think this is on a national level.
~Will
sig?
With the Boy Scouts, as with many things, your mileage may vary. It is HIGHLY dependent on the people that you were with, both scouts and leaders. I learned how to live with just a tarp, a knife, and a rope in the wilderness. I had friends who shared my interests in computers, gaming, and various geeky activities. Individuality was encouraged, and we had scout leaders across the political spectrum from liberal to moderate to conservative. We were taught tolerance and the value of freedom. We played capture the flag (real life version, not Quake *grin*), dodgeball, and many games of Magic: the Gathering, Shadowrun, and Battletech. My younger brother learned how to make a campfire in the pouring rain with just 2 matches and some damp wood. I have nothing but fond memories of the time I spent in scouts. Like the parent poster, I was a Life Rank, had a bazillion Merit Badges, and was Assistant Scout Master (never made it into Order of the Arrow). Unlike the parent poster, though, the people who surrounded me were supportive, fun, and not tied to any propoganda or agenda.
"I won't get concerned until the "Respect for Intellectual Property" badge becomes Eagle-required. At which point I'll personally go down to headquarters and find out what the hell's going on, and tell them to get back to their proper (ie, founding) values. Scout's Honor."
The article and the summary are from completely different worlds. The thing is a patch that can be earned in the Los Angeles area. There's a museum centered on biology here that offers a patch for visiting. It's not a merit badge. The last paragraph of the article specifically spells that out. The "insightful" submitter put together an amazing summary that makes it seem like this is a nationwide BSA merit badge while it is not a merit badge at all. You've got to love slashdot.
Congrats on the Eagle. I'm a fellow 1%er.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.