THOUGHTFUL ITEMS FOR SCOUTERS
Thanks to Scouter Jim from Bountiful, Utah, who prepares this section of Baloo for us each month. You can reach him at bobwhitejonz@juno.com or through the link to write Baloo on www.usscouts.org. CD
Prayer
2005-2006 Cub Scout Roundtable Planning Guide
“As we look into the future we understand that things will change. Even so, we need to remain true to the values that guide our lives. Amen.”
The Spirit of ‘76
Scouting Jim, Bountiful, Utah
2006 is the 76th Birthday for Cub Scouting. In 1776, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence could hardly conceive of what the next 230 years would bring. It would take nearly 40 years and two wars for the Union they were creating to finally become independent of England. They could never envision that some 85 years later the Union they created would have its greatest crisis nearly tearing it apart. But the union they created has given the world, the light bulb, the airplane, the assembly line, the telephone, the television, and technology that moves at a pace so quickly that the founding fathers would just stand in amazement at what creations have come to be. We stand on the edge of a new millennia and we look forward. What will the world look like in the year 2076, 300 years from the beginnings of our nation? Will our children’s children find a way to save the earth from the problems that loom darkly over our future now? Will the way we communicate be as vastly different as it was in 1776 from today? What will be the mode of transportation, and where will our energy come from? How will we dress, what will we do for recreation, and what will be the language of the world? Many of the Cub Scouts of today will be alive to see the third centennial of our nation. Ten-year-olds will be eighty and seven year-olds will be a youthful seventy-seven. This month let us help our young charges to envision the world they will leave for their grandchildren, the world they will help create.
A Heap
Sam Houston Area Council
It takes a heap of working with a boy to make a man.
A heap of care and patience, and you’ve got to understand
That he won’t be any better than you were as a lad,
Unless a spark is kindled to show him what is bad.
He looks to you for guidance, and he looks to you with pride
It’s up to you to demonstrate you can’t just let it slide.
For with that eager mind of his, he watches you each day;
Judges you by what you’re doing not just by what you say.
Quotations
Santa Clara Council Pow Wow Book
“In the Troop you will have to think for yourself and stand on your own feet. You will have to stop yourself from following a crowd if you are not sure that crowd is on a Scoutly job; you will have to stop yourself from giving up a thing because it seems dull and hard. You will need real pluck and steadiness.”.” – Lord Robert Baden-Powell
“The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.” - Abraham Lincoln
“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” - Albert Einstein
“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.” Alex Haley
“The future ain't what it used to be.” - Yogi Berra
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” – Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate
“Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge.” – Lao Tzu
“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” – Erma Bombeck
“Dream the dreams that have never been dreamt.” – David Bower
“Some men see things as the yare and say why … I dream of things that never were and say why not.” – George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah
“Hold fast to dreams for it dreams did, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.” – Langston Hughes
“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.” – Tom Wilson
“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” – Coco Chanel
“Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.” – William James
“Instead of thinking about where you are, think about where you want to be. It takes twenty years of hard work to become an overnight success.” – Diana Rankin
“Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.” – Ken Burns
Famously Wrong Predictions
Be careful what you predict. It may come back to haunt you…or laugh at you.
“Computers in the future may weigh no more that 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“I have traveled the length and breath of this county and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” – The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
But what…is it good for?” Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
“There is not reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876.
“Ours has been the first and doubtless the last, to visit this profitless locality.” – Lt. Joseph Ives after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861
“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.” – Decca Executive, 1962, after turning down the Beatles
“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the US market.” – Business Week, August 2, 1968
“Who want toe hear actors talk?” – H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
“Market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft chewy cookies like your make.” – Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of Mrs. Fields’ Cookies
“We don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.” – Hewlett Packard excuses toe Steve Jobs, who founded Apple Computers instead.
Airplanes are interesting toys, but they are of no military value whatsoever.” – Marechal Ferdinand Fock, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
“No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going toe be caught napping.” – U.S. Secretary of Navy, December 4, 1941
“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.” – Lee DeForest, inventor
“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” – Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
“If I had though about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” – Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads
“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in High Schools.” – New York Time editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work, 1921
“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try to find oil? You’re crazy!” – Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859
“640K ought toe be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates, 1981
“$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft.” – IBM 1982
“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” – Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon” – Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
