{"id":421,"date":"2006-02-22T21:12:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-22T21:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=421"},"modified":"2025-04-25T18:48:54","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:48:54","slug":"meritocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"Meritocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been a Boy Scout in the literal sense of the word (though I have been referred to as a Boy Scout in the derogative, goody-goody sense).  But I clicked through to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_discontinued_merit_badges_in_the_Boy_Scouts_of_America\">this article<\/a> on Wikipedia about discontinued merit badges.<\/p>\n<p>The most amusing, to my mind:<\/p>\n<p>* Stalker 1910-1911 (replaced by Stalking)<br \/>\n* Stalking 1911-1952 (replaced Stalker)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure that means something else, but it looks funny. Plus, I&#8217;ve noticed that the quality of stalkers has fallen off since 1952.  And this despite the technology has only gotten better!<\/p>\n<p>And why are the following no longer badges, anyway?<\/p>\n<p>* Blacksmithing 1911-1952<br \/>\n* Carpentry 1911-1952<br \/>\n* Civics 1911-1946<br \/>\n* Consumer Buying 1975-1995<br \/>\n* Interpreting 1911-1952<br \/>\n* Invention 1911-1917<br \/>\n* Masonry 1911-1995<br \/>\n* Master-At-Arms 1910-1911<br \/>\n* Pigeon Raising 1933-1980<br \/>\n* Printing\/Communication 1982-1987<br \/>\n* Rabbit Raising 1943-1993<br \/>\n* Wood Turning 1930-1952<\/p>\n<p>Pigeon and Rabbit raising was probably discontinued because they learned the animals got on quite well by themselves, thank you very much.<\/p>\n<p>And they cancelled the Consumer Buying in 1995?  No wonder the stock market ran out of steam just a few years later.<\/p>\n<p>It seems 1952 was a dark year for merit badges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve never been a Boy Scout in the literal sense of the word (though I have been referred to as a Boy Scout in the derogative, goody-goody sense). But I clicked through to this article on Wikipedia about discontinued merit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=421\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[475],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-world-at-large","tag-scout-badges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3724,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/3724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}