Scout's Canada wins $100,000 funding from Pepsi's Refresh Everything Project

The votes are in and Scout's Canada "Send more children and youth across Canada to Scout Summer Camps" pulled into first place after an 11th hour surge.

Thanks to everyone who voted on this!

Click here for the full list of finalists.

BTW The refresh project continues with more funding. Check it out there may be other worthy causes worth your vote.

Scouts Canada and Canadian Youth need YOUR help!

It will only take a few minutes of your time to:

1. Go here - http://www.refresheverything.ca/sendkidstoscoutcamp
2. Register once
3. Please vote everyday!
4. Help get the word out via email,  twitter, facebook, or any other tools you have.

Copy the originator when you forward this to let them know you’ve made a difference!

More on the project.  Pepsi is giving away 10 grants ranging from $5,000 to $100,000.  You can vote once per day for each grant.  There are lots of good causes worth supporting.  Many benefit kids. Check out the leader board for more.

Hey Boo-boo, look where they hid the picnic basket!

I came across this NY Times article about a small black bear named Yellow-Yellow that was able to defeat a well designed bear resistant food storage container.

The article includes some interesting lessons:

• The method usually recommended for protecting food by placing it in a bag hung from a tree is routinely being defeated by bears that have figured out that an easily cut/bitten rope is usually not far away from their goal.
• Never underestimate the power of perseverance, patience, and practice. Intelligent defenders can often be outwitted by the less brainy with an excess of spare time and focus. Or put another way, multi-taskers don't always win.
• The folks at Bear Vault clearly get it (vis-a-vis their adversary) whereas, sadly, the folks at software companies often do not.
• And a great quote attributed to a Yellowstone Park Ranger on bear-proof garbage cans was "Turns out there is considerable overlap between the stupidest human and the smartest bear."
• Never, ever, market anything as being [something]-proof.

Interestingly I didn't find this on a camping or scouting site but through an information security site Emergent Chaos under the topic "Penetration Testing Your Products."

BTW. If you don't know about penetration testing, basically it is the practice of testing the security of something (such as a computer or network) by breaking into it. While this sounds all very exciting, the key thing to remember above all is that any testing of this kind requires formal permission (i.e. contracts). Any testing without permission (and I mean the kind of permission that can hold up in a court of law) could find you charged with a felony, indictable offense, or similar serious criminal charge in many countries. For more information see Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking.

Mosquitos, Camping, and Astronomy, oh my

One thing that astronomers and Scouts share is being outside at night during the summer. That also means one other thing - Mosquitoes and other biting insects.

While bug repellant works well in most cases, it causes problems for astronomers. In particular DEET can damage plastic and the expensive optical coatings on lenses.


If you're an astronomer or camper looking for a new edge in the battle of the bug, there is a piece of kit you should consider.  The Thermacell - a small appliance that requires butane cartridges and pads.  I have one and it works remarkably well.  I've field tested it in fields southern and central Ontario as well as on the beaches of southern Maine.

Here's a detailed review of the Thermacell over at the One Minute Astronomer.  I had seen the same review in Sky News  last summer and thought it was worth trying.