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If you have any employees or customers in Louisiana, I'd suggest you avoid contacting them until Ash Wednesday.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Boy Scouts of America, an organization with 2.7 million members and 1.1 million volunteers.

I’ve written quite a bit about Scouting in this space, not just because I was in Scouting, but because now my sons are. Their Cub Scout experience has taken me to Cub Scout camp (which actually is Fat Farm for Dads), a repeat of my Boy Scout bugling experience, and sleeping on the field at Fox Cities Stadium, along with the difficulty of (assisting in) building Pinewood Derby cars and Raingutter Regatta boats when you are mechanically uninclined.

I can’t speak to Girl Scouts, since neither was I a Girl Scout nor did I have a sister. (Any reader who wants to chime in about the value of Girl Scouting should feel free to comment in the space provided.) Both organizations teach values, skills, leadership and responsibility. Both provide role models, of which there are never enough, even for children in traditional families, and especially in today’s world. Scouting’s mission is “to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.”

Such values as duty to God and country, help other people at all times and keep oneself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight, and the Scout Law's 12 precepts of trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, kindness, obedience, cheerfulness, thrift, bravery, cleanliness and reverence are values that society claims to uphold but often does not. Boy Scouts are middle school and high school students, whose non-Scout peers usually (in my experience) look at what Scouting represents as something beneath them, or look at Scouts negatively for striving to be more than non-Scouts are.

I grew up on the far east side of Madison, so I wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity to canoe on Wisconsin rivers (or set a water speed record for canoeing across a lake in an aluminum canoe when a thunderstorm came up), cook out in the semi-wilderness, shoot black powder rifles whose recoil was equivalent to someone swinging a baseball bat at your shoulder, or, particularly, hike across New Mexico. I learned about leadership through opportunities to lead others of my age; I doubt I did it very well, but learning includes learning from mistakes. (Which is probably why the Scout Oath begins with "On my honor, I promise to do my best ...") I learned about my own ability to withstand temporary discomfort through camping in really hot or cold weather, something that proved very handy a few years later. What I learned from Scouting wasn't necessarily different from what my parents and other adults in my family were trying to teach me, but parents would agree that reinforcement from another source is never a bad thing.

Scouting has been controversial in the past few years for upholding its own creed, for not allowing avowed atheists to be Scouts or leaders, or for prohibiting homosexual men to be Scout leaders. How an organization that teaches duty to God and reverence should be required to accept non-believers as leaders (who are supposed to reinforce such values as duty to God and reverence in Scouts) is beyond my ability to comprehend. As for the latter, consider the viewpoint of the president of Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty: “Our brief emphasizes our disagreement with the Boy Scouts’ policy of excluding gay members and leaders. But if government forces the Boy Scouts to change that policy, the constitutional rights of all of us — not just the Scouts, but everyone, gay or straight — will be diminished.” (I can tell you that any United Way chapter seeking my donation that does not provide funding to the Boy Scouts does not get my donation.)

The Scout Oath, which begins “On my honor I promise to do my best,” and the Scout Law are a pathway to becoming someone who puts more into society than he takes out, regardless of how famous or wealthy or powerful someone is or is not, wherever someone is and whatever someone does. And truth be told, you don’t have to be a Scout to try to live your life by Scouting’s precepts. I can’t imagine any business person who wouldn’t want to hire such a person.

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute columnist Mike Nichols observes something missed by most readers of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:

John Galt was a Wisconsinite.

Rand’s Galt was born in Ohio, but didn’t stay there long. He became a young engineer in an auto factory in Wisconsin before it, predictably, went out of business. He was an individualist and inventor who, stifled by the collectivism embraced by all the Wisconsinites around him, had to flee our state for a greener pasture – or, actually, valley.

Sound kind of familiar?

The first thought when I read this was that Galt must have worked for our late American Motors Corp. (Probably not Kissel, or FWD Corp.)

Actually …

Rand’s great “Twentieth Century Motor Company” is set in fictional Starnesville, Wisconsin — which so far as I can figure is a little northwest of Stevens Point. When Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (operating vice president of Taggart Transcontinental and founder of Rearden Steel, respectively) come upon it, it is nothing but an abandoned, dilapidated, cavernous shell of a factory that contains only one thing of value — the partial remnants of a motor that, they realize, looks capable of transforming static electricity into power.

Much later, Dagny finds why its inventor — and her future lover — abandoned it and the factory both. Galt left after his co-workers voted in favor of a new plan in which all employee earnings belonged to “the family” and compensation was based only on the degree of “need.”

Production and profits immediately fell and, soon enough, workers had been transformed into virtual panhandlers. The whole place ended up going bankrupt.

I wonder if the residents of Junction City realize their community plays a role in one of the most debated-upon and inspirational-to-conservatives-and-libertarians works of the 20th century.

Why Wisconsin? An archivist at the Ayn Rand Institute theorized a combination of Wisconsin’s “history of embracing Germanic social welfare policies” and our history as a manufacturing center.

Rand died in 1982. So the investigation could no longer include an interview, or questions about her thoughts on recent news of automobile plant closings caused in part by unsustainable union contracts, by the lagging per capita income in this state, by the startling recent news that Wisconsin now has more government jobs than manufacturing positions, by the ongoing “brain drain” of good minds to other places, or by the fascinating advances in nanotechnology around here that could lead to lighter stronger metals, but also by our state’s general deficiency of entrepreneurs.

Rand, you have to guess, would say she made Wisconsin a focal point of her book for a simple reason. It’s not a place where business generally thrives. …

Who was John Galt?

It’s worth remembering that he was — till he was driven away — one of us.

We have reached the biggest secular holiday in the Western Hemisphere.

And, to the joy of most Packer fans, without Brett Favre as quarterback of one of the teams.

I bring that up only to point out that whatever Favre can be criticized for, such as three playoff-season-ending interceptions, no one can criticize him for his toughness, as demonstrated by photos (only for the strong of stomach) of the two injuries he suffered during the Vikings’ loss to New Orleans.

The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has a theory about why sport is important to us:

What is the most highly valued thing in American life, perhaps in all human life? The answer is obvious: The most valuable thing in life is being a happy fan.

Most people would rather be a happy fan than anything else. Otherwise, there would not be so many fans for so many sports all over the world. This is irrefutable. …

Long ago, then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle figured out this greatest of all human truths, that the only value most people have in common, other than life itself, is the desire for a competitive home team. Family members who would sink a dinner fork into each other over Barack Obama’s health-care plan will do high fives in the living room later if the Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Rozelle got the league’s teams to distribute TV-broadcast revenue equally, so that no team would be permanently in the dumpster. Basketball and hockey did the same thing. Baseball has not, and it is well established that Chicago Cubs fans do not believe happiness exists.

Happiness has always fascinated thinkers, including America’s Founding Fathers. But were the Founders to revisit us, it’s not beyond imagining they would upgrade the Creator’s inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of fan happiness.

If that is the case, then the fans of the Colts and Saints are the happiest of fans. This is the Colts’ second Super Bowl in three seasons since the franchise moved from Baltimore in the middle of a 1984 night to Indianapolis. This is the fourth Super Bowl for the Colts’ franchise — the first two were the Super Bowl III upset by the New York Jets and the Super Bowl V win over Dallas, an 11-turnover trainwreck — all, interestingly, played in Miami.

The Saints, however, are visiting football’s Nirvana for the first time in franchise history — a history whose majority ineptitude eclipses even the Packers’ Gory Years. Say what you will about the reigns of error of Dan Devine or Forrest Gregg: neither of them had a 1–15 season, as did the Saints in 1980.

Not that much of the Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts’ history has been better. The Colts have one Baltimore and one Indianapolis Super Bowl win, but they also have a 1–15 season (and their one win was 28–27) in 1991 and, pre-Indy, a 2–14 season that cost them the number one draft pick, and an 0–8–1 season in the 1982 strike season. The tie? Green Bay.

While most Super Bowls turn out to be on-field disappointments in terms of the quality of the game, Super Bowl XLIV probably will be a fun game to watch.

That assertion is based on two factors: the quality of the Indianapolis and New Orleans offenses, and the fact that the best defenses of the four teams in the conference championship games, the New York Jets and Minnesota, aren’t playing.

ESPN.com’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback is geeked for the game:

Back in September, yours truly forecast an Indianapolis–New Orleans Super Bowl — both because I thought they’d be the league's best teams, and because I thought that if they did reach the Super Bowl, they’d play a memorable game. Why? In addition to having good players and smart coaches, the Colts and Saints have contrasting styles.

Watching Indianapolis is like watching a factory play football. The Colts are methodical, predictable, disciplined, mechanical. They don’t run trick plays. Their offense hasn’t shown a new formation, or even a new play, in months. Their defense rarely varies its fronts. The Colts win because no NFL team has better offensive timing, defensive discipline and overall precision. Review film of the Colts and you know exactly what they are going to do — the question is, can you stop them?

Watching New Orleans is like watching an outdoor cocktail party play football. The Saints are spontaneous, unpredictable, boisterous. They love trick plays. Every week the offense shows new formations and actions. The defense uses a zany style — blitzing way too much, gambling for interceptions way too often. No NFL team plays a more relaxed style or seems to be having so much fun. Review film of the Saints and you have no idea what they are going to do — they probably don’t, either.

When the mechanized, cybernetic Colts meet the wacky, laissez-faire Saints, I for one am expecting a fantastic game.

The two weeks before Super Sunday exist in part to let the media find or generate controversy. This year’s focuses on a commercial that is running — an ad with University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother to promote the anti-abortion cause — and a commercial that isn’t — an ad for a gay dating site featuring a Packer fan and a Viking fan.

The Super Bowl is always about stories. This year, Colts owner Jim Irsay is shown as the antithesis of his boorish father, the previous Colts owner. Colts quarterback Peyton Manning (son of long-time Saints quarterback Archie Manning) is not just the best quarterback in the NFL today, he could be the best quarterback of this generation. Contrast that with the mostly-pathetic Saints history and the role quarterback Drew Brees has had in New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina. And there are Wisconsin connections, of course — Colts coach Jim Caldwell is a Beloit native, and Saints quarterback coach Joe Lombardi is the grandson of a former Packers coach you may have heard of.

As for the game itself: I look at football games by comparing offenses to the opposing defenses. The Saints love to blitz, but the Colts seem to invite blitzing and then pick on the single-covering defensive backs left to fend for themselves. The Colts won Super Bowl XLI by running on Chicago’s defense, so contrary to their reputation (the Colts finished dead last in rushing this season) they may run more than one might think.

Arizona coach Ken Whisenhunt, whose Cardinals played both teams this season, thinks the Saints need to score pretty much every chance they get and get at least some defensive stops against Manning and the Colts’ offense.

The history of first-time Super Bowl participants is not kind to those teams. With rare exceptions (Chicago and the New York Giants are two), generally the first-time Super Bowl participant loses, unless they’re playing another first-time participant (Green Bay vs. Kansas City in Super Bowl I or San Francisco vs. Cincinnati in Super Bowl XVI). While a Saints win would be the feel-good story of the decade in the NFL, given the Saints’ history and New Orleans’ recent history, the Colts seem to be the more complete team, and unless they play poorly (New England in Super Bowl XLII), more complete teams usually win the Super Bowl.

With legislatures across the land pushing the political accelerator pedal to ban such activities as texting or talking on your cellphone while driving, this news might come as a surprise:

A new insurance industry study has found that state laws banning the use of handheld devices to make calls or send text messages while driving have not resulted in fewer vehicle crashes.

The study, released Friday by the Highway Loss Data Institute, examined insurance claims from crashes before and after such bans took effect in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

The organization found that claims rates did not go down after the laws were enacted. It also found no change in patterns compared with nearby states without such bans.

Adrian Lund, the group’s president, said the finding doesn’t bode well “for any safety payoff from all the new laws.” ...

The Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said its findings “don’t match what we already know about the risk of phoning and texting while driving” and said it is gathering data to “figure out this mismatch.”

“Don’t match what we already know”? To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, they apparently don't know what they don't know.

This is what I (a cellphone user and occasional texter while driving) know: there is no need for new laws because current law already prohibits distracted driving, regardless of the distraction. Anyone who crashes his or her vehicle while not fully concentrating on driving risks dealing with charges ranging from inattentive driving to up to injury or death (depending on what happens in said crash) caused by negligent use of a motor vehicle.

Cellphone bans are in the same realm as primary-enforcement seat belt use laws. (With primary-enforcement seat belt use laws, police are permitted to pull over drivers suspected of not wearing their seat belts.) Do we really want our tax dollars spent on police running around trying to find drivers using cellphones? Reason.com argues that cellphone bans aren't just a bad idea, they're unenforceable.

Moreover, vehicle cellphone use bans are fundamentally anti-business. While the stereotype is of a young driver who lacks the experience and/or judgment to focus on driving first (and bans on cellphone use for young drivers are more justifiable), the bigger major group of cellphone users are business people — checking messages, giving instructions to office staff, phoning customers or vendors, etc. And contrary to the assertions of the safety lobby, yes, there are times in business where someone has to be contacted wherever he or she is immediately, without the delay involved in getting back to the office or a (decreasingly available) pay phone. (Why otherwise were two-way radios installed in business vehicles in the pre-cellphone days?)

This next bit of news demonstrates the reality of the heavy hand of government, whether the hand is wielded by a Democrat or Republican:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood also has been campaigning against texting and cell phone use while driving. In a blog post Friday, LaHood dismissed the new study’s conclusions as irresponsible and said the study will lead people “to wrongly conclude that talking on cell phones while driving is not dangerous.”

“At this early stage in our work against distracted driving, no one should be discouraging strong nationwide efforts to make our roadways safer,” LaHood wrote. “Unfortunately, a study released by the Highway Loss Data Institute casts doubt on the reality of this epidemic.”

Perhaps the study “casts doubt on the reality of this epidemic” because there is no epidemic, or at least no epidemic caused by cellphone use. LaHood, a former Republican congressman who is chauffeured around to his various appointments, might want to familiarize himself with business reality.