Boy Scouts in Hawaii prepare for next 100

Anyone who has been a Boy Scout has learned a few things: how to tie a clove hitch, set a broken bone, handle a rifle, build a fire in the rain. More important, he learns to be a leader and confident achiever.

This month, the Boy Scouts’ Aloha Council marks 100 years of Scouting in Hawaii and the Pacific, a movement that has thrived through shifting social mores and political controversy.

Perhaps it’s because the bottom line, the Scout Law, is unassailable: A Scout is "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent."

And don’t forget the Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared."

Your phone is a bias

The Pew Research Center this week released a study showing that some of the election polling this year may be biased nationally because, increasingly, households are giving up their home phones in favor of individual cells.

Many of the polls survey only households still served by landlines — a sample that skews Republican. Pew’s analysis suggests that the poll results may reflect greater favor for the GOP, by a few points, than there actually is.

That bias in Hawaii, however, could be less pronounced. The National Center for Health Statistics last year did a state-by-state survey and found Hawaii is clinging to its landlines more than most: Only 8 percent of households here have cut the telephone leash.