Explosions are cool
Had fun with the older boy last night. He's a cub scout and his den built rockets as one of their projects. Yesterday was the last den meeting of the year so we had pizza and launched the rockets. The first launch went spectacularly. The rocket sailed pretty high and it was cool. The second launch went not as well. One of the fins came of at launch and the thing went sideways and landed on the ground about 10 feet from the pad (you know, where everyone was standing, watching). The engine was still going a little and then reached the stage where the nose cone comes off. But since it was on the ground, it kind of exploded instead. Mind you, not blow up into tiny little pieces, exploded, but it did rip apart the body and knock another fin off. No one was hurt and it was kind of cool. He had a good time even though his rocket didn't make it.
On a completely different subject, I watched a rerun of Real Time with Bill Maher last night. I like to watch it since he's mostly liberal, but will bring conservatives on the show as counterpoint. It's funny, informative, and controversial all at once. He interviewed Mario Cuomo last night (former governor of NY) which I thought was great. I think he's one of the smartest men to ever run for office. However, once he sat down with his panel, he really made me shake my head.
He started talking about the Pope's funeral. The man is an admited athiest that thinks religion is useless. However, he and Ariana Huffington, one of the panelists, were really going off on the Pope. It annoyed me a little as they obviously didn't understand being Catholic. They both wanted to peg the Pope as a bad guy because of the priest sex abuse thing. Granted, the church could have handled it better. But to say that all the other good things the Pope has done were invalidated by this one thing was wrong. Bill was also fixated on the fact that the Pope was against pre-marital sex and birth control. Again, I think he was missing the point of Catholic teaching on the issue. His point seemed to be that since most Americans disagree with the Pope on these issue, the Pope must be wrong in maintaining that sex should only be between married couples and that they shouldn't practice artificial birth control. As if the teachings of the Church were up for a vote. The man held a consistant message throughout his life that Christ taught these things were wrong.
I really wanted to reach through the TV and just smack him and say "Listen, here's what the Church is really saying". But, it was an entertaining disucssion. And he did one of the best jokes I've heard in a while. He mentioned that the Pope was set out for viewing for about 4 days and he wasn't embalmed. He mentioned a few lines about how the people filing by probably smelled worse. But the best line was at the end. He says, "but even after all of that he still looked better than Michael Jackson". That was awesome!
On a completely different subject, I watched a rerun of Real Time with Bill Maher last night. I like to watch it since he's mostly liberal, but will bring conservatives on the show as counterpoint. It's funny, informative, and controversial all at once. He interviewed Mario Cuomo last night (former governor of NY) which I thought was great. I think he's one of the smartest men to ever run for office. However, once he sat down with his panel, he really made me shake my head.
He started talking about the Pope's funeral. The man is an admited athiest that thinks religion is useless. However, he and Ariana Huffington, one of the panelists, were really going off on the Pope. It annoyed me a little as they obviously didn't understand being Catholic. They both wanted to peg the Pope as a bad guy because of the priest sex abuse thing. Granted, the church could have handled it better. But to say that all the other good things the Pope has done were invalidated by this one thing was wrong. Bill was also fixated on the fact that the Pope was against pre-marital sex and birth control. Again, I think he was missing the point of Catholic teaching on the issue. His point seemed to be that since most Americans disagree with the Pope on these issue, the Pope must be wrong in maintaining that sex should only be between married couples and that they shouldn't practice artificial birth control. As if the teachings of the Church were up for a vote. The man held a consistant message throughout his life that Christ taught these things were wrong.
I really wanted to reach through the TV and just smack him and say "Listen, here's what the Church is really saying". But, it was an entertaining disucssion. And he did one of the best jokes I've heard in a while. He mentioned that the Pope was set out for viewing for about 4 days and he wasn't embalmed. He mentioned a few lines about how the people filing by probably smelled worse. But the best line was at the end. He says, "but even after all of that he still looked better than Michael Jackson". That was awesome!
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