Paper airplanes

I substituted for a special education elementary school teacher today. These sub jobs are usulaly fairly easy to get because when subs hear special education and elementary school they usually have nightmares of paint flying and across classrooms and soiled underpants that need changing. The truth is that this is one of the easiest jobs a sub can get. First, off when you sub for a special education teacher there is a guarentee that you will work with a TA. There are also fewer students in special ed classes than in other classes. 


Well anyway, about an hour after lunch we had a scheduled break time. Students can't focus very well after lunch so this these breaks are crucial to keeping kids from screaming and yelling and fighting. One of the kids started making paper airplanes while I and another teacher were playing dinosaur Bingo with a few other students. In the middle of the game a paper airplane flies across the classroom and whacks me in the head. It hit me so hard it actually made a mark on my cheek. He picked it up and threw it again and it smashed against the chalkboard at the other end of the room. The airplane barely lost any elevation during its flight. We went into the hallway and he threw the airplane again and it went at least 50 feet before it dropped.


This is particularly humbling for me because I am notoriously bad at constructing paper airplanes. If the planes I construct go forward then it is an achievement for me. However, what is even more humbling is that I have participated in ad hoc paper airplane contests with fellow aerospace engineering college students and our paper airplanes fell woefully short of paper airplanes of a elementary student with special educations needs. 


Politics

There was an awesome commercial created by Will Farrell and a few other comedians that sarcastically denounced health care reform because it would hurt insurance executives.


Wendell Potter, an insurance company executive, revealed some of the underhanded efforts taken by this former employer to kill meaningful health care reform. It is absurd to me that many people have protested health care reform when insurance company executives are the overwhelming beneficiary of the status quo. Hopefully, the comedic prowess of Will Farrell and other comedians can convince people of the merits of reform.