In May 2004, Bill Cosby gave a famous talk at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision. It has since become known as the Pound Cake speech.

His words were scathing in their criticism of black culture. And they ignited quite a bit of controversy … just check out this excerpt to see why.

They’re standing on the corner and they can’t speak English. I can’t even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain’t, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be … and I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk.

Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact, you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower-economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won’t spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father?

People putting their clothes on backward … isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.

Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different ‘husbands’ — or men or whatever you call them now. have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can’t write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

We cannot blame the white people any longer.

Now that’s real.

To learn more about the speech (and some of Cosby’s other recent social activism), check out this fascinating article. It’s long, but definitely worth the read.

We all know which subjects American schools focus on … math, English, and sometimes science. Occasionally, we sprinkle in some social studies, language, physical education, and fine arts … but a quick glance at any of our standardized tests clearly shows our priorities … the SAT and ACT are almost exclusively English and math.

But why?

In my opinion, we are well beyond the Industrial Age, a time when America led the world in the production of innovative goods. Now these industries are moving on to more fertile overseas grounds while we as a nation are moving forward into a world that values creativity, collaboration, and expertise. But does our choice of curriculum really prepare our students for this new Information Age, or are we simply teaching what we’ve taught for centuries?

As an educator, I’m probably not supposed to think this way … but I feel like almost everything I learned in school (except for writing and typing) is now useless to me. I’ve barely used math since high school, I haven’t had to dissect literature, and I haven’t utilized almost any of the knowledge from my biology or chemistry textbooks. And while I understand and appreciate the necessity for basic knowledge and age-appropriate developmental learning, I can’t help but question the content that our schools are focused on.

What about Personal finance? Social networking? Consumerism? Netizenship? Environmental stewardship? Craftsmanship? World cultures? Social justice? Do any of these subjects have a place in our curriculum?

Can you think of any others that we might be leaving out?

Call it mean, call it inappropriate, call it whatever you want … but there’s just something about Falling Hillary that keeps me coming back for more.

Maybe it’s the physics … I find it to be quite mesmerizing. I think I could sit and stare at that rag doll for hours …

[hint: when she gets stuck, use your mouse to free her.]

According to this Washington Times article, a recent ruling in California states that 60,000 to 200,000 families who currently home-school their children are doing so illegally.

“California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to educate their children in their own home,” said the Feb. 28 ruling by the California Appellate Court for the second district.

“It’s clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children,” it stated, laying out the few exceptions to that rule, including if the child is enrolled in and attends a private full-time day school or if the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.”

Are you kidding me?

I still don’t know which presidential candidate I’m voting for this afternoon in the Ohio primaries. Here’s the deal:

• For various reasons, I am certain that Clinton, McCain, and Huckabee would be terrible choices for our country.
• Romney had some appeal, but it was clear early on that he’s shooting for the rebound in 2012.
• I believe that Paul has a voice that must be heard, especially in the we-like-sheep region of Cincinnati, Ohio … and I had originally intended to cast my primary vote his way as a stand for conservatism and freedom. But …
• I didn’t expect the democratic primaries to be so close in Ohio … so now I’m wondering if my vote would be better used to support Obama, my likely candidate in the general election.

But here’s the bigger picture. When I go to my polling location, I must choose which ballot to fill out. If I use the “Issues Only” ballot, I will not have the opportunity to vote for any federal, state, or local officials. If I grab the Republican or Democratic ballot, I will be limited to only candidates from the party that I choose. So I cannot cast a vote for a Democratic president and Republican congressman … I apparently don’t have that freedom in the state of Ohio.

Moreover, the ballot that I choose to use will determine my party affiliation. So if I vote for Obama tonight, I will (for the next four years) be spammed as a democrat, counted in their statistics, and pigeonholed into opportunities that are designed for them. Likewise if I vote for Paul. At least I’ll still be able to choose whichever candidates I want in the general election.

I’m actually thinking about flipping the script, punching Obama’s chad out tonight and reserving my general election vote for Paul … but I need to do some more research first. What do you think?

I have a fantastic idea for a video remix that would be a huge Internet sensation. Unfortunately, however, I haven’t the time nor desire to actually do it. Anyone?

If you turn the volume down really low on the second video then start both at the same time, it almost works. Well, not really … but doing that’s a lot easier than editing a video is!

When I saw this graphic (see it larger), I was pretty surprised. I guess I had never really seen the breakdown of where each denomination is geographically located in our country.

Have you?

A couple of weeks ago I found a website called Pick Your Candidate where you can rate your feelings about different issues and see how they align with the current presidential candidates. I didn’t realize how interesting my results were until now … here they are:

 32: Kucinich
 26: Biden
 25: Obama
 23: Gravel
 21: Dodd
 20: Clinton
 19: Edwards
 15: Paul
  7: Richardson
 -2: Cox
 -5: Thompson
 -9: Brownback
-10: Huckabee
-16: Giuliani
-17: Romney
-21: McCain
-23: Tancredo
-28: Hunter

To be honest, at this point I’m still listening to the candidates. Some of the above are definitely off the list, and I think I need to investigate why it says that I align (or don’t align) with some of them.

The overall stats (they take a while to load) are very interesting. And I’m not sure if my brother and I are actually related … his results were almost the opposite!

How about you?

“When it takes two weeks and six different positions to answer one question on immigration, it’s easier to understand why the Clinton campaign would rather plant their questions than answer them.”

– Obama spokesman Bill Burton

When I go to teach at my workplace, a salary is given to me in exchange for my personal services (my expertise and time). I am trading my labor for money … not “gaining” income. There is no profit involved for me, only an exchange based on the fair market value of the labor and services that I provide.

With this in mind, I am a bit confused about how “income tax” works. Is the federal government really taxing me for something that is I have traded for? Can this idea be extended to other exchanges … like one CD for another, a ride for a conversation, or a fantasy football trade? Where is the line drawn when no profit is involved?

I’ve been reading up on the sixteenth amendment and it’s only getting more confusing. It was never ratified properly, and even a read of this 61-page document published by the IRS raises more questions than answers.

Do you understand this better than me?

I don’t understand why America is so interested in promoting “democracy” in foreign countries, especially those on the other side of the globe, when our form of democracy is so incredibly ineffective and stagnant.

Just hear me out here.

Nobody votes in this country. And it isn’t because they don’t care … it’s because our system absolutely sucks. Moreover, I believe that its current design intentionally cripples the American people, stripping them of their voice and power in our government and society.

First thing’s first. We have no real way of tracking who is who. Some people have social security cards, some have driver’s licenses, some have birth certificates. But the only way to “ensure” that each person gets one vote is to force them to “register” then come and sign a paper. Can someone remind me why we don’t have a Citizen Identification of some sort? Even China gets this right.

Then there’s registration … it is absolutely unnecessary. Registration is an extra hurdle thrown into our democratic process to purposefully make it more difficult for real people to vote. It is very hard to find information about how to register … and if you screw up and don’t do it on time, you lose your right. So why, in the world’s most advanced nation, do we have to rely on the initiative of millions of individual people to jump through this unneeded hurdle? I don’t get it … if you’re a citizen in the right age group, you should by definition be qualified.

Next comes the voting itself … it’s designed to be as difficult as possible. They schedule it during a non-holiday weekday … and not a Friday or Monday either, but a Tuesday (because in 1845, when the day was established, people didn’t want to miss church for their overnight buggy trip to the county seat). They then force people to “vote” during business hours then tell you that you have to go to some remote and usually difficult-to-find location (like a church or elementary school). The only people that actually get there, every time, are those who were predictable … the retired ones and such. And don’t even try to tell me that nobody has thought that this scheduling isn’t convenient … it’s clearly a way to control and predict how many votes will come in from each “district” (and don’t even get me started on how those “districts” are drawn by our politicians).

But assuming that Joe Citizen does successfully make it to his polling station at the right time … what will he find? Well, that’s easy … he’ll find a system in place that is ridiculously antiquated. Old ladies handing out cards? Punching holes in paper? Is there a big IBM mainframe in a gym somewhere that can input these timecards and do complex addition problems with them or something? Give me a break … this is the 21st century. We’re pouring trillions into blowing people up but can’t come up with a way to record votes?

Finally, of course, is the fact that our votes don’t actually count. You do know, my friend, that we don’t really live in a democracy … we live in a representative democracy. We don’t elect a president … we take a fancy poll. Then, later, a guy called an “elector” goes into a room and does the actual voting … and in reality, he can choose whomever he wants to choose. That man, who I have never met nor chosen to represent me, is the one who votes for the next president. It’s not like the olden days, when we needed guys like this to ride their horses from our hometowns to the capitol of the country to deliver our votes because we had to stay home and take care of the farm … so why do we have it?

Now I’m no political scientist. And I don’t know that I have the answer … though I think that a Citizen’s ID, online voting, and the demolition of unnecessary representation are obvious components of the solution. I do know, however, that the reason why it isn’t changing is quite simple: Control.

Making voting more smooth, easy, and equal would only make the results more unpredictable. It would encourage those who aren’t involved to get involved, it would eliminate trillions of dollars in waste and bureaucratic spider-webs, and it would give a voice to millions of people who are currently so [conveniently] quiet.

Here’s what I say … if we’re not going to change the way things work, we should re-institute the Pony Express. At least that was one antiquated and irrelevant system that was really sweet.