From a high school textbook: A rectangle is 10 cm longer than it is wide. A line segment cuts the area enclosed into two pieces, one of which is a square. The area of the rectangle is 118 more than the area of the square. What is the width of the rectangle?

Leave answers in the comment section. And no, you don’t need to show all your work!

In 1998, unbeknownst to the general public and even to most of Congress, Congressman Mark Gouder, a conservative republican from Indiana snuck an amendment into the federal Higher Education Act. His amendment, called the Aid Elimination Penalty (and known to many as the Drug-Free Student Loan Amendment), denied federal aid to aspiring college students with prior adult drug convictions. More »

A bachelor’s degree? You should have gotten a G.E.D. A master’s? You should’ve just graduated high school with a 2.0. A PhD? You should’ve gone to community college for two years—and dropped out. In today’s job market, “pieces of paper” are really just pieces of paper—no matter the particular letters posted next to a person’s name. Degrees aren’t equivalent to jobs. More »

Although I have already received my degree via mail four months ago, I recently flew back home to participate in my graduation ceremony. My participation was not voluntary; instead, my family who felt that the ceremony was essential to my graduating experience and their memories mandated it. In retrospect, they were absolutely right! More »

“I wanted to do hoodrat stuff with my friend”

Webster defines ignorance as 1. destitute of knowledge or education; also: lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified; resulting from or showing lack of knowledge or intelligence.

If you don’t undersatnd what “Ignent” means, watch this video… Also, help me with my “ignence” by answering this question: what is the number one culprit that breeds ignorance in America?

Writing is the transference of my introspection to the external rest. It allows others an opportunity to interact with a particular perspective of the world that we all inhabit.

Or,

I write to engage you in an universal dialog that we know. My words, though from the same dialog, enable you to comprehend me. More »

With the battles and wars that take place all across the world in jungles, deserts, metropolitan cities, and governments about our human rights, you would find the most obvious human right and the one generally accepted is the Right to Ignorance. This is the one that should be abolished and done with great ferocity, and in doing so, we could bring about the idyllic world that had been envisioned by the great poets of the past. More »

What do you think of when you think of children’s books? I think of fairy tales and adventures with princesses and dragons…I think of books about overcoming obstacles, sharing and embracing others… I think of books that develop cognitive and literacy skills…What I don’t think of is plastic surgery… More »

I love B.I.G., but we’re taking his rhymes a bit too seriously.. The man could definitely wax prophetic from line to line, verse to verse, song to song, but let’s move away from making his words the Ten Commandments of what we can become.. I know I have y’all wondering what I’m talking about, and I’ll get to it in a second..

I keep hearing the “voice” of our people (at least to mass media, which I disagree with) in magazines, interviews and every other outlet they can reach quoting BK’s finest..

“either you slang crack rock, or you gotta wicked jumpshot”.. More »

Yesterday, I learned that my son knows about race. “Mommy, I’m black,” he told my fiancé. When she brought it up, it surprised me because he’s only three and just recently learned his colors. “How did he learn this,” I asked myself. We have yet to teach him about race…or have we? In an ah-hah moment, I remembered something he has told me previously –“you the black Power Ranger,” he said. I realized it’s the toys. More »