Today I was thinking about the phrase “pass the buck.” The NEA likes to send out their magazine where they complain and complain about poor kids and minorities and how it’s the school’s job to fix everything. For example it’s not the parent’s fault that they live in the ghetto, it’s the man’s fault, and they pass the buck…

But then I started to think, how does that phrase make any sense? Pass a dollar? Huh? I looked it up, and it actually has a very interesting origin. Back in the day when people cheated at poker in saloons, they would take turns dealing. That responsibility was designated by a marker, often a knife, whose handle was made of “buck” horn. When they would change they would “pass the buck” indicating they had passed the responsibility of dealing on to the next person.

I’m sure there are more on that site, but what other phrases can you think of that have interesting origins?

Over at ESPN.com a baseball player’s blog said there should be more minorities in little league (which means there are too many white kids!). It was the perfect opportunity for me to jump in and add to the conversation. Feel free to add yourself, but you have to register first.

A guy by the name of Alex Angarita is on season 14 of Survivor that starts Februrary 8th. He graduated class of ’95 from Warren with Stacie. He also has a younger brother named Roger that graduated ’98 with some of you.

The show is trumpeting a very "diverse" cast again, but it doesn’t sound like they’ll be splitting them by race. Instead of calling it diverse, why don’t they just say it has more minorities on it, or inversely, they kept down the number of white people? Can’t put a lot of white people on the show, because that would be boring! The fact that the producers even consider the people’s skin color is pretty pathetic.

I know most of you don’t watch Survivor, but it’s kind of fun knowing a Warren graduate is on the show. It will be interesting to see how he does.