Dream Living

I have simple needs. I am a very cheap person and am very reluctant to buy anything new, ever. I've been driving the same car for 8 years, and it wasn't new when I got it. I've been riding the same used bike for 8 years, until I bought an additional used one a few months ago.

Cara and I had been watching the same old TV for four years. We always figured once we got a house we'd get a nice new TV. The TV and Entertainment Center are posted at this link, which I think is pretty funny and you should read.

It's been my dream to get a nice TV, mount it on the wall and have absolutely no cords or anything hanging below it. There is a big storage/utility closet behind the TV where I want to store all the cords and equipment.

My dad came over on Monday to help me do some work in the closet (it needed cable and electrical outlets for this to work), and after a few hours of work, we got this:

No cords or anything!! If you look at the side of the TV ...

You can see that there are still DVD and Nintendo cords coming and going, where do they go? ...

Through the wall and into the closet behind!! Wahoo!!

The moral of the story: dreams can come true if you are patient, willing to work, and don't dream about things of any consequence. Now all I need is a DVD player that doesn't have a VHS player attached to it.

Napster and the Rise of Entitlement

     I have spoken with a lot of veteran teachers who claim that students don't work as hard or are as well trained as they used to be. They also feel that cheating is much more frequent today than it used to be, and that students don't feel like it's necessarily wrong to cheat. I think a lot of those sentiments are common, with every generation feeling like important values are in decline and things were better back in the day.
     I do think cheating is more common and more acceptable now than it was 20 years ago. I think a big part of that is due to Napster. I don't mean that Napster is to blame for any perceived decline in morality among young people, I mean that it was the first thing to really capitalize on the best things about the internet: free, fast, everyone.
     Napster would let you download any song you could find for free, of course. That means that everyone who put songs up to share and grabbed songs to listen to could get those songs in a fast, free manner. This is very different than the prior system, where I could only get songs from a friend. We both needed a blank tape or cd, and a system to record the music from one to the next, and had to actually possess the music already. That's not a system that is going to cripple the music industry. It wasn't fast, free, everyone. It was slow, a few bucks, and limited to my very small circle of friends.
     Napster let me get all kinds of songs I wanted and didn't really want. But what's important is this: it never crossed my mind that it might be right or wrong. It just didn't. I was in high school, the songs were there for me to listen to and make mix-cd's with, and no one seemed to care.
     This idea that everything should be free grew from that. I can watch movies on youtube, catch up on old shows in a million different places, and have all the information in the universe at my disposal. Fast, free, everyone. I believe that the freedom and ease of the internet has crept into many other realms of society, especially among young people. If test answers are available, they are probably fast, free and for everyone. If a video game can be downloaded, it too is fast and free. It's really hard to stop and think about the morality and ethics of things that come so easy and quickly.
     Maybe this leads to the occupy movement at some level as well. I know that Occupy Your Town has a lot of different things they are complaining about, but one key sign that I see often is "bailout my student loans," or something to that effect. Why aren't there free, easy jobs for people to get? Why wasn't there free education? So much in life has been free up to this point, why does the system change so fast? The internet is a huge piece to this sense of entitlement that we see among 20-somethings and under, in my opinion.


     Now the senate is considering a law that allows the government to shut down websites that violate copyright laws. Most of the fun, free stuff would go away, including tons of youtube videos, all torrenting/streaming sites that don't have rights to their content, and loads of other related sites. Most of my facebook friends that comment on this law are opposed to it. While I agree that giving the government more control of the internet can be a scary proposition, companies like Nintendo, which was one of the first to publicly support the law, lose an insane amount of money due to piracy. I read a report that, worldwide, the videogame industry lost near $400 billion due to piracy in 2010. I am sure that number is inflated, but I am also sure that whatever the real number is, it's still absurdly massive. This report states that almost 10 million games were illegally downloaded in one moth alone. Fast. free, everyone. We feel entitled to have what we want when we want it, when it comes to the internet, and that sense of entitlement is expanding.

Christmas in November and What it Says About All Of Us

This comic has been making the rounds. I always figured a turkey would want
us to overlook Thanksgiving, yknow, because they all die and all...

     "Everybody complains about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it." 
                                                                                                   - Grant Gilchrist 
                                                                                                     (seriously, I was the first to say that!)

     I have heard a lot of complaints about how early Christmas decorations are appearing in department stores, and about how early Christmas music is playing on radios. People saying things like "let me have a Thanksgiving before you start playing Christmas music!" It's a valid complaint, but want to know what really bothers me about it? No one who complains about it does anything about it.
     I asked a friend of mine who manages a department store why they are always put out their holiday decorations earlier and earlier. His answer? Because it makes money. He said it as blunt and matter-of-fact as that. Because it makes money. If putting out Christmas decorations early didn't make money, of course these stores wouldn't do it. It's like people don't realize stores and radio stations are trying to turn a profit.
     So, if you are a person that is frustrated by how early a store puts up Christmas decorations in October, or advertises Back To School Savings in June, or is ruining the planet or exploiting workers or whatever, STOP SHOPPING THERE. It's that simple. It's not like the weather - we can actually do something about it. Just stop spending your money at that location. Corporations are very good at knowing what influences how people spend their money. If playing "Baby it's cold outside" makes money, they'll play it. If it loses them customers, they won't.

     In the United States of America we vote in four major ways. In order of importance: How we spend our money, the links we click on the internet, the things we watch on TV, and the people and policies we vote for. Did you notice how actually "voting" really isn't as important as spending your money? That is how you make change in this country. You spend your money differently. People don't do this. They buy whatever is cheapest/easiest/coolest, in some order. I believe this is a problem.
     I've been giving this idea a lot of thought lately (the idea that we vote with our dollars but people seem reluctant to change their habits). For all of the people in the country that are worried about global warming, how many of them do you think started biking to work? Or heat their houses in a more eco-friendly way? Or grow their own vegetables and try to reduce and reuse more than recycle? My guess is very few (and I live in Oregon, where the above things actually happen with astounding frequency). People don't want to actually change, they want to buy a prius and "energy efficient" appliances that aren't as efficient as just hand/sun drying your dishes and clothes. Making small, non-intrusive changes to ease the conscience is preferable to a fundamental, day-to-day change in our lives.
     The strength of democracy lies in its people. Unfortunately, the weakness of democracy also lies in its people. Right now, I feel like there is a massive, debilitating sense that an individual making a stand or a principled choice can't have a real impact on society. Why should I vote for X if it's not going to change anything? If we could all coordinate and decide together "let's stop shopping at stores that play Christmas music before November 30," we could make a change. This coordination and communication is the challenge.
     That's where Twitter, Facebook and other, relatively new mediums of communication are so cool. They can really allow us to communicate ideas to masses, and let masses give feedback on ideas. If you hate Christmas in November, start telling people what stores to avoid, and other people that hate Christmas in November might start avoiding them. (The major drawback to this idea is, what if you and your opinion are in the minority? Then it might not matter how many people you get to stop shopping at Awful Store X, they'll still keep their decorations up early, but, it might help some other store to attract you and your friends).

     And as a side note, this is what astounds me about the Occupy movement. They are working so hard at being "leaderless" and organic, that they haven't just come out and said "everyone at these rallies, stop banking at Bank of America" or something similar. There are a lot of smart, informed people at those things, and I think the movement has potential to truly make a difference, but not if they don't really get organized (keep in mind I know less about this movement than I do about Batman).

     (As another side note, it's easy for us to recognize the value of our individual inputs at a football game at Autzen. Every member of the crowd seems to understand that if we all yell loud enough we can make that quarterback mess up a snap or two, but it takes a vast majority of the people at the stadium yelling for it to happen. This is different from real life in some major ways: we are all there together, we all have a common enemy, it only lasts for a short period of time)

Thoughts on Twilight

Let me very, very clear: I have never read or seen a twilight thing in my life. My wife and my sister have read them all, and did so in about 4 days each. With that said, I have two thoughts right now...

I felt pretty weird searching for and adding this photo. Kind of
queasy in my stomach actually...

1)   I used to love the name "Jack." I thought it was unique, in that I didn't know anyone named Jack and knew quite a few Jakes. I always figured I'd have a Jack if the name never got too popular.
     Well, the name got popular. I met or heard of a lot of people in the past several years that have had a Jack or a Jackson for a baby. Like, a disproportionate number of people. Want to know why I think the name Jack has become so stinking popular? Titanic. Jack is the name of every girl's heartache in that movie, and all of the teenage girls that grew up watching that movie 20 times are simply in love with the name.
     I don't think that girls are thinking "Well, it's time to name this baby. I sure do love Jack from the movie Titanic, so I'll name him Jack." I think that when girls are going through baby names and something similar to Jack comes up, it just registers extremely positively for them.
     I decided to look into this. Here's what I found:   http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/top5names.html

     It turns out that Jacob has become extremely popular in the past few years. What does that mean? I am going to pretend that it proves my point (Jacob = Jack, Jackson or Jake), but really I don't think it does.

     How does this relate to Twilight? Isn't Jacob the name of that sexy werewolf in twilight? I am afraid that Jacob and Edward are going to become popular names in the future because of those stupid books. Is that interesting? I don't know. Have I been asking and answering a lot of questions lately? Yes, yes I have.

2)   I believe that Twilight is porn for girls. I really do, and I don't mean that in a metaphorical way, or in a I'm-trying-to-prove-a-clever-point sort of way. I mean in a literal it's porn for girls sort of way. (Let me be very, very clear: I am not an expert on porn at any level. Again, I want to be very, very clear on this point.) 
     Porn, in general, is meant as a way to satisfy someone's desires without really satisfying them, right? For boys that boils down to attractive women and all the things that come along with that. It's pretty straight forward. Porn for girls is, of course, much more complex. Girls want to be understood (guys don't have this need): they want to be appreciated, they want commitment, they want to be prettier than their friends, and they want all sorts of other things that I haven't figured out yet. Filling these needs for a girl is tantamount to filling the visual needs for a boy -- it's girl porn.
     I've been told that the author of the Twilight series (Stephanie Meyer?) goes to great pains to not describe the lead female (Bella?). Like, we know very little about her physical appearance except that she is plain. But for Edward and Jacob, the sexy immortals, every feature and facet is described in immaculate detail. The physical appearance of the lead character isn't of importance, she's meant to be a shell that the female reader can identify with. When a girl reads Twilight, it's intentionally made easy for the girl to believe she is the main character receiving all this attention. Bella is plain and boring and whiny, from what I have gathered, but is loved and worshiped by an immortal Calvin Klein model. I gather that there is nothing truly remarkable about this girl, but Edward spends all his immortal life fawning over her and promising forever. What's more, she's fought over by werewolves too? I don't claim that all of this fantasy backdrop is part of the girl-porn thing too, but I get that it's the thing right now.
     Bella is understood by Edward, he chooses her over all of the other girls, she's appreciated, he talks to her about love and eternity and forever and love and stuff, and he fights for her. And remember, "Bella" is meant to be replaced by the female reader.
     That's porn for girls. It's filling the needs of women and expressing what they desire in a fashion they can claim as their own, if they so choose. I don't think that Twilight is the first book to do this (I have a hunch that pretty much every seedy romance novel does), but I think it needs to be exposed. Exposed for what it is!!! Why?! Because I can't live up to those lofty standards, dang it!! Stop reading those books and watching those movies, ladies!!

(I probably can't convince you that I haven't read the books or watched the movies at this point, can I?)

"Doing Math"

     I will often hear students say that they are solving problems without doing any math. An example: I put an equation on the board and asked my students to make a table of points that solve the equation:

2x + y = 12  was the equation.

Some points that solve the equations are (0, 12), (1, 10), (2, 8), (3, 6), (4, 4), etc. There are an infinite number of points that solve the equation.

When I ask my students how they got the points, a lot of them well say something (sheepishly) like "well, I didn't use any math, I could just look at the equation and see it."

When they say "I didn't use any math," what they mean is they didn't write stuff down and do adding/subtracting multiplying/dividing. Like, at no point did they plug in a 5 for x:

2x + y = 12
2(5) + y = 12
10 + y = 12
-10          -10
y = 2

so the point (5, 2) also solves the equation.

The above work they call "math."

     I try to stress that "doing math" isn't actually math. It's arithmetic. The adding/subtracting multiplying/dividing of numbers is simply arithmetic which is just a part of math.
     But mathematics is really just logic. It's logic applied to a very precise, well defined system. Looking at the equations 2x + y = 10 and just "seeing" points is really an application of logic, and that's math.

    Similarly, some students find more points in the equation above by noticing the pattern (every time the x-value increases by 1, the y-value decreases by two in the (x, y) points). They seem to feel that noticing and using a pattern isn't "math." No, it's not "arithmetic," because math is nothing if not lazy people noticing patterns to make their lives easier.

     I feel like this must be a result of poor teaching, from a young age. We call arithmetic "math" and never really teach straight, plain logic. It's frustrating, and something that CS Lewis mentions often throughout his writings. Teaching logic is challenging, and arithmetic can be easily grasped at a young age, so i understand its emphasis, but this is a huge disservice to our children.

Solving a System Through Combination

Systems of equations is a fundamental algebra topic. If 2x + 3y = 4 and 6x - 9y = 48, what do x and y equal?

One method of solving this system is through combination (also called elimination, and also called addition).

2x + 3y = 4
6x - 9y = 8

multiply the top equation by -3

-3(2x + 3y) = -3(4)
    6x - 10y = 50

which gives

-6x - 9y = -12
6x - 10y = 50

the point of doing this is to have two variables that have opposite coefficients (in this case the x's).

We can then add up the equations


   -6x - 9y = -12
+  6x - 10y = 50
         -19y = 38

if we divide both sides by -19, we get

         -19y = 38
          -19    -19

            y = -2

if y= -2, we can plug that back in to either of the original equations to find x

   2x + 3y = 4
   2x + 3(-2) = 4
   2x + (-6) = 4
           +6   +6
   2x = 10
   2x = 10
    2       2
    x = 5

so x = 5 and y = -2. The point (5, -2) solves both equations.

But, let's look at that step where we added up the equations again:


   -6x - 9y = -12
+  6x - 10y = 50
         -19y = 38

     I always, after a couple days of doing this method, ask my students "did anyone wonder why we are allowed to add up equations? We've never done that before. Was there a moment where anyone thought if that was even allowed?"  Usually one or two students admit that they briefly had that question (and it's usually a girl, truth be told).

     Why is that allowed? It's kind of weird! Well, first things first, we aren't actually adding up the equations, we are adding up expressions, the two halves of the equations (6x - 10 is an expression, 50 is an expression, and they were equal to each other).

     The Addition Property of Equality states that if a = b, then a + c = b + c, which basically means you can add whatever you want to both sides of an equation.

Well, let's look at that new equation we made by multiplying by -3:

 -6x - 9y = -12.



I ask my students, can I add 4 to both sides?

-6x - 9y = -12
           +4      +4      of course I can (some students don't think I can, in fact, because there was no -4
                                anywhere in the equation. I try to clear this up.)

so, could I add 6x, if I wanted to?

-6x - 9y = -12
           +6x    +6x    yes, again, I could do that.

I could also add 3 to one side and 2 + 1 to the other, right?

-6x - 9y = -12
          +3     + (2 + 1)     as long as I am adding the same thing to both sides, then I can do anything.

Well, look at that other equation 6x - 10y = 50. The equals sign means that the two sides are the same. 6x - 10y is the same as 50. So really, if I want to add 50 to both sides of the first equation:

-6x - 9y = -12
          +50    +50
I could change that first "50" into 6x - 10y (because they're the same thing! 6x - 10y = 50)


-6x - 9y = -12
+(6x - 10y)   + 50


and at this point, it is easier to just add up the equations and save some writing.


   -6x - 9y = -12
+  6x - 10y = 50
         -19y = 38

and then solve from there.

     Does anyone care about this? Again, I would have maybe one or two per class who were interested. But understanding little things like this can really pay off in the long run. I was never taught this, not remotely. I was in a van driving to a frisbee tournament talking about math with a couple of friends, and some made the distinction between adding equations and adding expressions. I took some time to put the rest together and a lot of other things in math started to fall into place. I want to give this opportunity to my students as well. So I try to teach my students why.

I Am An Idiot.

     My beloved cousins up in Portland get together and make frozen burritos. Lots of them. I'd be exaggerating if I said they make thousands of them, but they certainly make hundreds. They brought some down to Eugene right after Wyatt was born (I like to pretend that I got the most out of all of the Eugene Gilchrists, due to my favored status, but I don't think it's true).  I've been taking a frozen burrito to work for lunch every day ever since. It's been a lifesaver and the burritos are delicious.

It's proof of my idiocy

     The burritos are individually wrapped in wax paper and are filled with chicken, pork, or beef.
     The kitchen where I am working this fall is pretty bare. No plates or napkins (no sink to wash them), no silverware, no cups and no faucet. There is a fridge, freezer, microwave and coffee maker. So, I microwave the burrito on top of its wax paper. Usually I do this for about three and a half minutes. Sometimes the wax paper gets stuck to the burrito a bit but I can live with it.
     Today, eating THE LAST burrito that I was given, I microwaved it for about four and a half minutes for some reason. That's a long time. When I picked up my wax paper, the burrito fell through it, making a big hole in the middle. Again, for some reason, I didn't think much of this and took it into my office. I looked at the bottom of it. It was kind of slimy, but almost in an appetizing way. I thought to myself, "is there any chance there is wax on this?"
     I took a bite.
     I chewed for a few seconds.
     Something hard started crunching.
     I pulled out a bunch of hard wax from my mouth.
     I am an idiot.
     I took the burrito and ate into just the top of it, trying to avoid the wax, and made a mess.
     It still tasted like wax.
     I am an idiot.

Life at Conception and Initiative 26 - Part I

(A two-parter on when life begins and my views on abortion. Part II is here.)

     I should start by saying that I am pro-life, just so we all know where I am coming from. If anyone says to me that a woman "should have the right to choose" what happens to her body, my response tends to be "I completely agree, and she had the choice to not have sex." I don't even think that's as strong an argument as "well what if that fetus is a girl, why doesn't she get to choose?" I think sex is the root of the argument, when people make it about "life."
     "Life." That's what's up for debate. When does a human life really begin? When does a person become a person? I am out of my league in this conversation. I have half-formed opinions from half-understood facts and statistics that may or may not be accurate. This is me thinking out loud, because I tend to understand things better when I think them out loud in my head (it makes sense). Being misinformed and out of my league has never stopped me before, after all.

      I'm going to start with the most logical approach I can. Let's say life doesn't start at conception, as this law is trying to say it does. The logical question that follows is then, when does it begin? I've heard people say that it begins when the embryos "start to look like a person." This is incredibly dangerous, because not only is it stupid (it really is), it's subjective. But more importantly, if that was the definition of human life, "looking like a person," the true outcome of that line of thinking is that we would have levels of humanity. The deformed would be less human than the non deformed. Those in their prime of life would be more human than infants or the incredibly old. A man who gets in a car wreck and loses his legs is suddenly less human than he was yesterday. This is obviously a notion that few would accept (and we tend to not thing too highly of those that would accept it). But why do we reject it?
     Why are opposed to the idea of levels of humanity? There must be something that unites all of humanity beyond how we look.

When did Wyatt start thinking? I'm pretty sure it was long
before this picture was taken.

     Maybe a person becomes a person when he or she can think. When there are synapses firing in the brain. I don't know when that happens in a human embryo (and am not going to bother to look it up), but I know at some point it goes from not-happening to happening, right? Is it at that moment little Wyatt became a human? Well, what separates human thinking from animal thinking? It can't be problem solving or language, as lots of mammals can do that, just not as well as us. Is it the ability to think abstractly? I don't know if animals can do that (and I don't know if anyone knows). But, suppose there was a human with a defect and he couldn't think in the abstract. Would he no longer be human? I don't think anyone would say that. When a person lies in a vegetable-like state, are they no longer human? I don't know. Some might say he's not. I don't think those people have the plug pulled because they are no longer human, but because their quality and hope of life are so diminished that it's in everyone's best interest. What am I talking about? Point of the paragraph: I don't think that "thinking" is what makes us human. Pretty much all animals have a brain.
     So it's not based on how people look or when they start thinking, in my opinion.
     What's left? A heartbeat? That's actually a pretty good benchmark. Once that heart starts to beat, we have a person. But really, the key isn't the heartbeat. Heartbeats have a special meaning to us because we can feel them and hear them and pretend like that's where emotions come from (despite the fact that we really feel them in our gut, right?). But the heartbeat is just a means to an end: pushing blood around to get stuff to different parts of the body. Picking "heartbeat" as the benchmark is fairly arbitrary. What if someone gets a heart transplant? In those few moments when there's no heart inside him, is he no longer human? Of course not. Or if someone has a machine pumping their blood? Still human. The heart isn't the issue, it's the whole system of bodily functions. Well damn it, those functions are starting as soon as that baby is conceived. They change and morph over the next several months, but they are fundamentally the same, right? (no really, I am asking, I don't know). Those functions are no different than a bear's or a wolf's or a rats. Rats.
     If it's not the brain, the heartbeat, or the physical appearance, what's left? Really, the question becomes "what makes a human a human," or, different from animals. That is a question of soul. Humans have a soul. Define that however you want, I don't actually care for the moment, but let's just agree to call the difference between humans and animals "the soul." (If you think humans are no different from animals, you are deluding yourself.)

     So, pretend we agree that humans are humans because they have a soul. Then, back at our original question, if having a soul makes a person a person, when do they get that soul? Conception makes the most sense. They become a human when that sperm and that egg become best friends and start growing. It just fits. If the soul came any later, you would have to assume that someone or something is giving that person a soul, and that someone or something would really have to be God by some definition, and at that point the morality and ethics of abortion are pretty much lost (if there is a more-powerful, higher being, we shouldn't be undoing its work of creating life). If the soul isn't bestowed at some point, it must happen at conception.

     This is what I do. I grab an argument or statements or assumptions and I take it to its grandest, largest extremes, and I take it to its smallest, most minute extremes. If the arguments hold up in these extremes, they are probably valid, and if the arguments break down, they are probably flawed. I do this with everything, all the time. I can't help it. So, yes, I concede that I am nitpicking notions like "life begins with a heartbeat" and that I am drawing fairly broad, grand conclusions about the existence of a soul or a God. But my logic is pretty sound. I can't prove anything, but doesn't it at least raise enough questions about the alternatives? Don't you have to question the idea that a person becomes a person at any time other that conception?

     Believing that life begins at conception is logically consistent. It is also the simplest, easiest definition. I am not going to try to apply Occam's Razor, because it doesn't really fit here, but the fact that it's the easiest point to start from is a great reason to back it, in my opinion. Get rid of those grey areas if you can.

     Unfortunately, this isn't a very convenient place to start life. It means that some effective, popular forms of contraceptive are actually killing people (because they do their work after conception), and it means that throwing out fertilized eggs when a woman is receiving in vitro fertilization is murder, and it means that early abortions are more horrible than they were before. All three of those results suck, but there you have it. You aren't going to find a very convenient place to say that a human embryo isn't a person, and convenience isn't the goal, anyways.

     If this initiative is passed, a lot of things follow. It is almost surely going to go all the way to the supreme court, which will either undermine or strengthen Roe v. Wade. It will make getting an abortion illegal in Mississippi, and it will make the process of in vitro fertilization much more complicated and less likely to be successful. It will make post-conception forms of contraception illegal. This initiative is a very big deal.

Part II is here

Life at Conception and Initiave 26 -- Part 2

A two-parter on when life begins and my views on abortion.

     I just spent 1300 words explaining why I think life begins at conception. Know what? I don't think that really matters. I don't think that's the real issue here, or the real issue with abortion. I think the real issue is that people want to have sex without consequences. People like having their get-out-of-jail free cards and want to defend it and protect it and keep it legal, so they fight over it.
     As I said last time, I am pro-life. I think the labels "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are stupid, because no one is really "anti-life" and no one is "anti-choice," but they are the political terms that have been solidified. I will use pro-abortion and anti-abortion to call it what it is.
     I don't think there are many people that have the active, thoughtful mindset of "I don't care if I get pregnant (or my girlfriend does) because I can just have an abortion." I really don't. I figure at the very least, abortions are expensive and annoying, so people would rather avoid them. But I do think that in the back of peoples' minds, there is this notion that "it's okay if I (or my girlfriend) get pregnant because it doesn't have to change my life." That thought is there for a lot of people, and you will never convince me otherwise. How could it not be? This comforting thought allows men and women to have sex and if a girl gets pregnant, they can continue their lives essentially unaffected. This is good news, because sex is fun. And sex without consequences is more fun. If we can convince ourselves that sex without consequences is possible, sweet! That just means ignoring the fact that sex has an emotional hook to it, that it tends to produce life, and that it often transfers diseases.
     Well, emotions can be managed, diseases can be treated, and life doesn't start right away anyways, so free sex is still fair game.

     The consequences exist. They just do. So, abortion becomes an option to get rid of one of those consequences. People that are opposed to Initiative 26 have a lot of concerns about it and what it leads to - I am just going to focus on abortions for now.
     There is the legitimate concern that criminalizing abortions will lead to more back-alley, coat hanger abortions and overdose abortions. This may happen. It's truly unfortunate. But there are consequences for actions, and getting an abortion is just a consequence for trying to avoid another consequence. It will still drastically reduce the number of abortions that occur.
     A lot of people argue that this won't fix the problem. That there are too many unwanted pregnancies, that these children will grow up in homes that aren't able to provide, or that it will cause further problems on society. This is also probably true. Here's where I propose a radical idea:
     Don't make criminalizing abortion the only step towards stopping abortions and unwanted pregnancies.

     There's not just one solution to the problem!! Why is that so hard for people to see?! Don't just stop abortions. Educate kids better! Inform them of the consequences of sex, the safety and benefits of abstinence, AND how to use condoms! Have parents start preaching values again! Attach a modicum of morality and ethics to sex!
     And if you are a person or group who is anti-abortion in an active, loud sense, then you damn better be pro-adoption. And I don't mean pro-adoption in the theoretical, supportive sense. I mean you better get off your ass and adopt some kids that need a home. If you care so much about those unborn babies, give them a good home to come to.
     There's not one solution to the problems that ail our country. The financial crisis we are in is not due to a lack of oversight by the government. It is not due to rich people not paying enough taxes. It is not due to massive corporations not paying enough taxes, or banks being dumb with their money, or huge debt by the government, or huge debt by the American people, or defaulted housing or a lack of jobs. It is due to ALL of those things. Fix all of those things. Stop blaming each individual thing and fix all of them.
     Abortion is no different. The problem isn't that people want to have free sex. The problem isn't that kids are uneducated, or that there is a lack of morals, or that men aren't taking responsibility for creating life, or that there aren't enough viable candidates for adoption. It's all of those things. We have to fix all of them.
     I truly believe these problems, all of them, start at home. Families are broken down through divorce, values and morals have been lost, money is no longer saved, and everyone wants a nice house, car and TV. This lack of family values trickles into how we buy things, what we watch, and who we vote for, and here we are. Oversimplification? Yes. Accurate? Probably. Do I have any solutions? Men need to nut up and start raising families and everyone should go start buying into some reasonable system of morality and ethics. I can recommend true Christianity if you don't know where to start (meaning, not Christianity preached by someone trying to profit off of you or their fame, for starters). And start saving your money.

     I don't know what I am talking about. I understand that. I turned from a logically thinking person to a crazy man spewing his ideas of how the world should look. But I just might be right. I think I am right. Sex isn't free, abortion is killing a person, life begins at conception, and work hard to raise a good family.

Stuff That Happened To Me Today

     A student of mine at LCC went deer hunting and brought me back some venison steaks and a stew. Do I have to give him an A now? This is a quandary. It was very thoughtful of him to give me some meat without me prompting him at all. I guess, When he told me he was going to miss class because he was deer hunting, I said "if your freezers full you can always throw some venison my way," but it's not like I asked for some venison.
     More subtly, on the first day of classes I always begin by saying "My name is Grant Gilchrist, I've been teaching here for two years, and I can be bribed." As a government employee I feel like that's the right thing to do.

     I grabbed my frozen burrito and put it in the microwave for a few minutes, and went to my office to check facebook grade. When the microwave beeped that it was finished, I went back to the kitchen and checked the freezer again. My burrito wasn't there (venison still was, luckily). Where did it go?! Did someone seriously steal my frozen burrito? As I was freaking out I smelled it in the microwave and felt like an idiot.

     Did you know that a gallon's size was determined by the size of a goat's stomach? I really hope that's true because I've been telling my students that for years.

     I think I encountered my first brown recluse spider: the very poisonous spider that lives in the northwest and hides in dark, dank corners. I was moving a bag of pellets from a corner of the garage to the pellet stove, and I'm pretty sure that bag had been sitting there for a couple of years. When I picked it up, I thought "I bet there's a brown recluse under this thing. Sure enough!!! There, on the bottom side was a big, really dark spider with a huge butt (that must hold all of its deadly poison I am sure) that started moving around frantically. I ran with the bag into the house, threw it on the stove, and freaked out a little. I did my best to bury the spider underneath the pellets and hope it burns.
     I told all of my friends about my near-death encounter. Then I looked up brown recluses. Turns out they don't look like the thing I've had nightmares of, and don't tend to live up here. It definitely wasn't a recluse on my bag. I don't plan to tell my friends this.

     I was subbing at a high school and a kid just got up, went to the back of the room, sat on the counter and started talking on his phone. I wasn't teaching or anything, it was general work time, so it wasn't offensive or disrespectful. Usually if I see a kid texting, I write down my "phone number" on the board, and if they are asking their friends for help with math they can just text me. This makes them blush like crazy, and depending on the reaction I will start calling them "texter" and have texter work on the problem I was doing. It's lots of fun for everyone except maybe one person.
     Well, this was a new one for me (someone cavalierly on the phone in the back of the room). I grabbed my phone, held it up to my ear, and started talking on the phone right next to him. "Yeah, so I guess this is the place in the room where we just get on the phone and talk. No, there's not any more appropriate place to do this. Yeah, I know, right!?" Then I started basically repeating whatever he was saying on the phone into my phone.

Picture on my phone

     He turned to me, showed me his iphone picture and said "I'm talking to my dad." I showed him my phone with a picture of Wyatt on the desktop and said "I'm talking to my mom!!" He handed me the phone and said "no really."  He was talking to his dad. Not that it's any better. I handed back the phone and started yelling at people (on my phone) to buy low/sell high, move the inventory and stop mismanaging my funds. Things like this went on for a bit longer until I was bored. He outlasted me.

     When subbing, I try to not call of names for attendance if I can help it. It kind of halts the class, people start talking, and it reminds the class that I am not in charge. So if I have a seating chart, I just use it, and if not I take attendance at the end. I work really hard at saying people's names right on the first try. I usually read through the list once or twice to myself before I go live, and try to work through how I think names are pronounced.
     I was doing a great job. I called Juan Juan, Jesus "hey-suess" and Julia "who-leah." But her name was Julia Anderson. Julia with a J. And I'm an idiot.

Awful, Awful Math Problems

     I had a student approach me after class this week. He said there was a problem he was asked in a math class a long time ago that he'd never been able to solve, and it had stuck with him. It's a classic textbook problem:

     "You're at the zoo and look into the arctic exhibit. You see that there are 18 legs and 6 heads. How many polar bears and penguins are in the exhibit?"

     This is one of the dumbest possible problems. It's just so stupid. If you are looking in the exhibit, why wouldn't you just count the animals instead of their legs and heads? If you can see their heads, you can see what kind of animals they are! And why are the polar bears and penguins together in the first place? They live as far apart as possible on the earth. Not to mention that those polar bears might try to eat those penguins (we don't know, BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIVE WITH EACH OTHER). What a crappy zoo! Why am I at that zoo?! I hope I didn't pay to go to that zoo.

     If you were to give this problem to a young child, like an elementary school student, they would ask all of those questions I listed above. If you gave it to a high school student, they would sigh and try to get through the problem. At some point along the way those high school students were conditioned to accept these dumb parameters, where logic is thrown out so we can practice using logic. Is it any wonder a lot of students hate math? They are asked to pointless, not-remotely-applicable things like this all the time!!

    The problem is supposed to be solved like this:
     x = # of polar bears, y = # of penguins

     4x + 2y = 18    (equation for legs, 4 per bear and 2 per penguin)
     x + y = 6          (equation for heads, 1 per bear 1 per penguin, ideally)

     And then you solve using substitution or elimination/combination (there end up being 3 of each, who does that in a zoo?!).  Substitution and elimination are worth learning and practicing. This problem (and almost all the problems that come with this topic) are not worth doing. There aren't a lot of simple, entry level problems that use these ideas in mathematics. These ideas are useful in chemistry and city planning and other areas, but they are fairly complicated to start.

     This guy talks about how awful math problems and textbooks can be (his name is Dan Meyer and he teaches in Santa Cruz), and everything he says is legitimate. I am looking for problems in real life when I might potentially use systems of equations, but haven't found any. I'll work at it, and if you know of any, please send them my way. (grant.gilchrist@gmail.com)

When 1 + 1 Doesn't Equal 2

My bike Shadowfax. He's so fast he's blurry.

     I used to go for bike rides along the Willamette River in Eugene at night. When I was in college and wanted to clear my head, get some exercise or mull over a math proof (really), I'd hop on Shadowfax and do the loop. Sometimes at 2:00 or 3:00am if I was up.
     One time I stopped at one of my favorite spots - one of the bridges over the river. I was looking at the moon/street light hitting the water and two guys rode up and stopped to chat. They may have been homeless, they may have been drunk, and they may have been on drugs - sometimes it's hard to tell. One of them asked what I do. I told him I was a math major at the U of O. He scoffed. Mathematicians. Let me tell you about mathematicians. One plus one does not equal two, one plus one equals one plus one and two equals two. He went on in this line of reasoning for a while, talking about all kinds of related topics. He honestly seemed like one of those bums who has all the answers to the questions no one is asking.
     Shadowfax and I rode on, and I didn't give it much thought until later. Until now, really. I've talked about how equality means that one side is the same as the other, (or that each side of an equation is the exact same as the other). 2x + 3 = 5 when x = 1 and 1 + 1 = 2.
     Equality only exists in the abstract, though. 1 + 1 = 2 only if you are dealing with a concept, like "numbers" or "apples." By that I mean, if I were to take a literal, tangible apple and then put another apple right next to it, those two apples are not the exact same. They weigh different and look different and one of them has more worms. No two apples are exactly the same. 1 + 1 does not equal 2, because I don't have two of the exact same thing.
     But If I think of those two apples as the generic, abstract label of "apple," then I go from having one apple to two apples when I add them up. I can "add" the two apples because I can label them as "the same," and this abstract label lets me deal with equality. Does this make any sense? One plus one does not equal two, unless the two things are completely identical. One plus one equals one plus one, when the two things are not identical.
     What does this mean? It means that in the real, tangible world, equality doesn't exist. No two things are exactly the same out here.
     Well, what does that mean. Equality from a social perspective means that all people are given the same opportunity, regardless of gender, race, religion, etc. Is that even possible? No, it's not, because no two people, cultures, backgrounds or beliefs are the same. Equality can't happen in the real world. Maybe that notion is obvious, I don't know. But it's undeniably true.
     So should we even pursue social equality? There will always be rich and poor, healthy and sick, feeble and strong. Can we really grant Equal Opportunity to people applying for jobs, when one guy comes from a wealthier family than the other? To truly grant equal opportunity we'd need to make everyone go to the same school and come from the same family and be born at the same time. That sounds stupid.

Cara had a photo idea and ran with it.

     When I think about the ideals of social equality, from the vantage point that equality doesn't remotely exist in the real world, I start to think it's misguided. Equality: treat all people the same. No! We don't treat men and women the same, nor should we. I don't have breasts to feed my son. Cara doesn't have muscles to move heavy things (and I mean, like, really really big muscles like mine). Men and women are so clearly not equal that trying to treat them the exact same is absurd. (And for the record, there's little doubt that women are better than men, in my opinion. As a whole, the only thing that they aren't capable of doing as well as men are feats of physical strength and agility, which isn't such a big deal in today's society (we're not running from sabretooth tigers anymore. Yes I am putting parentheses within parentheses.), and they can bear and nurture children. Of course I am going to hold a door open for them!).
     This is all very easy for me to say. I am a white, straight, middle-class, educated, attractive, charming, physically imposing Christian male. Some of those attributes are by choice, some are by chance, some are by birth, and some are fabrications, but the point is I am not a person who is historically oppressed in the United States. It's easy for me to say things like "we don't need to try to treat people equal when they are not equal," because it doesn't tend to impact me negatively. But I recognize that those in power view "not equal" as "inferior" and begin to exploit. I get that, and I think things like Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity hiring are wonderful things (although I think affirmative action should move towards being based more on socio-economic standing and less reliant on race, but that's for another time). So let me go back a step.

     Equality doesn't exist in the real world, only in the abstract. Fine. But if I am going to apply my purely mathematical logic to the real world, I need to apply it to my abstract world as well. Equality only exists in the abstract, but I still use it. I still write and solve equations as if 2x + 3 equaled 5. In my perfect, ideal, non-real world, equality is real and it is useful. Is it such a stretch to think that the abstract concepts of equality in the real world aren't useless either? Math breaks down when you apply it to physics. It turns into a model of the world and not an absolute law, mostly because we can't ever know everything and have all the necessary data. In the same way, equality breaks down in society, it becomes a goal we should strive for. We can't ever have a perfect society, but we can strive for it in the same way we strive for cleaner energy or faster transportation. Really, as a Christian I am called to be perfect, knowing full well that I never will be. I am called to strive for it, just like as a society we should strive for equality.

     People and groups and individuals and genders are not equal. That is a wonderful, necessary thing. If they were truly all the same, the world would be a simpler, more boring-er, less accomplished place. We shouldn't treat everyone the same, that's a disservice to all of our tremendous differences. We should treat everyone with the same respect and the same regard (at least as far as it is truly deserved), but we shouldn't treat them the same. 1 + 1 doesn't equal 2, thank God.

     (One last, tangentially related indulgence: This is why I love math. I like to take things that it teaches me, logic it has instilled in my brain, and see how it applies to other things. This application tends to shed new light on things for me, things that other people have probably had figured out for a long time. I don't expect other people to do this with mathematics, but I think they should do it with whatever they know and love. And I don't expect my students to need to be able to solve quadratic equations in life, but damn it I wish they were all equipped to at least analyze their world with cold, hard logic. That's all math is, logic applied to a specific, well defined system. A system where 1 + 1 = 2 and that idea leads to a lot of other ideas. How can I convince a 14-year-old with an iphone that this is worth caring about? I don't know. Thanks for reading.)

What "The Monster at the end of this Book" Teaches Us About Video Games

     Did you read this book when you were young? It was my favorite, mostly because Grover is hilarious. In this book, Grover reads the title page and gets nervous, because he is scared of the monster at the end of the book. He doesn't want to get to the end of the book and see the monster, so he does everything in his power to stop you from turning pages. He begs and pleads, ties corners of pages together, and freaks out everytime you turn the page. I, the young reader, have god-like powers in this scenario and continue on, until we find that Grover himself was the monster and drugs are what we should really be afraid of.

     I've been reconsidering this book, because I recently found the sequel, Another Monster at the end of this Book, which adds Elmo to the mix. When I say "found," I mean it literally: it was sitting on a projector at work and I took it, along with a couple other children's books.

     Here's what I've reconsidered: What if there was a real monster at the end? I mean, what if we got to the end and Grover was right all along and ends up stuck in a page with a scary creature? I, the almighty page turner, would be a huge jerk to do that to the poor guy. If I knew that there was actually a monster at the end of the book, shouldn't I stop reading pretty early on to keep my lovable, furry old friend Grover safe?

     These sorts of dilemmas come up all the time in video games. I think it's a trope of Japanese storytelling. You'll be progressing through hours of game time, and if it's a good game you become pretty attached to the world and characters filling the game. Video games progress linearly, so for the most part you have to keep moving forward, and at some point you take an action that causes unbelievable devastation. The whole world lies in ruin, forests become wastelands, monsters roam the city, and it's kind of your fault. It's up to you (and maybe your misfit gang of rebels) to make right these awful wrongs. No one in the world ever blames you, because the bad guys were going to do bad things anyways, but dang it!! I was working so hard to get the three spiritual stones so I could protect princess Zelda, and Ganondorf wanted me to do it all along to realize his true power?! I feel so used!

     I have come to the point in a couple of games (Final Fantasy 3 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time come to mind, both truly fantastic games that you should try if you haven't) where I know that progressing in the story means things get real bad before they get good again, and they are bad for a long time. If I enjoy the world before it gets bad (which I do, it's happy and fun and the music is uplifting), why would I progress? If I am truly taken by the story, the best thing I could do for those little people is leave my game on and my character standing in a field, playing some music. This is a tough concept to grapple with when you are 12 years old.

     This method of having the hero unwittingly bring about disaster must be a flawed story-telling method, at least when the reader is an active participant. As I said earlier, in my experience it's a very Japanese approach (based on the video games I've played and cartoons I've watched, and yes I am an adult). It's different from the heroic cycle of western lore. In that heroic cycle, evil is coming towards the protagonist and he/she refuses to take action early, for whatever reason, and this leads to disaster. The refusal to take action is the problem, and the hero has to fix it. Conflict is pushed upon the hero. This is vastly different than the hero unwittingly unlocking the magical powers that end the world. As a powerless observer, watching someone screw up and try to make amends is very entertaining, but as an interactive controller of the story, this method of progression is unsettling and doesn't make me want to continue.

The Fourth Wall

     That's where video games are trying to be different. Video games work hard at being an interactive story, much like Grover and his book. Grover breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience as easily as I break his brick wall between pages. Video games talk to the main character, but tell me I am that character, which is the same thing as talking directly to the audience. They try to make the player/reader feel like he's involved and has a say in what happens. Instead of watching a movie where the hero saves the world, they let you push a few buttons (or turn a few pages) to help along that protagonist, but in truth you have little control over how the story goes (kind of like life, which is essentially a bigger world with more systems and variables at play, but the ending is going to be the same no matter what choices you make -- you will die). Games work harder and harder to make their worlds a self-sustaining story, but whatever the programmers include in their game is what dictates how the story goes. There really is no freedom (at best there are multiple endings to work towards) in a video game, much like a book or a movie (In truth, video games are fundamentally the same as those choose-your-own-adventure books that you think will be so fun at first and then you realize you'd rather just read a good story). 

Grover and I both break it (we are very strong)

     Part of the problem is just bad story telling. Video games have wonderful visuals and truly beautiful music, but the dialogue and narration are exceedingly poor (Game makers are working on that and getting better, this is after all a young medium.) When a video game does a good job of immersing me in the story, making me feel like I am the one who is going to save princess Zelda, the video game needs to recognize that I don't want to hurt any innocent bystanders, just like how I wouldn't want to make Grover run into the swamp thing either. If it wants me to truly invest in the world and become immersed in its characters and interactions, it either needs to a) not have me be the one to end the world, or b) have that end of the world come about in a way that is very consistent with the established characters and themes.

     I've thought of ways this is similar to real life. How walking down a path will take you to the end of that path. If you don't like where you're heading, turn around (if you don't want to end the world, stop playing). Predestination in life is another obvious discussion that could arise from reading Grover's book. I am sure that discussion happens all the time when little Johnny and his mom realize they actually had no control over Grover's fate, the almighty author did. I think there are lots of little pieces that have application, but nothing worth expanding upon. I suppose the nice thing about these stories is that they end and begin in very good places, you just have to get through the bad stuff in-between to finish. This is a good life lesson. Things will work out and drugs are the real monster.

     

Explaining Division of Fractions

     I find that most of my students aren't terribly concerned with why things are the way they are in mathematics. I am of the opinion that this is because when students ask why questions when they are young, they don't get answers. If they ask "why is a negative times a negative a positive" they get an answer like "just because," or, if they are home-schooled, "because I said so." I'd like to discuss some of those why topics in math, most of which I don't think are asked that often.

     Little known math fact: When you divide by a fraction, you multiply by its reciprocal. I say "little known" because every student ever forgets this fact from one day to the next. Maybe, just maybe, if they understood why you multiply by the reciprocal they'd remember. Putting equations in a blog is pretty hard, so I am going to get a bit tricky:

     If I show this to my students, I let them know before and after showing it that they don’t need to “get it,” but it’s worth seeing. For a couple students it makes sense (and they seem to find it clever, and hopefully deepen their appreciation of the subject). I was never taught this, I was nerdy enough to look it up. Now I know why.

Growing up PK

     Pastor's kids rebel. That's the stereotype. They are subject to so much pressure and scrutiny that they become a rebel without a cause and start dancing all footloose and other things happen. Well, I'm a PK and I didn't rebel. Neither did the PK's around my age at school or at my church. Why is that? I don't really know, but I am going to pretend like I do.
     I think a big part of it is that Eugene, Oregon, is not a "churchy" town. Going to church on Sunday is not the socially correct thing to do, so being a PK doesn't carry as much weight here as it does in a lot of other places. There isn't the pressure of a whole town watching and analyzing your every move, and I think that makes a huge difference. When I went to school, I would guess that most of the people in my class didn't go to church at all, and many more were just holiday church-goers. All of those people, and by extension, all of their families, don't really care about who the pastor's son is.
     Growing up in a non-churchy town has a strange effect as a PK. Whenever someone found out what my dad did, they would change how they acted around me. They'd try to stop cussing, maybe not tell a dirty joke, sometimes even apologize for using the Lord's name in vain. I kind of liked it. I think the idea of religion was really foreign to a lot of my classmates, so they weren't sure how to act around a person like me. This might be the case for all PK's everywhere, and in fact it might be the case for all obviously-Christian people as well, I don't know. But people would definitely change when I was around, and it was a little weird.
     Since the whole town wasn't concerned with their pastor's children's lives, that really just leaves the church. When I was growing up (through college), my dad was a pastor at a really big church, with thousands of people attending on a given weekend. I'd be in sermons, I was leading small groups, I was even asked to represent "the youth of the church" at a special ceremony for the groundbreaking of a new church building. With all of those people and the attention that comes with it, I never felt like I was being terribly scrutinized, and that's a testament to the people in that church. I didn't feel a lot of pressure to act or be a certain way. It's very possible that I didn't feel that pressure because I was already acting in ways that were acceptable, for the most part, but I think it was different than at a lot of other churches.
     My uncle (dad's brother) is also a pastor at a big church, up in Beaverton, Oregon. I remember walking into that church with my cousin Jess on a Christmas Eve service, and feeling everyone looking at me. I just knew it was happening. We as a family would all go sit in the front row of the church and wait for the service to be over so we could get at our presents, but it felt different. It's possible I was aware of the attention because it was new to me (like how my room never smelled to me but always did to the girls that came over -- once, and always asked why it smelled like damp goose and never came back). But I honestly think the attention I received at my uncle's church was fundamentally different from the attention I received at my church.
     But the main place that pressure can come from - the pressure to act or be a certain way - has to be from home. There were a few times when my mom or dad would say something like "what would the church think," or "how would that look to the church," but a few times in 21 years is not that many. I came from a home that allowed me to be who I wanted to be, and that takes away any external pressure that might exist. I think even if I did go to a church, or live in a community, that was very preoccupied with the behavior of its PK's, having parents who didn't care if I was in AWANA or going to youth group every week would have been enough. Again, that might be a chicken-egg sort of conundrum (maybe my parents were laid-back because I was a good kid), but I don't think so.

     There were a couple times in high-school when I was feeling stifled or judged for how I was behaving, or what I was planning on doing. I remember thinking, briefly, that I was tired of having to live up to other people's expectations, or that there was a lot of pressure on me because of who my dad was. I can understand that pressure being overwhelming if it is consistent and strong. But I made a realization at a very young age that has served me well for my life up to this point: no matter how many people are watching me and have expectations for me, it pales compared to the fact that God is watching and has expectations for me. In fact, pleasing Him was more important than pleasing everyone else, which is actually a freeing revelation (as opposed to piling on more pressure, in addition to all the people). It was like the corollary to the cheesy cross-stitch "Me and God is always a majority." Which, in math, is read Me + God > Everyone Else. I understood that if there was any reason to feel pressure from other people, there was much reason to feel "pressure" from God, in a good way.

What if he likes art? What if art is his thing?
We'll have nothing in common.

     I wonder what it'll be like for Wyatt (and his future siblings) to be a pastor's grandkid (PGK). Will he still be treated differently by peers when they find out? Having a dad for a teacher might be similar, if I end up teaching at his school. I guess I'll have to be careful to not put any unnecessary pressure on him to be a model churchgoer, or a fantastic mathematician. Things to think about I suppose.

Making a Difference

Sometimes I really feel like I am getting through to my students:

  When I asked him what time it was, he said "blue."

Stuff That Happened to Me Today: Building a Deck

     True story: A student of mine approached me at Lane Community College after class. She said "Grant, I have a question. I am building a deck and want to know how I can make sure to get a right angle when I am laying it out." I got excited, and asked her what we had to work with. She had the pile of wood from Jerry's, all cut and ready to go, a tape measure and a chalk line.

     Perfect. Absolutely perfect. This was the most validating thing that had ever happened to me in my math career. In geometry you do what's called "constructions," where all you have is a pencil, straight edge, and compass, and you need to make things and prove things and do things and things. It's fun and challenging and I will do it in my spare time (like, at a boring meeting, or when my wife is telling a story).

     I essentially had a compass and straight edge to make this right angle from a given side. Here's what I tried to explain:

Let's start with a picture I took of their house (well, I copied it off google maps)

Now let's focus on the pertinent part.

We want to make a right angle from point A upwards, and want to find the most accurate way to do that (note: not the easiest way, the most accurate way).

Along the same line as the side of the deck you have plotted, mark a point the same distance away from A on each side. (This is easiest shown with a circle)

Points X1 and X2 are the same distance from
A (6 feet) and lie on the same line as the deck

So we end up with

Having never remotely done this in real life, I can safely recommend using a distance of about 6 to 8 feet from A to X1 and X2.  Now we can use the points X1 and X2 to make a perpendicular to A. 

Whatever that distance from A to X1 is (let's say it's 6 feet), choose a substantially larger distance to measure. I'm going to use 10 feet to make the pictures work, but the longer the better (it really depends on how far out you want your deck to go, but we'll work with this). Draw two circles around X1 and X2, each with the same exact radius (10 feet in this case).

Points X1 and X2 are each the center of a circle with a radius of 10 feet.

You don't need to draw the entire circles, just trace enough to find the point where the two circles intersect above Point A.

Using your chalk line, mark the line from Point A to the intersection above Point A (let's call it Point I... for "interesting") and you have a perpendicular line! It's as accurate as you were.

Anywhere along that line you can put the other corner of your deck. Wasn't that fun!?

There are all kinds of tools and tricks construction workers use to make right angles that I will pretend to know, but given just a tape measure, chalk line and wood we can do it (truth be told, you don't even need the tape measure - a chalk line and a place to start is sufficient).

There are a couple of faster ways, from this point, to finish the rectangle. Maybe for another time.