Stuff That Happened Today/Recently

     Remember earlier when I said I had a student who was a comedian, and he said he'd written some new jokes that have me in them? He told me that he's doing a show in March in Eugene (and several others around the NW) and that he has all new material, where I am mentioned by name. He's giving me two tickets and holy crap I'm excited. Stay tuned.

     Early in the term at Lane Community College, a student came in to my office hours for some help. After he was done and was walking out, he jokingly said "I'll be back often, you'll probably get sick of me." I chuckled and jokingly replied "yeah, I probably will."
     Fast forward eight weeks and he comes in to my office hours again and says "sorry to bother you, I know you don't like it when people see you in your office" all sheepishly. He took me seriously! He'd been afraid to come to my office all term! I felt awful. But I told him I was joking and that he had been joking and come on!! I'd feel really bad, except he hadn't come to class for like four weeks for various reasons. I guess I come on a little too strong. Another example of me coming on too strong:

     There was a girl at the high school staring at a the wall while I was teaching. There was a poster of the boy's soccer team on the wall. I don't think she was staring directly at the poster, but we had this conversation:
     "Maggie, is your boyfriend on the soccer team?"
     She looks up at me and is a bit confused. "No..."
     "Do you wish you had a boyfriend on the soccer team?"
     She's still confused. "No, why?"
     "Because you've been staring at that poster of the boy's soccer team for like 5 minutes, so I figured you must like one of them."
     She starts blushing and giggling a little "No..."
     "Okay, but if you had to date one of them, which one is it?"
     "No one," laughing pretty hard.
     "Come on, which one is the cutest? If I walk over to your desk will there be a name with a bunch of hearts drawn around it?"
     It went on for a bit longer.

     This happened last year. The girl in the conversation had just switched into my class. Like, a week before this happened, halfway through the year. She looked around at the rest of the class, wondering what was going on. Some students turned to her and said "he's like that, it happens to all of us." Luckily she was a confident girl and we get along great.

     Subbing is really easy the first time. You start class the moment the bell rings, glare at and speak sternly to the first kid that tries to talk over you, and pretend like your the boss for a period. But when you sub for a  teacher over and over the students get used to you, they figure out that you are all bark and no bite, they start to push their limits, and you don't know the classroom norms. Today I subbed for a class for like the 8th time this year, and they are on to me. They try to leave early, turn in late homework, sit with their friends and other sinister activities.
     I used to really enjoy subbing, because you don't have to grade papers, take work home, or see the same kids every day. But as soon as I got my job at LCC I couldn't stand subbing any more. It's so boring. BUT, I am happy to have the work and the opportunity to make more contacts, and I know I am a good math sub, which is hard to find.

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.