Mills' Blog
12 August, 2010: Looking at the stars, & wondering...
I just got back a few days ago from spending time in my own little piece of heaven. When I'm there, I am so very far from cities and lights that drown out the universe that lays itself out every night in all its splendor on the canvas we call the night sky. I sit up at night and stare at the stars and marvel in their beauty. There are billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and our little galaxy is one of billions in our little corner of the universe.
What is funny to me is that we are so egotistical and self-centered enough to claim that the universe is only 13.7 billion years old when that's all we can see of it! It takes so long for light to travel the great and awesome distances that we are just now receiving light from stars that are 13.7 billion light years away from us. And with this information, we assume that as far as we can see, that it must be the edges of the universe! Our universe could be so vast and so overwhelmingly large as to put our little 13.7 billion light years of sight to shame, but we are too self-centered to consider that what lies beyond our vision is so much more to see!
So many scientists look up and see these billions of stars in these billions of galaxies and think of the awesome probability that among all of these, we would just happen to be here. They consider that we are the only ones with this kind of intelligence (and some say the only life at all) in this universe, and consider how lucky we are to even be alive! I look up at the stars that are before my eyes and see countless other worlds with life just like us, with intelligence just like ours, looking up at the same stars and thinking how wonderful it must be to be one of a countless number of worlds in this universe!
Above it all, I gaze with wonder and curiosity. Why are we so worried about the material things? Why are we so worried about our next moment of gratification? Why are we so self-centered, egotistical, thinking that someone else owes us so much? Why do we not turn our eyes upward and think of the others that are out there, and pull our resources together for the benefit of mankind and explore!?
Can we get off the surface of our planet? Have we made it to the Moon? Our solar system, in all its wonder, is 4-light years away from the nearest star! Our star and our nearest stellar neighbors make up only four of billions of stars in a galaxy that spans 100,000 light years! We should be moving freely among the planest in our solar system with ease and plotting our next exploration of stars like Proxima Centauri in the Centaurus triple, Wolf 359 (yes, it's real... not just in Star Trek), Sirius A, Epsilon Eridani, and the countless other stars in our "neighborhood" we call the Milky Way!
Why do we insist on setting our sights so low (on things like Facebook, or the Playstation, or the next action film) when we could be achieving so much together?!
Call me a dreamer, that's fine... Because I am!
Category: Commentary :
Posted By: CMills :
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07 March, 2010: Excited for the soccer season to start!
Although half of our materials are not here yet, I am very excited for soccer to start. I've worked hard to get soccer here in town, and so have a handfull of the students. We're going to have a great team!
We are still missing some of our equipment. I will hope to hear from the gentleman we ordered the equipment from tomorrow. We still have two weeks before our first match, but it would be nice to have everything here in order to start our first practice.
Category: Commentary :
Posted By: CMills :
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19 January, 2010: Wow... Forgot about this!
Well, it seems that, once again, I've neglected my blog. I really have a bunch to say, but I feel that I could get in trouble for some of it, given my position as a public school teacher. I guess that some opinions need to be kept to one's self. I try to avoid too many politics and religion in here, even though it's my blog and I could say what I want to say...
Anyway, I'm trying a new design here... The parchment-paper-as-a-blog-post look. This is just to separate blog posts and to make things more difficult for me to update. Why? Dunno, got creative and thought, "Hmm... I wonder if I can do that?"
Category: Commentary :
Posted By: CMills :
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29 March, 2009: The Universe, You Are In And Of It
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08 February, 2009:
"If Everyone Cared" - Nickelback
Category: Quote : 
Posted By: CMills : 
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Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to top"If everyone cared and nobody cried, if everyone loved and nobody lied, if everyone shared and swallowed their pride, we'd see a day when nobody died."
- Nickelback, If Everyone Cared (2006)
09 December, 2008:
Einstein and God
Category: Quote :
Posted By: CMills :
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Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to top"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."
- Albert Einstein, Glimpses of the Great (1930)
08 December, 2008:
Consequences? Responsibility? What are those?
Category: Opinion :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topWhat has gone so wrong with civilization that we all now believe that there should no longer be any consequences for our actions. I have students that complain that they have to work hard to receive an A. I have students that believe they can do whatever they want and get away with it. I'm also sick and tired of hearing about government bailouts and payoffs. Why should I have to pay for somebody else's bad decisions?! What went wrong!? When did we diecide to start telling our children that they don't have to be responsible for their own bad decisions? Was it when we stopped spanking them? Was it when we let a student get away with suing his or her parents for teaching them the difference between right and wrong?
When you don't study, you fail. When you fail, you repeat. When you repeat, you fall behind. When you fall behind, you have to get your sorry rear end caught up, or else you suffer the consequences of being in last place! If you make bad business decisions, then your company should have to suffer the consequences. If your company goes bankrupt because of your poor decisions, then it should dissolve and make room for other companies to grow and learn from your mistakes. It's called free market. It's called capitalism. Don't mess with it! If you screw up, you should have to fix it. Don't go home crying to mommy and daddy telling them some bad man wants to take away their toys because he says you don't deserve them. Because you don't!
05 April, 2008:
Does Anybody Here Speak English?
Category: Editorial :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topSo, it was later in the evening and I was hungry but nothing sounded good. I stopped at McDonald's, more for convenience than anything. I payed $8 for a Chicken Club and a Big-n-Tasty. Pricy, I thought, but that's what I get for wanting a convenient meal. Every employee, including the manager, was not an english speaker. When I ordered my Big-n-Tasty, I asked for it without mayonaise (I can't stand the stuff). I get all the way home and discovered that the sandwich had the bun, the beef, ketchup, and mayonaise! It didn't even include the tomato, pickle, lettuce, or the onions! I drove all the way back and the manager blamed the issue on me, didn't offer me anything for my trouble, and acted extremely rude on top of it all.
I know I'm going to appear like a racist with some remarks I make, but I assure you that race has nothing to do with it. If a person is going to come to my country, I believe they should be capable of carrying on a conversation in english, regardless of what race they are. Having grown up in California, I know that if a hispanic person walks into a store, they can request a spanish speaker to help them. Would I be wrong to request an english speaker if the situation were reversed? I would think not! From now on, I will be asking for an english speaker wherever I go, or I will take my business elsewhere.
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Thomas Jefferson
14 March, 2008:
Happy Pi Day!
Category: General Updates :
Posted By: CMills :
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Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topHappy π Day to all! Every year on March 14th (otherwise known as 3/14, or 3.14) my classes celebrate Pi-Day. We talk about the areas of circular foods, such as pizza and pies. The only stipulation is that the pies and pizzas they bring in for the celebration need to be square. This brings up lots of discussions with parents and friends about the reason for them being square. I tell them that, I know the grammar is bad, but the formula for the area of a circle is A = π r2, or that "pie are squared." Thus, we celebrate Pi Day with square pies! Until next year!
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one." - Spock, ST II.
11 March, 2008:
Samuel A. Peeples Quote
Category: Quotation :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topWell, I was sitting down watching a TV show this last week where people purposefully make fools of themselves while on camera and the reactions of passers-by are the main focus of the humor. It occurs to me when I watch programs like this that all this information is being broadcast into space! The very first thing potential alien civilizations are going to find out about us are old comedic radio shows. The next thing will be Adolph Hitler opening the 1938 Olympics. Aliens will get intrigued that they're not alone in the universe and they'll respond by sending their own broadcasts at us. Sometime after, they'll start receiving Bob Sagget's old TV show, America's Funniest Home Videos, and wonder to themselves why they ever responded to our broadcasts! They're going to be scared to death that they've invited a war-hungry, idiotic, race of beings that make fools of themsselves for entertainment! And, yeah, as if YouTube is making it any better!
"Never give up! Never surrender!" - Cmdr. Taggart, Galaxy Quest (Film, 1999)
24 February, 2008:
The New Site Style Adopted!
Category: General Updates :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topOkay, well, I know that I said I'd stare at the changes for a while before enacting them, but I couldn't resist. I liked the new style so much that I spent a half an hour making the changes permanent. I would still like to come up with some alterantive to the message boards. I'd like to ahve a place for people to go to but that wouldn't allow all the spam in. Of course, I don't have a whole bunch of people on the boards, so they're practically a waste of time.
Anyway, the rest of the site is great and looks real nice. THe education pages get used the most, but that's great! That's what they're there for. I wish there was some way I could determine what other kind of page would be used a lot on my site. I've had a "games" page in the past, I wonder if I could put up another that would get used!
Until next time!
22 February, 2008:
New Site Style Proposed!
Category: General Updates :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topI've been working on some updates to help pages load faster. If I can get this to work, the page style you see here would be the new style. I'd like to ask for some opinions, but nobody visits my site anyway, and even if they did, they wouldn't got to the message boards to comment! So, I'm going to leave this on the site for a while and visit it every day for a week to see if I like it. If I do, then I'll start updating all the pages with this new style.
Thanks!
21 February, 2008:
The New Blog Page!
Category: General Updates :
Posted By: CMills :
Last Edited: Never :
Post Comment: Admin Only : Back to topWelcome to the update blog at the Teach and Discover Network. Instead of putting all the updates on the main homepage as I had done before, I'll keep everyone informed of what's going on right here. The blog will include information on site updates as well as anything I wish to post. It can be used for school and sports announcements as well. I hope you're finding the site useful and friendly.
If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please feel free to leave your input in the Forums And Boards (link found at right, above). Your comments will be welcome.
Also, I elected to delete the last board. It was stupid. I had gone through the process of installing Nuleus Blog software on my server, but it just kept giving me problems. I had also tried other blog software installs and I was not very satisfied with them either. So, I've decided to install my own handwritten blog page. It doesn't have as many bells and whistles, but it will be nice and easier to maintain.
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