A Few Quick Notes 317

-Today was a beautiful day. The cloudy periods that were forecast were kind enough not to materialize this afternoon. Instead we had a relatively sunny and pleasant afternoon and evening. Now that the sun has set the temperature has started to drop, but it is still rather pleasant.

-A few of the lettuce seeds that I planted recently have started to show signs of growth, though at the moment they are only a few millimeters tall. The other recently planted seeds haven't yet started to show any signs of growth. I am hoping that with another few days of good sun I should see some rather significant progress.

-As today was quite nice I was able to move some of the plants to the balcony for a few hours. Though I have no real evidence that this will be particularly effective, it does seem that they are likely to receive at least a little more light in this location than they are to get in either my bedroom or the living room.

-We had homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner. I thought it was pretty passable.

-Tomorrow we will be heading out for a free Thai meal provided by the Dal math grad students.

-Aside from the freeness of the meal, I am looking forward to the meal as it should be during the meal that we are met by my friend Greg who will be coming into town for a few days. Hopefully Greg and I will get a chance to hit a few of the locations we visited when we came here on vacation in July 2005. Shockingly, we managed to visit all kinds of Halifax attractions, including the Dartmouth ferry and Bayer's Lake in just a few days. I imagine that this time our sightseeing will be a little more circumscribed, largely as the visit is shorter and also because there are a few places we have already thought about visiting.

-This evening Neil and I attended at talk by Tony Burman of Al Jazeera English hosted by the CIC at King's. While we both expected the talk to be about reporting in the context of Al Jazeera and the global south, as the lecture title suggested, it was really almost exclusively about Al Jazeera English's attempt to be carried by Canadian cable carriers and their CRTC application and why we should support such an application. While I likely would have attended such a sales pitch had I been given the opportunity, it was just not what we expected.

On the other hand, it was kind of cool to attend a talk by the head of a major international news channel. Though what this talked suggested to me was how much emphasis the channel was putting on having their application approved by the CRTC.

One thing that I did learn at this talk that I found to be of some interest is that one can view Al Jazeera English online for free (here, or here), if one is so inclined.

-Yesterday I subscribed to three new podcasts, as I have all kinds of free time that I need to eliminate. Instead of comedy podcasts, as has been my habit recently, I went for a slightly more eclectic mix. As I seem to be having a hard time segueing into the names of the three podcasts, I will just drop them now: Philosophy Bites, Planet Money, and Selected Shorts. So far all three of them seem pretty good, though I can't say that I have given either Philosophy Bites or Selected Shorts a thorough listening to yet. (Several moments ago, while editing this post, I subscribed to two more: Ethics Bites and Philosophy: The Classics.)

-For the past few days I have been meaning to mention that we are presently in the midst of a provincial election in Nova Scotia. For the most part if I didn't know this already I wouldn't be likely to pick it up by walking around downtown Halifax. It seems that it is a relatively low key election so far. And as I don't get to listen to the morning show on CBC I am really not all that in touch with how the campaign is going. I am hoping a few more canvassers swing by our apartment so I get a chance to talk with them and push my election issue (more accessible bottle return options).