A Few Quick Notes 424

-While this morning was beautiful (clear and warm), things have taken a slight turn for this worse this afternoon. The sky is now overcast and the winds have picked up. All of a sudden the thunder and lightning that have been forecast for this evening seem much more reasonable than they seemed earlier today.

-Just as a point of comparison on the changes in conditions of the weather in Halifax, here is a photo that I took early this afternoon.



This photo was taken just after 4:00 PM, the switch to a grayer sky is quite obvious.



-It seems that today is election day in the UK. It was about a week after the last election that I left Keele after my year as an exchange student in the UK. After the last election the Blair government retained its relatively significant majority. According to recent reports the present election isn't expected to produce such a clear result. The Globe and Mail is providing live coverage, as is my favourite newspaper, The Guardian. Hopefully I will be able to follow (at least intermittently) the coverage of the election results tonight.

-In April 2008 I posted a few videos on my YouTube account of the riots/violent celebrations that occurred after the first round success of the Montreal Canadians. Not only did these immediately become some of my most popular content, but I also ended up licensing them to the TV show Most Shocking. Anyway, after almost two years of YouTube obscurity these videos seem to be generating renewed interest with the current playoff success of the Montreal Canadians. I guess I should make it clear that 'renewed interest' only means that they are now sometimes receiving upwards of 30 views a day (I guess they are still relatively obscure as far as YouTube videos are concerned).

If you are interested, this is the most viewed of the set of videos.



[Embedded Video]

-Since I started working on this post it has started to rain intermittently. Tonight should be fun.

-This afternoon I finally motivated myself to move my old filing cabinet and place the new one.



Unfortunately I have not yet been sufficiently motivated to start filling the new filing cabinet. Also, hopefully within a few weeks the pots on top of the filing cabinets will be filled with plants.

-Yesterday I had the good fortune to pick up and start reading a book of essays by John Stuart Mill. Though it is not my habit, in this case I started reading the introduction. The introduction, at least the part I have read, describes aspects of Mill's intellectual development and charts his thinking on certain topics. One of the aspects of Mill's life (which seems to generally well known) that I found most impressive was that Mill's father, in association with the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, developed a program of education for Mill that was intended to create a perfect utilitarian. Perhaps not surprisingly after such a regimented upbringing Mill eventually moved away from some of these ideas and even went so far as to actively criticize Bentham's utilitarian positions. I am really looking forward to reading the rest of the introduction as well as a few of the essays.

-I had an ultrasound yesterday afternoon. It seems that I still have at least a few big stones, though I will likely only get the formal confirmation of this in a few weeks. That this is the case wasn't surprising in the least.