johnStuart Mill - The utlimate collection of online works, papers, and biography

Our homeowner’s association has really strict rules about how everything in the community must look. I’m required to keep my yard looking great at all times. It’s difficult for me to keep up with everything because I work really long hours, so I called in a professional. My brother recommended a tree service in Nassau County that he had used in the past. I called them up, and they agreed to come over and give me an estimate for the work that I wanted regularly performed.

I enjoy gardening, but at this stage in my life I really need professional help to keep up with everything. The tree service I contacted was able to come up with a schedule for me on the spot. We talked about what it was that I was looking for, what was important to me, and what I’d like to see improved. Read the rest of this entry »

I got home from work first. We live at the end of a cul de sac. Our house is actually separated from neighbors by trees. I saw it when I pulled into the driveway. A large branch from an oak tree had come down during the storm we had while we were at work. The branch was on the ground and so was the gutter and a bunch of shingles. I called my wife and told her I was going to send her a video of the storm damage. I then called for roof repair in Manhattan NY to get someone out ASAP.

I went inside and up to the bedroom under the area of the roof section that was damaged. There was some evidence of water, so I knew the insulation in the attic had to be soaked. There is a lot to do when a tree comes done in a rainstorm. Not only did we have to have the roof fixed, we needed the tree removed, grass replanted and we needed the attic dried out and the insulation replaced. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a few milestones in a person’s life that are really memorable. One of them happened to me not that long ago. My husband and I getting married was a milestone, and having our two children were two others. However, moving into the home of our dreams definitely goes on that list as well. It was a fluke that we even found the house that we all four fell in love with, but it did not take us long to make it ours. The hardest part was finding a Singapore moving company after our offer was accepted.

I guess I should not say it was the hardest thing, but I honestly thought that it was going to be. Read the rest of this entry »

I knew that I wanted to get a diploma in media design, but I had to carefully consider my options. I was raising a family, working a full time job, and I just did not have a lot of time to devote to getting an education. The twist in that though was that without more education, I was never going to get further in my job, and I was struggling financially at that level. A really good friend of mine told me to look at the Orita Sinclair School of Design, New Media and the Arts, and it turned out to be the answer to my prayers. Read the rest of this entry »

When I started looking at available jobs in my field, I was really only looking at the ones in Singapore. It made no sense to look elsewhere, since Singapore was my home. Notice that I said was, because I now live in another country. Yes, I did immigrate to Canada, but it was not something that I decided to do on a whim. I researched everything about Canada that I could possibly could first. I wanted to make sure that there were other opportunities there for me too should something happen to the job that I was interested in originally.

Also, I wanted to check on their crime stats. Read the rest of this entry »

I take my career very seriously. I work very hard to excel in the corporate sector. I am very thorough in my tasks and diligent. I always exceed expectations. Recently, my boss Mr. Jefferson invited a fellow co-worker named Ben and myself to go hunting with him in the woods. It was a rumor going around that he was looking to give one of his employees a promotion and salary boost. Mr. Jefferson was an avid hunter and used the trips to make decision. I purchased two camo guns for the trip. I knew I needed to make a good impression.

My co-worker Ben is very sycophantic. He will do and say anything to get what he wants. He knows what to say and tell to people just to get on their good side. He has a reputation at the office as being a kiss-up. Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be that apartment living was something people did while they were saving for a house and most apartments reflected that fact with their cookie cutter box design. Sure, they started calling them apartment communities at some point but they more of a conglomeration of boxes than anything resembling a community. Today that has changed as many people don’t want the high cost of getting into a house and expect more from the standard box style apartment living. Real apartment communities such as the The Marq Highland Park located in Florida are leading the way to what a real apartment community should look and feel like.

These new apartment communities are real communities surrounded by all the amenities you come to expect when looking for that perfect place to live. Read the rest of this entry »

I have decided that it is going to be a good idea to make a big deal out of Anne’s birthday. Of course you can not do that with every date on the calendar, but this is one which usually hits a woman hard. She is going to turn 40 and it is not something that she really enjoys. I have been thinking about how far I want to go however, because obviously we have our bills to pay. I was trying to get a firm quote from a place called Star night – limo services in Toronto, but they do not seem to be all that eager to be pinned down. They want to get all of the details before they tell you what it is going to cost you. Read the rest of this entry »

Of course file sharing has been around as long as the Internet quite nearly, that is essentially the purpose for which it was designed. The CERN Physicist Bernards Lee who originated the idea was looking for a solution to the difficulty of categorizing and digesting scientific documents, but within a short time some guy sent off a scan of a naked girl. There have been dozens of dozens of steps between that baby step and the vast archive found on sites like the Pirate Bay. I am wondering how we go to the next step and what happens when we get to something like the sorts of speeds that they have in South Korea and Japan and other smaller nations in the Far East. Of course they have advantages when it comes to building real modern high speed networks. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a rather interesting night out last weekend. I was going out to this really swanky club and I decided to try to look a lot more affluent than I really am. That was not too hard, because I have a really nice suit and I borrowed a very expensive watch from the guy down the hall. Of course I was hoping to end up bringing home a beautiful woman. I ended up talking to two of them, and they told me that they were lesbians who were looking for a three some with a handsome man. I was definitely interested, but after a little while I began to get suspicious. You may not have heard, but there have been a number of robberies in New York City this year and they all start out in this sort of way. Most of the time the victim is actually some guy who has a lot of money. Read the rest of this entry »

They cancelled the weekly Bingo in our town. They went from every Wednesday to once every two weeks. Then they cancelled it altogether. The attendance was nearly just as high as it had been in its heyday. The problem was getting volunteers to run it every week. Many non-profits used to rely on things such as Bingo for revenue. Now I guess they have other sources. My grandmother was very upset. She went every week since the early 1970s. She only missed when the family went on vacation. I used her computer and saw the http://www.torontolimobus.limo website up on the browser. I asked her what she was up to. If you knew my grandmother, you would know she was up to something.

She told me that she had called all of her friends who used to go to Bingo with her. Then they got talking about all the people they knew at the social hall where it was held. She said she was up to 45 contacts. I asked her what all that meant. She told me that she was in charge of renting the party bus to get everyone to some big Bingo game that is held about 60 kilometers away. She said that everyone was going to drive, but they all thought that a party bus limousine ride would really be fun. Read the rest of this entry »

When the women’s ministry leader at our church asked if it would be okay to look at some bus companies for the women’s annual retreat, I told her that it was definitely within our budget to do that. Usually, all of the women carpool to wherever we are going, but this was going to be a different kind of trip. Rather than go somewhere to spend the night, she just wanted us to get out for the day and have some fellowship fun. I started looking at different bus companies, and she told me that she already had one in mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Can you think of a friend, relative, neighbor or coworker that does not have some sort of TV package coming into their home? Are you old enough to remember when we used to get TV just over an antenna or rabbit ears on the back of the set? Most people today either have cable or satellite TV in their homes. Cable has come a long way, but satellite has too. It used to be you could only get local channels with cable. Now you can go to http://satellitetelevisionpackages.com and sign up for the channels you want and they include your local channels.

What is really nice is the amount of full HD channels you can get. When you talk to your cable or satellite provider, ask how many of the channels you get will be in full HD. Also ask about the cost. Read the rest of this entry »

I live in a sleepy town with only 4,000 residents. Up until the 1990s, most of us did not have television cable, much less local channels. When the weather was just right, our TVs could pull in one local channel from a large city about an hour away. While the rest of the country had faster Internet, we had slower dialup service only. When I heard that Mississippi Hughesnet service would be coming to a nearby area to offer online services, I found myself hoping that would soon include my little town, too. We have been so behind the times in the area for far too long.

It is important that I point out the finer points of where I live as well. No cable TV service meant that area residents found other ways to entertain themselves instead. The same goes for slower online speeds because the average person really does not have the patience to surf very long with a modem that only crawls along. Yet progress absolutely does have an upside. Read the rest of this entry »

My brother moved to the states to live with my grandparents when he was a baby. Things were tough growing up how we did. However, we both had family that supported us, and we both earned our bachelor degrees. I called my brother to tell him I was enrolling to earn my mba in singapore. My brother fancies himself a comedian and asked me why I started playing basketball. I reminded him I said “MBA” not “NBA.” He told me he knew and was just being funny. Yes, that is my brother.

He told me that he had enrolled to earn his Master’s in Business Administration about three weeks ago. He was waiting to hear from me to tell me. We will be graduating at the same time. Our lives have kind of paralleled like that even though we are separated by great distance. I have been privileged to spend every other summer with him growing up and he with me here in Singapore. We both have a well rounded sense of the two cultures and places. Read the rest of this entry »

John Stuart Mill was, without question, a philosopher who was far ahead of his time. An intelligent and introspective deep thinker, what separated Mill from many of his philosophical contemporaries was his deep feelings of compassion for others. At times when it certainly was not popular nor “politically correct” to do so, John Stuart Mill spoke out in defense of women’s rights and against the cruel and horrible wrongs of slavery.

Born in Pentonville, London, England in 1806, John Stuart Mill was a strong and hugely influential contributor to both social and political theory. A stong believer in utilitarianism, the ethical theory that was created by Jeremy Bentham, Mill is thought by a great many number of historians to be the number one most influential English speaking philosopher in the entire nineteenth century. In addition to his work philosopher and political economist, Mill served as a member of the British parliament and played a very important and influential role in shaping the liberal political philosophy of his time.

John Stuart Mill’s philosophy very strongly recognized the importance of and supported the freedom of the individual in opposition to the strength and power of the state. Read the rest of this entry »

Philosophy used to be set apart from common society. There were men and women who wrote using an expansive vocabulary to describe the deepest things of human experience. They were loved and hated by their readers. Some would read what they wrote and used it to assist in formulating an opinion on everything that has to do with human existence. Others read the essays to fuel their dislike for the philosopher’s opinions. Others, who may rarely read, would point out that talking about life gets in the way of living it.

All human beings have a philosophy and a theology. We have a way of categorizing everything in nature whether it be physical, psychological or spiritual. A contempt for the philosophical among us is in itself a philosophy just as the absence of religious faith is actually a theology. Read the rest of this entry »