Today’s (Oct 12, 2012) Burnaby Now has an article on how we came to purchase our Plug-in Prius. Many thanks to Jennifer Moreau for making me sound articulate, and to Jason Lang for doing his valiant best with a not-quite-photogenic subject. 🙂 The photo was taken at a bank of
Continue readingAuthor: EclecticLip
Eclectic Lip: Muslims in America and other hidden ethnic histories
Yves at Naked Capitalism cross-posted a wonderful Alternet piece by Lynn Parramore, eviscerating the idea that Islam is new or alien to America. In truth, the Muslim faith has had a long (if lightly-populated) history in the United States. Islam arrived in America so early, the Puritans hadn’t even burnt
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The plug-in has landed!
Yesterday (Sept 26) we had the pleasure of picking up our new Prius Plug-In, at a local dealership. Apparently it’s the first one sold in British Columbia (not including prototype vehicle testing fleets, which’ve been around a couple years, but weren’t available to the public for purchase). It’s so new,
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Blogging will be light until Equinox…
Blogging has been light non-existent for the past couple weeks, as I’ve been preoccupied with a fifteen-part chronicle of my life in fuel cells. A vacation now beckons, meaning that blogging should resume around the autumnal equinox. Back soon!
Continue readingEclectic Lip: In praise of (some specific aspects of) libertarianism
(written Dec 8, 2010 — uploaded Aug 28, 2012) I ridiculed the silliness of some aspects of libertarian thought in an earlier post, and planned to offer some balance by noting that their inherent suspicion-of-authority has played a big role in raising awareness of the financial crimes and improprieties of
Continue readingEclectic Lip: How Libertarians brought America Big Religion and Bigger Lawsuits…
(originally written Nov 2010; uploaded Aug 21, 2012 as part of my Great Upload of Musings… for balance, I’ll soon post the follow-up which praises some portions of libertarian philosophy which are very dear to my progressive heart. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and I’m not above shacking up with
Continue readingEclectic Lip: The biology of phishing
Some nefarious group recently made a phishing attempt against me, trying to lure me into providing bank account information in response to an Official Looking email. Presumably, the combination of spam filters and alert consumers means phishing has a very, very low success rate. Fortunately for criminals, email has virtually no incremental
Continue readingEclectic Lip: Commemorating Joe Romm’s “Language Intelligence”
Joe Romm‘s book Language Intelligence is now out in the US (but maddeningly, remains unavailable in Canada). Early reviews proclaim it as both a rhetorical masterpiece, and a masterpiece on rhetoric. To commemorate the book in my small way, I dug up a piece I wrote for a competition on Dr. Romm’s
Continue readingEclecticLip: A post-weekend update
pem(posted May 20, 2012)/em /p pOne of Friday’s big news items was that a quot;rogue traderquot; at UBS lost the Swiss bank $2 billion.#160; He was apparently led to jail in handcuffs.#160; Meanwhile, the people a few pay-grades up who created a $3,000 billion crisis remain at large.#160; Even though
Continue readingEclecticLip: Training week…
(originally written Jan 25)
I’m in training pretty much the whole week — which fact one of my horoscopes must’ve predicted. I mean, there are so many of them floating out there, that one of them must’ve been right!
The past couple days covered FMEA, an engineering topic so obscure I’ll give the unabbreviated name (Failure Modes […]