What do you think of it? Sexy? Boring? Whatever the case may be, it is the first new Lotus in 13 years.

Yes, they’ve come out with some new models more recently than 13 years, but these have been souped-up versions of existing cars (think Exige - Elise). This one, though - the Evora - is all new, and to be completely honest, I’m not sure I like the looks.

There isn’t much data available yet on the Evora (Top Gear was nice enough to get these images from the British Motor Show). However, one thing that Lotus have claimed is that the Evora will do 0-60 in under 5 seconds… which is enough to make up for the mediocre looks.

Pop quiz! Where are all the terrorists in the Middle East?

I say we ask John McCain the same question. After all, he is the candidate the Republicans are trying to paint as the best choice for National Security.

There is a problem, however. John McCain has proven today that he truly doesn’t know what the hell is going on around him.

As is mentioned in this article from the Huffington Post, a lot of people were expecting a political gaffe from Barack Obama this week, as he’s been in the Middle East strengthening his international credentials. However…

The only foreign policy error made in the last few days came this morning on ABC’s Good Morning America, when John McCain made ANOTHER geography gaffe while trying to criticize Obama’s visit to Iraq. (Just last week, McCain repeatedly referred to Czechoslovakia, a country that hasn’t existed since 1993.)

It seems that Diane Sawyer posed a question to Mr. McCain concerning whether or not the “situation in Afghanistan is precarious and urgent.” To this, Mr. McCain offered a thoughtful response straight off of the Straight-Talk Express:

I think it’s serious. . . . It’s a serious situation, but there’s a lot of things we need to do. We have a lot of work to do and I’m afraid it’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.

Anyone else rolling on the floor with laughter?

For those who aren’t, consider this: Iraq does NOT border Pakistan. Afghanistan does, of course, but call me crazy: I think a presidential hopeful should be able to discern the two.

The really big question is this: how many Republicans watching Good Morning America were also completely unaware of the geography in the Middle East? I’m willing to bet a majority here, based on the fact that one must be completely ignorant to be a member of the Right.

I’ve recently had some debate with someone who is best described as a fanboy. Except that she’s a girl.

The topic of our conversation was, in part, Blackberry. Not the naturally occurring capsule of fruity goodness, mind, but the seemingly popular mobile device by Research in Motion. You see, this person just bought one of Apple’s new iPhone 3Gs, and was keen to point out some issues that she thought the Blackberry did better with. This led to some absolutely useless arguing over personal preference, but it also got me thinking about the topic of mobile phones in general; now, I can say with certainty, smart phones are for dumb people.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve owned a smart phone before, so I’m not one of those jealous fools who claim that Ford is better than Ferrari simply because they can’t afford the latter.

My qualm is this: Apple’s iPhone does many things very well. It has email support on par with that of a desktop PC, for one. Its video support is very good. The internet experience is wonderful with Safari, and the device has a general look and feel that is pleasing on many levels. In short, the iPhone does a lot more than a regular phone will do, which gives it something very important: purpose.

The Blackberry, however, is a different animal. Email support is decent, but not great. The internet experience is similar to what one would get on standard Motorola mobile phone, for example, and the text entry scheme is troublesome at best. The Blackberry is one of a certain kind of device that I like to refer to as a “Jack device.” Think “jack of all trades” here: it tries to do a lot of things, but does none well.

Jack devices like the Blackberry annoy me to no end. My little Motorola does not have a pleasing internet experience, but it works. The text messaging capability is good. The photo and video capability is good. The built-in organizer is sufficient, and it will sync with my desktop computer. Is this a Jack device? No, simply because it doesn’t claim to be anything fancy, and it isn’t.

The Blackberry, on the other hand, claims to be the Wunderkind of the mobile market. But what is it really? It doesn’t have a pleasing internet experience, and the text capability is the same as a basic phone, as is the organization capability and the photo capability. What makes this a Jack device? It claims to be more than a basic phone, and it requires a data plan, to boot.

If you’re going to buy something that needs a data plan to operate, get an iPhone: it claims to be a Wunderkind, and it is. If you don’t need a nice internet experience, but want other features to work as expected, get something more basic, like a Motorola, and skip the data plan.

Blackberry, like all Jack devices, is right in the middle. Its more expensive, for no more functionality. And that, my friends, is as bad as it gets.

Other Jack devices? Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Apple’s Macbook Air, and every SUV ever made by anyone.

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Say it ain’t so: it seems Hollywood has seen the need to take a chance at ruining another classic television series by completely changing it for the silver screen. If you like your Hawaiian shirts as much as I do, you won’t be pleased.

From People:

McConaughey, 38, is reportedly reading the script (written by Dodgeball’s Rawson Thurber), but has not yet announced whether he’ll accept the role of Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV.

Is this really necessary? Think about this for a moment: Tom Selleck is alive, and he doesn’t look too bad for his age. Roger Mosley is still alive, too (who played TC), and so is John Hillerman (Higgins). In fact, it would be difficult to find an original cast member who isn’t still alive and kicking.

Why not do what Spielberg did for Indiana Jones and bring the original cast back in a piece set some 30 years after the series? Is that really so wrong? Must every beloved series be changed into some kind of neo-comical dribble?

It happened with Starsky and Hutch. It also happened with the Dukes of Hazzard. It would have happened with Miami Vice, if Colin Farrell didn’t happen to be such a bad ass.

Come on, Hollywood. Give us one good movie based on a classic. Sure, the teenieboppers won’t go and see it because they won’t recognize anyone, and it might not make as much money as a result. But really… consider it restitution for Iron Man.

When I was in elementary school, I remember being told the importance of critical thinking. The questions posed under the “critical thinking” guise were always more difficult and took more time, but they allowed for a greater range of creative answers than a normal academic question. This was the purpose of critical thinking.

It seems that Louisiana, with the passage of the “Academic Freedom” bill, wants to redefine the word to serve a Christian agenda.

From Arstechnica:

The text of the LSEA suggests that it’s intended to foster critical thinking, calling on the state Board of Education to “assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories.” Unfortunately, it’s remarkably selective in its suggestion of topics that need critical thinking, as it cites scientific subjects “including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

I should say: if Creationists and other heathens were as accepting of the idea of Evolution as they expect the world to be in accepting Creationism, I wouldn’t have a problem with them. They expect everyone to subscribe to Creationism, however, and anyone else (according to their flawed Weltanschauung) is terribly misinformed.

It is for this reason that I am suggesting renaming the “Academic Freedom” bill to something more fitting… perhaps the “Biblical Past” bill, or even the “Academic Stupidity” bill, as that is all it will really generate.

One of the inherent problems, of course, with a bill of this type, is the scope of the material involved. Evolution is a vast and complex scientific entity, one which has oodles of information under its umbrella, enough for study over a span of years, or even decades. Creation, on the other hand, is limited to a few pages in the Greatest Fiction Story Ever Told, and it is famously vague, leaving countless items of importance unanswered (as one would expect from any book designed to quench the curiosity of the stupid).

Even with this vast disparity between the two topics, you can bet that the Christian Right (who, ironically, is almost always wrong) will give infinitely more time to the study of Creationism. The little time given to Evolution will be used for discussion of the incorrect “man from monkeys” hypothesis. Creationists always come up with this strange “man to monkey” argument when attempting to look at Evolution. I think it’s because it’s all that a feeble Christian mind can handle. I wonder if they know how stupid they sound, as Evolution makes no claim of humans coming from modern-day monkeys? I doubt it. They’re too busy praying to understand.

So, with that said, here’s what I would propose. If Creationists want so bad their flawed curriculum to be taught in schools, those in charge of the curriculum and those who would teach it must also go and get a degree in Evolutionary Biology. The advantages of this would be two-fold. First, one could be sure that the incorrect “man from monkeys” argument never rears its ugly head; if they are going to teach Creationism along side Evolution, they need to be damn well versed in Evolution (at least as versed as they are in Creationism). Since Evolution has so much more information contained within it, they’ll need a degree to present it and not some falsehood like man from monkeys generated by Creationists.

Secondly, once the stupidity has been expunged from the equation through the degrees in Evolutionary Biology, there won’t be any need to teach Creationism. The Creationists will be no more. You see, a Creationist is made of three things: stupidity, laziness and arrogance. All three things float in a sort of intellectual ether and feed off of each other. The laziness comes from the stupidity: they are too stupid to understand science, and so they become lazy and choose to get “answers” from a few pages of fiction instead. The arrogance comes also from the stupidity: the stupidity, of course, caused them to read the book, which tells them also that their viewpoint must be the correct one (even though it was written before Darwin was even born). And the laziness feeds everything: because they’re lazy they’ll remain stupid, as they wont go and educate themselves as to what Evolution actually says, and they will also remain arrogant, because it’s far easier to do that than to hear the opposition and think critically about their arguments.

All of this might seem a bit harsh to say against those little Creationists in the midwest. That’s really too bad. If their errs weren’t so blatantly obvious, and their attitudes against Evolutionists and Free Thinkers not equally harsh, I might choose to be a bit nicer. Alas, now I shall not rest until the last of Creationist stupidity has been expunged from the earth. And while we’re at it, we might as well get rid of those damned anti-abortionists, too.

My Intensive Japanese class starts tomorrow for Summer Session. I’ve got 30 Hiragana under my belt… and much more to come. Wish me luck!

Here’s an interesting tidbit: anyone ever used the word “dord?”

According to Snopes, this word is a “ghost word.” It never existed in the English lexicon, but did appear in Webster’s dictionary. How could something like that happen?

It seems that the confusion came about by an old system of cards employed by Webster’s in the 1930s to design their dictionaries.

If they deduced that there was a word that needed to be added to the next edition, a card was typed up containing the word and its listing, and it was added to a pile of cards consisting of new additions. Abbreviations, too, were handled in this way (like lb for pound), but those cards were placed into a different pile.

It seems that the abbreviation “D” for density (in physics) was to be added to the dictionary in the next edition. The card read “D or d,” denoting the abbreviation in the capital and lower cases. However, the card was misplaced; instead of going into the abbreviation pile, it was placed in the word pile.

When the new edition was actually being designed, the card was subsequently misread; instead of being the abbreviation D or d, it was read simply as a word: dord. Thus, an entry for a nonexistent word was added to Webster’s dictionary.

Of course, the modern edition contains no such thing. It does make one wonder, however: if I decide to use the word “dord” instead of density for some type of academic work, and I provide a dictionary that contains the word, am I still wrong?

Normally, I post linguistics papers on my language-only blog, LINGUISTIquips. This particular paper, however, is more related to sociolinguistic aspects of language (a largely sociopolitical issue), and so I decided it was worthy of the pages of Crispy Quips.

I recently completed this paper for a class in Multilingualism at UC Davis. It’s got a few illustrations, so I’m providing it in PDF form instead of formatting it for the web.

The work is concerned with the language policy of South Africa, and how English seems to retain political dominance even though native languages (such as Zulu and Xhosa) are more commonly spoken. Do give it a read; it’s worth your time.

Click here for PDF: South African Language Policy