Aston Martin's Next Hypercar Gets A Suitably Fantastic Name
The Aston Martin AM-RB 003, the planned hypercar successor to the V-12 hybrid-powered Valkyrie, has just been given its official name: Valhalla. Like the Valkyrie, the name Valhalla originates from Norse mythology. It's the name given to the widely celebrated hall in Asgard, an ancient warrior's paradise. Created in collaboration with Red Bull Advanced Technologies and F1 design legend Adrian Newey, just 500 examples of the Valhalla coupe will be built. Like the Valkyrie, the Valhalla will use advanced lightweight carbon fiber-intensive construction. The design borrows heavily from the Valkyrie as well, though it's not as extreme-Aston Martin wants this to be a car you can use every day. It has space for luggage and even a mount for your phone on the dash. As Aston Martin said during the reveal of the Valhalla at the Geneva Motor Show in March 2019, the car will be powered by a combination of a turbocharged V-6 and some sort of hybrid system. It'll also be the first production road car to get Castrol's revolutionary Nexcel 90-second oil change system, which was first tested on the track-only Vulcan.
In my profession, doing such a thing would cost me my academic credibility, and probably my job as well. If you have any doubt about whether something should be cited, I expect you either to cite it, or to check with me beforehand. After your work is turned in, I will accept no excuse. If you engage in academic dishonesty in any part of an assignment, you will fail the entire course. Plagiarism is a mortal sin, and a deed you'll regret for the rest of your life. Especially if you get away with it. 10. Draw on all the relevant course materials! What should you cite? Above all, the course materials. The point of most assignments is to get you back into the course materials. I want to see evidence that you are interacting deeply with the texts and lecture material along the lines of the stated question. If I don't see it, your grade will suffer. In fact, it may suffer, be buried, and not rise on the third day.
Secondary research is less important, often not important at all. While research papers are important projects in a college education, I assign few of them. I would rather take on the task of helping you discover how to read a few books in depth than how to scan a library shelf. By the way, for now, unless I say otherwise, you can add "Internet research" to your list of oxymorons ("jumbo shrimp," "television journalism," "Pepsi Cola"). The library is where you will find peer-reviewed work that reputable scholars thought promising enough to publish, and your school thought important enough to purchase. The Internet is where you will find material offered for free whose quality you are not yet capable of judging. Avoid it unless you are sure it comes from reputable sources. You don't know where that stuff has been! Hopefully its easy for you, to quickly spot all 8 mistakes which were in this sentense. If not, get to work on your style, pronto. I have required, conditionally required, and recommended books on grammar and style over the years.
If you don't like my choices, you may prefer William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style (Macmillan, 4th ed., 1979). It is clear, brief, and affordable. Of course, some in the wired generation prefer hypertext, no matter how good or inexpensive the paper alternative. For you, I suggest working through Susan Snively's Writing Better: A Handbook for Amherst Students, or Dr. Ed Vavra's on-line grammar. The truly feeble will want to rent Schoolhouse Rock on DVD. Do I "grade off" for poor grammar, spelling, or style? On your course evaluations, do you take into account how well your teachers communicate? I hope you do. An argument is poorer when presented poorly, and this is inevitably reflected in how it is received. I'm your professor, not your pen pal. If your grammar or style needs work, have a friend or relative read your work to help you see where you're being unclear. Sometimes sentences I think make perfect sense turn out only to make sense to me. For help copy-editing, I recommend Claire Kehrwald Cook, Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing.
Read and imitate well-written material. Textbooks rarely qualify; they often train us away from clear writing. But there are some lovely books, including lovely textbooks, that can help you learn what good writing feels like. Magazines such as The Atlantic can too. If you can write like these people write, your work will really sparkle. In fact, you can be a professional writer, which pays even more poorly than teaching. Look for simple words that do the work of complex ones. Do not utilize them; just use them. English is full of Germanic words, which tend to be short, common, and at home in our tongue, and Greek and Latin words, which are imported into our language, usually complex, and thus more difficult to comprehend. Often you can substitute (or trade) a Germanic word for a Greek- or Latin-based word without sacrificing precision. Theology doesn't always make it easy to do this (the word itself comes from Latinized Greek words), and sometimes imported words really are better choices (I can't think of a better alternative to "sacrificing precision"), but do your best.