By the time a student reaches Calculus level courses in college they have already knocked off quite a few of the mathematically challenging courses such as algebra and geometry. They are ready for some serious math now! Preparing for the first Calculus class can bring with it a rude awakening. It hits just about the time the student completes enrollment, grabs this semester’s schedule and heads into the bookstore to purchase the required mathematics textbooks. If only purchasing discount Calculus textbooks could be less mathematically complicated.

Advanced Calculus

Actually, most students are not aware of the money that can be saved when they buy cheap textbooks online. The bookstore is set up to make as much money as they can on unsuspecting students who do not know that there are other ways of obtaining required textbooks for their classes. The bookstore isn’t going to give students a discount; they are going to try to get as much of the student’s school money as they can because they know that the books are necessary for those who are serious about attending classes and maintaining a successful college career.

Thankfully there are online resources where students can purchase discount textbooks. These are the same books that are required for their college classes, as well as the same book that the bookstore has available for an incredibly high price! Students can save a lot of money if they choose to buy textbooks online. Buying textbooks online can also save time. It’s the best way to eliminate a trip to the campus bookstore only to stand in line for a very long time to pay for overpriced books.

The school budget is tight enough already with all the other costs associated with attending school. And purchasing textbooks can almost be like adding insult to injury until now. Purchasing inexpensive Calculus books online can seriously help reduce the financial impact of returning to classes. It is as simple as knowing the title and the author. You can buy textbooks online and put the money saved toward all the other many necessities that will come along while you pursue your coursework! It will give you one less thing to have to worry about.

When you see this book in the shelves, and you skim through it, you will be attracted to the caption at the back that says this book aims not to alarm you about the use of Internet, but it is also not intended to proclaim Internet as if to sing praises for its glory. Seeing how important the Internet is, I find no reason to antagonize today’s technology, but it is a good idea too to be aware of what these devices can do to us. “The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr gives a decently balanced view about the matter by tracing the history of books, reading, and technology. It also points out the developments including how maps and clocks were altered, our perspectives on the changes, and how our brains really are made of and how it works.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

To think that the Internet can make us more attention deficit is far from original and only an axiom. One of Carr’s (the author) main problems in this information era is that it has made it hard for people, even those educated ones to just sit down and read a book the conventional way.

Carr’s major criticism that is quite obvious in the title of the book is that, as our knowledge gets broader and readily accessible, it gets shallower, too. It means we do not have time and patience to stay with just one idea for long to thoroughly evaluate it. We are too restless to move to the next website like Facebook, Tweet, blog post and so on.

Arguing with Carr’s arguments is hard, but finally, he cannot really provide a solution to the problem. There is not a real criticism if a solution can not be provided. We can not simply discard the Internet and never use it again, and many people will not be happy about that even if that is possible. For those people who despise it really, a total collapse of civilization and a giant step backwards to the early times would be their best hope. Of course, that is a possibility that most of us can consider inconceivable at this time.

Maybe, Carr, like most people, overrates the true value of conventional book learning. From another perspective, reading is a simulated activity that promotes a particularly left brained and Aristotelian point of view. We could just consider the Internet as a portion of giving tribute to the computer age and we romanticize it slightly.

The Shallows gives some good point regarding the Internet. If you are an affectionate reader, the best cure to Carr’s warnings is to keep reading and net surfing balanced, which means we should not rely solely on the net. You can also listen to books on tape, which is a more healthy way of letting your brain absorb information.

One thing is clear. The Internet is able to distract and waste our time if we don’t use it intelligently. This, of course, has to be kept in our minds and the benefits of it. At least, the Shallows remind us of what we may lose when we are online.

Many people believe that they are being eco-friendly when they purchase an eBook instead of a traditional paperback or hardback book. After all, aren’t you saving trees by purchasing the e-version? While it’s true that the book industry has a significant impact on our environment, the manufacture and production of the technology on which eBooks are read could be even more detrimental.

Think about it. The trend right now is to read your eBooks on an e-reader tablet, such as the Nook, Kindle, Sony Reader or the more multipurpose iPad. All of these devices consume power, require natural resources to manufacture such as plastic which is man-made but derived from oil… and cause the burning of fossil fuels in transport to where they are sold. Not to mention the fact that planned obsolescence is ingrained into the tech industry, meaning that as soon as the market has become saturated with one sort of e-reader, the companies that produce them devise a new one to make the old one obsolete. Therefore, the average consumer must buy a new product – contributing even more to the devices’ carbon footprint – to not fall “behind the times” in terms of technology.

Some people might argue that you do not have to purchase an e-Reader to read eBooks, and that’s true. People can read eBooks from their home computers. However, computers and laptops also have a huge impact on the environment. Again, we have an example of machines that are part of planned obsolescence by tech companies. Tons of obsolete computers end up in landfills. So computers and laptops also contribute to resource depletion, environmental pollution and ultimately, climate change.

While many of us would like to believe that the solution is to purchase and encourage the development of eco-friendly computers and devices, the truth is that as long as planned obsolescence remains in the tech industry, and the rate at which people use and discard these machines remains high, the production of laptops and devices like eReaders is simply unsustainable. The best we can do to use technology more sustainably is to hold on to our computers for as long as possible, share computers with family and friends or use public computers at our city or university library, and recycle our computers and devices when they become too outdated to be of any use.

Compare this to the book industry, in which the primary factors of environmental concern is that they are derived from paper, which requires the cutting down of trees, the energy expended during the manufacturing process and in the paper mills, the transfer of books to wholesale sellers, and the transport of books to individual retail bookstores (like your university’s student bookstore). For the average reader who reads 5-10 books a year, it’s usually a better bet to go with a traditional hardcover or paperback book after all, or better yet, buy used books or check out books from the library. Additionally many books have a longer lifespan than just a single reader, so this helps toad to their increased lifetime value as well as to decrease the lifetime environmental cost of each book.

This guest post was written by Mariana Ashley
 

Mariana Ashley is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com.

Have you purchased gasoline lately? Did you notice the price? Actually, almost everything has jumped up in price lately. For the college student this means tuition hikes as well as housing increases. Textbooks are no exception. For those attending colleges, purchasing textbooks required for classes can be the only thing that is as troublesome on the educational budget as trying to pay tuition. Sorting through the process of trying to find cheap World History textbooks can cause headaches and money troubles. But now the student can buy these textbooks online.

College bookstores are known to charge outrageous prices for supplies that are required for classes. But now the student can find affordable textbooks online. Purchasing discount textbooks can relieve a lot of pressures on the pocketbook of the student. All that is needed is the title of the book required for the course and the author. The mind can now be filled with knowledge about world history without emptying the bank account.

Peruse through titles and authors to find all the affordable textbooks that will be needed to complete the course. They are accessible and easy to find as well as easy to purchase. Buying textbooks online can also save students lots of time that can be quickly absorbed looking through stacks of books at the bookstore. Even if the correct text is found it can still mean very long wait times in line just to pay a huge amount of money. Finding the same title online can save both tons of money as well as equally important time.

In an effort to escape from the ever present bad news that seems to be the cornerstone of our current civilization I have spent much time recently watching old movies, and reading good books.

The desire that I feel to escape to a “happier time” is understandable, after all, we are living in an unstable world, where no one knows what the next shoe that will drop will be. Oddly enough, instead of turning to fantasy or other such genres I find greater comfort in books that mimic reality, reading about the extremes of what could be possible, but thankfully what has not yet occurred.

One such book is “Death Wave” by Stephen Kahn. This book provides an excellent analysis into much of what is currently happening in our world – in terms of the financial crisis.

From the book cover:

“In the midst of a financial crisis one man must save the world with the aid of a maniacal serial killer, his dead hamster, and a homeless bum named “Troll”.

Stewart is a young man trying to keep it together during the worst financial crisis since the great depression. The corrupt politics and corporate scandals…”

If you want to read more about this book, or listen to free excerpts from the audio book, please go to http://www.kafilmworks.com/deathwave/contents