College Life Today

Since Paper Masters is all about making life easier for the college student, we get pretty excited when something new comes out that is destined to change the playing field for students. Yesterday, January 26th, Apple announced the launching of its latest stroke of genius, the iPad. The iPad is a step up from the iTouch but not quite a mac book. Apple touts it as an e-reader, an app platform, e-mail client, web browser and photo viewer. What we are so excited about is the e-reader and app platform on the iPad, destined to be perfect for many student related activities, such as note-taking, text-book access and organizing class information.

First and foremost, Apple is working with textbook companies such as McGraw-Hill to provide textbooks on the iPad through their iBook Store. This will be a substantial savings to students and convenience, as the iPad will have numerous capabilities of highlighting, inserting notes and copying important text to a notepad. Toss the backpack and have all your texts in one place! Read more…

Google has just made finding sources a ton easier for college students working on a research paper. Hopefully you are familiar with Google books, Google’s great feature that provides 1.5 million books for free online. Google has 5.5 million more books scanned, searchable and waiting for the go ahead from the Justice Department to implement selling books online. The cool part of Google’s goals in selling books online is search factor that will go along with every book they offer, free or otherwise. Google is making all its e-books .html capable, meaning that you can copy and paste from books, put snippets of books on a blog and search flawlessly through content without ocr restrictions.

Google books is a great service, offering hundreds of thousands of books online for free viewing. Keep an eye on their services as an invaluable tool for research results. As a student, your time is valuable and finding great resources for research papers from your computer at home instead of having to go to the library is invaluable.

Google books are also available via Barnes and Noble eReader called Nook. The Nook is a great way to access Google Books and many of them are free to download for the Nook. You have the ability to carry around any Google Book in your backpack, without an internet connection! Fabulous for students and great for having available for note taking.

Hats off to Google Books for making their educational materials so accessible for college students. While Google gets a bad rap for many of the information gathering and privacy issues that they overstep their bounds with, they are frequently ahead of the game on providing educational materials and print to the public with astounding altruism.

A 3 year legal battle is coming to a climax as the University of Wisconsin is getting their day in court with the term paper mill R2C2 Inc. R2C2 Inc. sells term papers on the internet without the consent of the author, which is blatant plagiarism. The law suite was filed in 2006 and is intended to put a halt to term paper mills on the internet. Term paper mills resell the same papers an infinite amount of times to students that either pay to join a service for access to a database of term papers or pay to download individual papers that are available from a database of 1000’s of pre-written term papers. Term paper mills meet the criteria for plagiarism at several levels, most notably, using an author’s works without their permission. The author’s of the term papers that are downloaded receive no credit or compensation for the term paper that is being sold, nor have they given permission for the term paper mill to sell their work. Read more…

Back in the industrial revolution, technology got a bad rap. Think of the film Metropolis and Fritz Lang’s depiction of the future of industrial labor under the strong arm of technology. However, today’s college students can hardly scoff at technology, as it drives their lives in nearly every aspect. Journalism classes at Purdue University require Twitter accounts; New software called Hotseat allows students to ask questions live, during class via their facebook, twitter, myspace or sms accounts. Think of the limitless possibilities of social media technology in light of past predicaments. If only Juliet had text messaging, that whole “I just committed suicide” misunderstanding could have been avoided. I can see it now…Juliet texts Romeo “brb…taking fake poison…napping, catch you later in tomb”. Easy as that, no communication problems. Think about Twitter and the Holocaust…”Hitler’s an ass…I don’t buy a word of his crap”. “Germany is killing Jews, wtf are they thinking!”. Or how about the fall of man: Read more…

Netbooks have received a vast amount of criticism over the past year but one area that they excel in without debate is for use in the educational setting. Cheap, compact and powerful enough for student applications like word and the internet, netbooks seem tailored for college students.

While cheap generally is connotative with “sacrifice what you really need”, I find this not to be the case. I work weekends on a netbook from a hotel room and not once have I ever run into a situation that I felt a lack of memory, power or screen space. I even do web development on my Toshiba NB205, and find the 10″ screen just fine for seeing the big picture. Read more…

Herta Mueller, tenacious and stubborn, most certainly would be the topic of a research paper worth writing! With her vivid and moving descriptions of Romania under communism, Mueller can be a research paper case study in one that truly deserves the Nobel literature prize she received. Overcoming the obstacle of being banned in her own country, Mueller managed to get published in Germany and launch her career among international controversy. Her first collection of short stories, Niederungen, illustrated the hardships of living in a tiny village in Romania under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. She followed her first publication with her brilliant work Oppressive Tango, but also received harsh criticism of the writing from the Romanian National Press.

Mueller’s work are as follows:

* Niederungen, short stories, censored version published in Bucharest 1982. Uncensored version published in Germany 1984. Published in English as Nadirs in 1999 by the University of Nebraska Press.[4]
* Drückender Tango (”Oppressive Tango”), stories, Bucharest 1984
* Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt, Berlin 1986. Published in English as The Passport, Serpent’s Tail, 1989 ISBN 9781852421397
* Barfüßiger Februar (”Barefoot February”), Berlin 1987
* Reisende auf einem Bein, Berlin 1989. Published in English as Traveling on One Leg, Hydra Books/Northwestern University Press, 1992.[5]
* Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet (”How Perception Invents Itself”), Paderborn 1990
* Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel (”The Devil is Sitting in the Mirror”), Berlin 1991
* Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (”Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter), Reinbek by Hamburg 1992
* Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett (”A Warm Potato Is a Warm Bed), Hamburg 1992
* Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm (”The Guard Takes His Comb”), Reinbek by Hamburg 1993
* Angekommen wie nicht da (”Arrived As If Not There”), Lichtenfels 1994
* Herztier, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994. Published in an English translation by Michael Hofmann as The Land of Green Plums, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996[6]
* Hunger und Seide (”Hunger and Silk”), essays, Reinbek by Hamburg 1995
* In der Falle (”In a Trap”), Göttingen 1996
* Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet, Reinbek by Hamburg 1997. Published in English as The Appointment, Metropolitan Books/Picador, New York/London 2001
* Der fremde Blick oder das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne (”The Foreign View, or Life Is a Fart in a Lantern”), Göttingen 1999
* Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame (”A Lady Lives in the Hair Knot”), poetry, Reinbek by Hamburg 2000
* Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird (”Home Is What Is Spoken There”), Blieskastel 2001
* Der König verneigt sich und tötet (”The King Bows and Kills), essays, Munich (and elsewhere) 2003
* Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen (”The Pale Gentlemen with their Espresso Cups”), Munich (and elsewhere) 2005
* Atemschaukel, Munich 2009

Worries that tariffs and restrictions on tire imports to America from China would impact China’s willingness to talk global climate change were put to rest in New York this week, as China talked a surprisingly strong and encouraging rhetoric for meeting stringent carbon targets. However, in a disappointing show for the host of the summit, President Obama failed to deliver a 1-2 punch type of speech and merely reiterated the warnings against a path to failure if complacency continues. Perhaps Obama felt pleased that the talks were even taking place after China angrily retorted at the Obama administration for cutting its throat on tire imports to America. However, I would expect that the leader of one of the top industrial nations in the world and the host of the summit would take no prisoners when it comes to climate talks.

I had high hopes for Obama on the environment. An educated man with few ties to oil (a refreshing change from the past 8 years) can certainly see that America needs a boost in its effort to establish a global climate policy that leads the world. The United States typically obstructs rather than leads the world in addressing climate change, as demonstrated by Presidents Clinton and Bush. The most significant issues related to global warming include the following: 1) The costs and benefits of climate changes; 2) What actions should be taken to mitigate these changes; and 3) How the available policies may vary amongst countries over time. Some areas of North America are particularly vulnerable to potential damage, such as New Orleans, while others, such as Canada, may benefit from such climate shifts. Time is of the essence, since there are a number of extended intervals between changes.

The issue of global warming possesses a number of serious consequences for Planet Earth. The increased emission of greenhouse gases and other related concerns has led to widespread shifts in climate across the world. In North America, a number of areas have been dramatically affected, including the Great Lakes Region, which has experienced increased amounts of snowfall over the past few decades.

College students are in a very powerful place in their lives to make change on a grand scale. The 18 to twenty-somethings are grouped together, educated and generally open to looking at the world in a new light, as they are recently freed from the influence of their parents. We encourage the college students we work with to become involved in active in the educational process beyond the classroom, that is, what is going on socially with their peers. Social change can happen on a grand scale, beginning with the college campus. Take the example of protests going on all over campuses over the use of coal. From Penn State to Georgia State, students are protesting the use of coal-based fuel, some of which produces the majority of power on campus.

Coal was among the first fossil fuels to be collected for producing energy or power. It lost favor when oil and gas were found to burn more cleanly. However, coal has once again become useful for generating power or providing heat or electricity. New technologies have reduced the harmful emissions that result from burning coal.  Students on the campuses that use coal are concerned that the harm to the environment isn’t worth the cost savings of using a non-renewable resource. Furthermore, students are upset over the message that colleges are sending. As institutions of higher learning, colleges should be ashamed of campuses that operate coal plants. Coal, just like wood and other fossil fuels, is a limited resource.  The over-use of coal, with its inevitable carbon dioxide emissions, is attributed to increasing the greenhouse affect. Keep an eye on how well students are doing in kicking coal off college campuses.

Students can make a difference on a global scale. Get involved in social change issues on your college campus and you’ll meet people, learn about change in a changing world and do something productive with the power you have.

How could sex, ethics, politics and the California political crisis not score with professors for a research paper topic! At Paper Masters, we are constantly trying to give our readers fresh ideas on how to approach writing research papers with fresh ideas and angles that will give professor’s something interesting to read about while illustrating a thorough understanding of the topic area. Mike Duvall is a gift from the Research Paper Gods! Last July, Duvall, a second-term California assemblyman, gets ready for a televised committee meeting, not knowing his microphone is on. The self-proclaimed christian conservative with staunch family values begins spouting off about his sexual conquests with a lobbyist and his many other triumphs of philandering, cheating on his wife and various other activities associated with bodily fluid emission. Read more…

Partisan politics at its best! President Obama gives a back to school speech encouraging excellence and participation in politics in students and the GOP goes nuts! Tuesday’s back to school speech included encouragement from President Obama for students to write letters on how they can help the President or what they admire about him. Conservatives in Washington went ballistic with claims that the President is pushing a liberal agenda in schools and trying to sway students to liberal politics. In light of pre-speech backlash, President Obama canceled the lesson plan that was prepared by the White House to go along with the speech, as it aired in schools across the nation. However, amazingly, the President was able to send the message of “stay in school and work hard” to the students without any Republican backlash. Whew! Read more…