Look familiar?

Shopping for textbooks will still be painful for your wallet next year, but at least it will be easier. This fall, Blackboard will launch with a feature that lets you buy textbooks from Labyrinth online, at a 30% discount. Once you’ve registered for courses, you’ll be able to see the required and recommended books within Blackboard, pick the ones you like, charge them to your student account, and drop by Labyrinth for the pre-bagged set, making it simpler than ever to be a lazy college student.

Yes, it’s still limited to Labyrinth, and no, it does nothing about the Pequod monopoly, but it will list prices for books in all conditions – not just new. Even better, a Labyrinth representative said the reading lists will be available before the week classes begin, eliminating one of the only remaining inconveniences to shopping around for cheaper books online.

Cold, sterile shelves of capitalism (via flickr)

Oh hey freshman carrying two very heavy-looking Labyrinth bags. What’s that? Oh, you like playing exorbitant prices for books that you’ll read ten pages of and never look at again?

For those of you who don’t wallpaper their rooms with euros or enjoy shilling top-shelf prices for absorbing titles like “Fundamentals of Microeconomics, Fifth Edition, with Special Accompanying Compact Disc You Realistically Won’t Ever Open,” take this piece of advice: Don’t buy from Labyrinth.

Yeah I guess buying books at Labyrinth would be cool, if it weren’t for the fact that Amazon has all the books you need, for a fraction of the price, and you don’t even need to schlep from Nassau with a crapload of volumes you won’t need for another four weeks. You won’t have to mess with the lines, or the humans, if that’s a sticking point for you. (Also, ever notice you can’t talk on the phone in there? Who are these people?)

Plus, now Amazon is offering a free one-year membership to its Prime service for college students (that’s you!), which means that you get free 2-day shipping for practically all the books you’re going to be ordering from them. Check the offer out here.

So, freshman with tired arms, I implore you, take those books back. There’s some fundamental microeconomics for you.

First of all, all classes are canceled. So you can toss that out the window.

Second, what dining facilities are open? All dining halls are, Frist is open, and basically all dining facilities are open besides the WWS Café and Witherspoon’s in Frist (in front of Viv). But Witherspoon’s might be open later today. Café Viv is going to be closed.

Dillon Gym is going to be open also, so you can get your sweat on.

How about non-University stuff?

Well, Panera didn’t respond to our calls, so we can assume they’re closed. Olive’s is open at the moment, but will be closing early (around 2:30). Labyrinth says they’re open right now until noon, but might close for the afternoon. (We recommend calling to make sure if you plan on going up to these places, anyway.)

Wawa said they’re open for business today at the time of this post, and said they’d remain open whatever happened. Troopers, we say, real troopers.

from Centraljersey.com

“Only the super-rich can save us!” cries a Hurricane Katrina victim in Ralph Nader’s new book.

Titled “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” the 736-page novel is the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate’s first work of fiction.

”This book was written out of frustration,” Mr. Nader said. “Increasingly, the doors have been shut on citizen groups in Washington, D.C. What did we need to keep those doors open?”

The answer, he suggested, was money.

In the novel, the group of philanthropists, which includes media mogul Ted Turner, artist Yoko Ono and actor Bill Cosby, consists of “real people in fictional roles,” Mr. Nader said.

To read the story, visit Centraljersey.com.