Accessing shipping cost in Magento's cart and/or checkout?

First, try not to worry too much about performance until you see an actual bottleneck somewhere. Have faith in the multitude of caching systems. Put more cynically, Magento's already a bit of a SQL beast, so if you have a store tuned well a few extra queries won't hurt.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.