The bill would also ban textbook makers from jacking up prices by bundling unnecessary CDs and other extras. Finally, schools would be required to publish a list of required books long before the start of classes so students could avail themselves of the free market and ferret out the cheapest prices.

Faculty should also be doing their part. Instead of assigning two expensive books and using just a few chapters of each, professors should order custom books with only the chapters they intend to assign.

Congress, though, should do what it can, because mounting textbook prices are one of a number of factors that are pushing higher education further out of reach of many young people.

That Textbook Costs How Much? $200? [NYT]
Make Textbooks Affordable [Campaign to Reduce College Textbook Costs]
H.R. 4137 - The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 [THOMAS]
Write Your Senator
Write Your Representative
PREVIOUSLY: How To Write To Congress
(Photo: Getty)

As you might remember, the Cingular brand came about when everyone was just jumping to name their new company some arbitrary nonsense term that evoked absolutely no internal mnemonic connections whatsoever unless you were already informed what product they were selling. Telecommunications companies especially loved this strategy: for example, Orange, or O2, or Verizon. Still, the Cingular brand is well established now. So why is AT&T changing the name?

Bundling appears to be the answer. AT&T wants its pipes to be sole umbilical cord to communication with the outside world. — telephones, broadband, cell phones — and, of course, slap it all on one handy monthly bill.

But we'd like to suggest an alternate theory on why AT&T might be changing the Cingular brand name. As we said, the Cingular brand is well established. Everyone knows what Cingular sells: crappy customer service. Regularly changing your company's name might not be too shabby a way to thwart bad word of mouth.

AT&T Plans to Kill Cingular Name [Consumer Affairs]