Grocery prices driven up by supermarket discount cardsWritten by Jeremy Brubaker
Jumping through hoops at store to get lowest price on frozen pizza is not my idea of fun. What happened to giving every customer lowest price? How much money is wasted on two different price tags for most products, cards themselves, and all of direct marketed ads sent to cardholders? I have never met anyone who wants more junk mail from grocery store. I've heard argument that cards help retailers track inventory levels or sales trends, but there is no reason cash registers couldn't track both without cards or invasion of privacy.
| | Coffee: A Historic Beverage, And A Great Holiday GiftWritten by Irene D. Hope
Ah, coffee... a fantastic dark beverage that wakes us up in morning. For some of us, it keeps us up during day, or for late night study sessions. We drink it out of habit, we drink it from addiction, we drink it for flavor; whatever reason, it is surely a popular beverage. So where did this famed drink come from?Coffee, for Americans, is three hundred years old. In East it was widespread at every level of society, since earlier era. The most notable dates point to around 800b.c. However, Homer, and according to Arabian tales speak of a mysterious bitter black beverage with powers of stimulation that could have been this drink. About year 1000, coffee was being used for medicinal purposes. In 1400 a Yemeni goat herder observed his flock eating reddish berries, then becoming excited and restless. After relating his observations to a monk, they boiled berries and made a beverage that could disperse sleep and weariness. No matter how it actually was created, fact remains that coffee plant started in Africa, in an Ethiopian region known as Kaffa. From there it spread to Egypt, Yemen, and Arabia, where it became a part of daily life. In late 1500s coffee was a commodity, being sold in Europe. However, due to an increasing demand for new beverage, and high taxes on shipping, there was experimentation with growing crops in various other countries. Much later, around 1727 coffee growing started in Northern Brazil. By 20th century, various forms of coffee were developed for public.
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