Pumpkin, Pumpkin Every Where!

During this time of year, pumpkin foods go on overload. It’s almost as if pumpkin wasn’t around for the entire year and it’s a limited edition fruit. 

Yes, fruit; a pumpkin is actually a fruit, not a vegetable.

Around this time of year, coffee shops like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts pull out their pumpkin best and we, consumers, go crazy. They have managed to put pumpkins into EVERYTHING, including muffins, bread, cookies and coffee. Don’t forget the donuts!

Pumpkin Spice Latte Anyone??

Not only do baked goods suddenly have pumpkin in them, beer does too. Pumpkin beer is the main ingredient in some great recipes. Click here to check out ten AMAZING recipes from last week's Parade Magazine.

Apart from food, we can find the pumpkin scent as well. For example, Bath and Body Works carries a pumpkin hand soap, hand sanitizer and candle, which smells INCREDIBLE.

So what is it about the pumpkin flavor or scent that we have correlated it to fall? Could it be its affiliation with Halloween? 

If you have any theories, we would LOVE to know. Leave a comment below and we will get back to you.

Social Networking in the 1600s

There was an article in The New York Times last week about Social Networking in the 1600s. The article addresses the concern that some people have about today’s social media networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the article, websites like Facebook and Twitter will cost our economy about $650 billion every year.

 

Not only are they costly to keep running, but they, the social media websites, seem to have an effect on our attention spans and tests scores negatively. This is not the first time that social networking has gained a bad reputation.

 

Back in the 1600s, the idea of coffeehouses was imported from Arab. Coffeehouses were a place where people would go to discuss an array of thing including pamphlets, news-sheets, and catch up on gossip.

 

 At the time, an Oxford academic, Anthony Wood blamed the decline in the drive to learn on the coffeehouses, but many great things occurred because of the coffeehouses as well. Isaac Newton had an argument with fellow scientist that prompted him to write the “Principia Mathematica.” Also, everyone, no matter who you were status wise, was able to have conversations with each other.

 

The coffeehouses were something like an "in person Facebook". It is simply something that has changed over time like hand written letters have changed into emails, and how I am writing this blog instead of standing up on a soap box. On the contrary to the beginning of the article, today’s or the old age’s social networking has not put a damper on our learning, it has more to do with the drive of a particular person.

 

What is truly amazing is how things may evolve, but they do not become extinct. Who knew that Facebook existed in a different form hundreds of years ago? Cool, right?

 

This is definitely history repeating itself.