Home and Shopping

"In 2002, while I was working at Time magazine, three women jointly selected as the Persons of the Year were dubbed The Whistleblowers. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten their names already — Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron. Ah, fame is fleeting.) Like Haugen, these women had spilled the beans. The choice struck me as kinda gimmicky, but looking back a couple of decades in the rear-view mirror, it now seems prescient. Which is why I found myself musing about the virtues of female whistleblowing. (Being able to keep track of dates and times is critical for would-be whistleblowers.) I was waiting for my good friend and fellow journo Evy to arrive for dinner. I never suspected that our meal would mark the nanosecond when I, too, would attain whistleblower status." more »

"While developing a rapid test that detects the coronavirus in someone’s saliva, Blink Science, a Florida-based startup, heard something startling: The Food and Drug Administration had more than 3,000 emergency use authorization applications and didn’t have the resources to get through them." "The U.S. produced covid-19 vaccines in record time, but, nearly two years into the pandemic, consumers have few options for cheap tests that quickly screen for infection, though they are widely available in Europe. Experts say the paucity of tests and their high prices undermine efforts in the U.S. to return to normal life. more »

Ferida writes: "They aren’t harmful to humans, yet having so many insects meet us at our door is not exactly a welcome greeting. They take winter refuge on boxelder and ash trees, which we don’t have, and maple trees, which we do. So we have started spraying them with diluted dish soap which was suggested instead of pesticides and we’ve noticed a slowing down of their invasion. I hope they will be gone soon." more »

"In total, home prices in September were 21 percent higher than in June 2020. Home price increases are also widespread. In September, about 90 percent of American cities had experienced rising home prices over the past three months, and the home price increases were substantial in most of these cities... The demand for housing has risen for several reasons. Interest rates are low, families have accumulated savings, and income growth in the past 18 months has been quite strong. Families are also reconsidering where, and in what kind of home, they want to live. Purchases of second homes, for example, have been somewhat high in the past 18 months. Meanwhile, the supply of new homes has been held back by shortages of materials, labor, and developed lots." more »