There's an old saying that, if you have a problem, you've got a problem, but if you have two problems, sometimes they can solve each other ( Read more... )

I've written before about how home cooking may help people live better while struggling financially, but that it's not a magic bullet. So when I came across yet another article about how such advice is useless for low-income families, I noticed a lot of good points, and a lot of over-simplifications ( Read more... )

Most of us are aware that malnutrition, particularly in the early years, can have lifelong consequences. It can stunt growth, but it can also increase susceptibility to diabetes and other metabolic issues.

However, one doesn't have to experience actual starvation for it to leave a mark. Even just being perpetually short of food -- what is ( Read more... )

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It's always interesting to sort through materials that have accumulated over a period of time and discover things from years earlier. Sometimes the memories they evoke are happy ones, sometimes they are sad, and sometimes they are bittersweet ( Read more... )

The growing problem of homelessness, and particularly of homeless people who behave in disturbed and disturbing ways (defecating in public, etc) is disrupting the ability of a number of cities to function and putting everyone's health and safety in danger. However, the punitive approaches to homelessness and mental illnesses that are being touted ( Read more... )

Most of us have a pretty good picture of what the homeless look like: the disheveled person with the cardboard sign at the streetcorner, panhandling for spare change, the people huddled in tents or cardboard boxes in encampments in parks or utility easements, the people trying to find a shelter to take them in for the night. Most of them have lives ( Read more... )

Most of us have an internal image of what a homeless person looks like: disheveled, probably unkempt and needing personal hygiene, and often showing the ravages of mental illness and/or addiction issues. However, the homeless whose lives are in disarray like this are actually only a portion of the population who lack stable housing. And the other ( Read more... )

Rat infestations are probably as old as civilization -- it's generally hypothesized that cats self-domesticated as a response to growing rodent populations in early cities providing them with an abundance of prey, and thus became accustomed to interacting with humans. A number of breeds of dogs, particularly the smaller terriers, were also ( Read more... )

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