I think you'd have to really stretch a point to consider "bless you" after a sneeze, with or without saying "god", to be any form of endorsement of religion. And even if you did individually, the courts wouldn't agree. We can't even take god back out of the pledge or back off the money!

Even if they're not employed, odds are they're still paying tax in the form of sales tax, possibly property tax, that sort of thing.

Leviathan (steampunk!) Cinder (cyborgs and androids!) Starglass (Jews in spaaaaaaace!) Dust Girl (fairies!) Ruinmarks (Post-Ragnarok fun!) Zahrah the Windseeker (Computer vine thingies!) Earth Girl (okay, I can't really exclam this, but it's fun) A Face Like Glass (Courtly Politics! And a big vocabulary! This one is most similar to Ella Enchanted of the ones I've listed, I think, and don't underestimate Hardinge) The Lost Girl (Weird cloning!) The Goose Girl (same author as Princess Academy. Everything by Shannon Hale is golden) Salvage (Escaping fundamentalism!) Katya's World (Worldwide ocean!) Tankborn (Not sure how to describe this!) Losers in Space (Giant pink elephant!) Of course, the old school option is definitely The Blue Sword. If you don't mind me saying so, your booklist is also awfully *white*. You could stand a little more diversity in the mix. I've gone ahead and bolded those books which definitively have non-white protagonists.

Well, actually, that's not proven either. If nothing else, giving money to poor people puts money in circulation. Poor people spend their money. Wealthy people tend to hoard it, because honestly, once you have everything you need and everything you want, there just isn't that much left to do with your cash. Money in circulation makes the economy go round, so everybody just gets richer and richer. But in fact, recent studies are indicating that when you just "throw money" at poor people, they tend to spend it a lot better than some people believe. http://n.pr/1xHyJR0

I've heard that a lot, but the evidence just isn't there. In fact, states which raised their minimum wage are experiencing a job creation and employment boom right now. The truth is that the vast majority of low wage employees aren't hired by small businesses, but by large corporations. Walmart, McDonald's, Apple? They could raise the minimum wage and do absolutely nothing to make up that cost except cut executive bonuses a little - or even just make do with slightly smaller profits.

I used to hook my hand, and it made handwriting tiring and painful. If I didn't, I didn't know any other way to write without smearing ink all over my hand. I certainly couldn't see what I was writing if I didn't! I finally worked out a way to write without this issue (turn the page to match the slant of my arm), but nobody showed me how to do it. I was a victim of poor education, but this is exactly the sort of mistake any well-meaning right-handed person might make when teaching their kid, to allow them to develop a poor and painful grip as a coping mechanism and then not know the best way to correct it. Of course, if your handwriting is painful or difficult, you avoid doing it as much as possible. This has the side effect of making it messy, because you get less practice than people without that issue. That, in turn, can give you more incentive to avoid writing things down. You know, I'd be interested to know if righties have that problem when writing Hebrew or Arabic. I can't figure out how to find out on Google, but my guess is that it's less common if only because teachers and parents are more aware of it and more likely to step in and help their kid out.

Lefthandedness isn't a disability, no - but poor handwriting instruction can make what ought to be normal variation into a disabling condition.

I used to have a cat which did that habitually, but that cat also chewed on all my clothes. Other cats only do that occasionally, and isn't it adorable?

I've actually had a neighbor ask me to do it, to pay for my groceries with her card and then hand her back the cash. I was so surprised I agreed reflexively, and then only later realized I probably should've gotten more information first or Just Said No. (Not that I begrudge people their diapers or sanitary supplies or whatnot, but....) On the subject of hot foods, I'd be interested in knowing when this was. I know that in NYC after Hurricane Sandy, for about a year we were able to purchase hot foods with SNAP because so many people had lost their homes. I'd forgotten all about that until just now! So maybe something similar was happening in her area at the time.

It sorta is possible to cheat the rules, if the system allows cashiers to punch in numbers or, alternatively, if you can get a friend to buy groceries with your card and then pass you some cash back - say, offer them $20 of groceries if they give you $15 cash. People often spend that money on non-food necessities, like toilet paper, diapers, soap, pet food. Or, yes, sometimes on luxuries that aren't covered, likecigarrettes, alcohol, or lottery tickets. The solution to the former is to provide a way for people to obtain those things, a reliable way. Food banks aren't reliable enough, because they need donations. I don't know what solution there is to the latter.

If everybody in the area gets their food stamps at the same time, is it possible that the stores run specials when they know the folks with food stamps will be there?

But then you'd move out of the way, right? So... mission accomplished.

Baby food is extremely expensive per pound, however, it has an advantage over unprocessed foods in two ways. First of all, it keeps indefinitely, which is a godsend if you don't have reliable access to a working fridge or if you can't afford wasge - and because it comes in small jars, you have less to store. Secondly, it doesn't have to be cooked. Many, many people don't have a stove they can use, because they live in just a room, or in a motel, or in a shelter. Food you don't have to cook is worth the extra price if you have no way to cook it in the first place. (And don't forget, many people don't have much time in the day to cook, or don't know how. This is just one of the many ways it is more expensive to be poor rather than rich.) And many landromats won't allow you to wash cloth diapers. They just won't. With that said, if you're deadset on food for the food bank, the best bet is to donate cash. They know what their clients need better than you can, and they can take your $10 donation and purchase what would've cost you $25 or $50 at the store, using bulk prices and corporate matching.

Giftedness isn't the issue. I was terribly bright, still had atrocious handwriting and a very, very poor grip. Out of four lefties in my 8th grade English class (all gifted), only one had good handwriting. I know, because the teacher specifically commented on it when criticizing the handwriting of the rest of the three of us.

That's actually exactly what I was thinking of - criminal activities, or certain very unusual circumstances. I really don't want to spend my comment spelling out "Okay, it's all right to contact the professor if your kid has this disability, but not that one, and maybe this one in this situation...." because I figure most people can and should use their own good judgment :)

In a nutshell, I would say it's giving rules and help to your kid that are more appropriate for a younger child. For example, routinely tying a third grader's shoes and getting upset if the teacher won't do the same thing in school, when that's typically a task mastered in kindergarten. Not allowing your eighth grader to walk to the library when all their friends have been doing it for two or three years. Not allowing your 16 year old to go even on group dates that end at an early hour. Calling your kid's college professor to complain about a bad grade, even though your son or daughter is asking you to please NOT do that. Those are specific examples, but that doesn't mean that everybody who does those things is being overprotective OR overbearing, of course. Some children take longer to manage fine motor control skills like shoe tying. Some families really live in unsafe areas, or their kids are exceptionally oblivious. Some people really are just a little stricter than others, and sometimes the college professor is being so blatantly unreasonable that a little back-up is useful. And of course, individuals with certain special needs are always going to need more help or more restrictons. Helicopter parenting isn't just having one area that's more restrictive than the norm in your community, it's being like that in most or all areas, and without a compelling reason.

What is she interested in?

I suffered from some really annoying symptoms coming off of a month of daily Zyrtec for hayfever. Itching, hives, itchy hives, extremely watery eyes - and it lasted three straight weeks before it even started tapering off. And that was three weeks where I was basically mainlining Benadryl to keep the hives down slightly, on the hopes that I wouldn't have withdrawal from *that* after the fact. Apparently, this has happened to other people. Zyrtec is an extremely powerful antihistimine. After that experience, I suggest that if you are going to take it that you cut it in half and only take it on days when you need it, rather than assuming you'll need it every day. Don't know if the Zyrtec will even work on a rash, just giving my little warning there. If Benadryl makes you sleepy, I would have thought a Benadryl cream would be a better bet.

Even if you're looking at the Bible as an unadulturated, extremely factual historical document, you surely know that the events in Genesis predate the birth of Christ - don't you?

If most people spend less on their food then that's because most people eat grains and, if they're trying to budget, legumes, two things which are cheap and filling. If you can't eat those foods, and need to buy higher quality meats,your budget is going to have to be higher than most people's. There's just no way around it. Meat is pricey. You might find organ meats such as liver or tongue are cheaper per pound than even the cheap cuts of meat you're already buying, and if you can do eggs it might be helpful to replace a few "meat" meals a week with "egg" meals instead, eggs usually being a bit cheaper than meat. And if you can buy in bulk, a whole cow or pig at a time as has been suggested, that can also come out to be cheaper per meal (but it will be a lot more upfront, and you need to have some place to store it). Otherwise, I just can't see where you can cut your grocery budget and still eat the foods your family does better with. *sighs* You might try gardening, but if you don't have skills there you might not save any money with the effort.

Sure - but it's not going to work for everybody. Among other things, by the nature of scholarships, not everybody is going to get one, or if they do, there's no guarantee that the scholarship will be for enough money.

Yes, and "high tea" isn't fancy and formal with cakes, it's simply late in the day. Though apparently the use of the word "tea" for that word is a dialect issue...?

By going into severe debt for decades or longer?

Sounds to me like that's a curriculum issue. Some "common core aligned" curricula are great, and some are crap, but people have this habit of attributing all the ones they hate to "common core". The younger kid went through three schools in three years (long, kinda boring story) which means three math curricula which were all approved by the city to meet the standards. And boy, did they run the gamut! They weren't terribly similar to each other, but even today, I can go on their individual websites and find they're "common core aligned". One was awful, one was middling, one was pretty good. *shrugs*

Sure, okay. I disagree with your premise, but let's accept it for the sake of this discussion. Why do blacks get convicted more often than whites, even of the SAME crimes with the SAME circumstances? Once convicted, why do blacks get stronger sentences than whites, even of the SAME crimes with the SAME circumstances? It all starts to fall apart when you consider that the cops are only a tiny part of this equation. That doesn't mean that all the white jurors and white judges just hate minorities and want to screw them over. It means that they, like everybody, are subject to unconscious bias. It means that humans sometimes are more lenient with people like themselves. It means we need to study and then address this issue rather than pushing it under the rug and saying it's not really a problem.