Myths about heroin addiction

This one is simply wonderful. Read the first two or three paragraphs if you are short of time. One-line summary: bureaucracies usually perpetuate the problems they set out to solve. Well, there's a good deal more, and all of it good, talking about how people really become addicted and why they really stay that way (summary: they have nothing better to do or to be), but the beginning is the most widely applicable part. If I were writing the article, I might risk my skin by pointing out that the same applies to many other organisations who claim to be fighting one kind of evil or another.

I've found a fair amount of good stuff elsewhere in TheAustralian especially in the Books section.

health and housing

When I think of the difference between where I grew up (England) and where I live (the USA), I think of space. No, not SpaceShipOne. Lots of land, an acre per house at least, one one side of the Atlantic, and small gardens on the other side. Correspondingly, sprawling cities and long commutes along traffic-choked freeways, versus compact towns in which a walk or short bus ride would get me anywhere I wanted to go. (In compact towns, buses and the like are actually useful. In sprawling cities, they are a waste of time, money, fuel, or quite possibly all three.)

The huge cities of California are well known for their smog. And Americans are stereotyped for never walking if they can drive. And neither of these is believed to be healthy. And now there are numbers to prove it.