What Does 'House Poor' Mean?

London includes a quote about john thornton as he is observing hal attempt to motivate the exhausted dogs "it was idle, he knew, to get between a fool and his folly". if the word "idle" is defined as "of no real worth, importance, or significance", what does this statement mean with regard to hal? who is the fool? what is hal's folly? why would john thornton think it of no real worth or useless to intervene?

Iback to my office after i saw the rain.

Namerican born chinese, the main characters, the monkey king, danny, and jin wang have conflict because they: