Red state, in this case, Alabama, in action:

The amendment had two main parts: the removal of the separate-schools language and the removal of a passage — inserted in the 1950s in an attempt to counter the Brown v. Board of Education ruling against segregated public schools — that said Alabama's constitution does not guarantee a right to a public education. Leading opponents, such as Alabama Christian Coalition President John Giles, said they did not object to removing the passage about separate schools for "white and colored children." But, employing an argument that was ridiculed by most of the state's newspapers and by legions of legal experts, Giles and others said guaranteeing a right to a public education would have opened a door for "rogue" federal judges to order the state to raise taxes to pay for improvements in its public school system.

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Much ink has been spilled from various conservative commentators to the effect the "moral values"is not an euphemism for "gay-bashing, abortion-baiting, white Christian fundamentalism", and that most Bush voters are not God-addled extremist bigots. And of course they are right. Most conservatives, but not apparently those in South Carolina and Oklahoma, would be appalled by the suggestion teachers who are single mothers be barred from schools, or that doctors who provide abortion should be put to death. But it is suggestive that nevertheless many of them find it possible to hold their noses and keep company with such people, to vote for a party that openly appeals to gay-bashing bigotry, that openly panders to the worst tribal instincts in people to gang up against various despised minorities, a party where religious fundamentalists who want to blur the division between state and religion exercises a disproportionate influence. You are the company you keep; if you accept unsavory company, you are bound to smell bad. The compromises you make in order to have what you want say a great deal about who you are.

Last night, walking home, I gave money to a man, fifty or so, a bit shabbily dressed — an English teacher, he said — who did a song and dance number about having driven his wife to the emergency room, only to have ran out of gas, and his little daughter is waiting in the car, freezing, and would...? On the verge of tears, he seemed, and grateful, afterwards.

We can be analytical about this. Let P_T be the probability, however small, that the man is telling the truth; let C_T be how bad I would feel if he was telling the truth and I did not give him any help. Also, let C_F be how stupid I would feel to have been taken in by a con with talent for tearing up. I should give him money provided the following relation is satisfied:

P_T C_T ≥ (1 – P_T) C_F

The probabilities and costs, of course, must be individually evaluated. It seemed about right to me, at the time. So how come I feel pretty much like a fool?

Here is another way to look at this. Around here, one can't walk down the street for a few blocks without having someone, often obviously homeless, asking for two dollars "for the bus". I never give them money, part of the reason being I think they are lying, i.e., the money will be spent on smokes and beer. However, if one of them comes to me, on the verge of tears, saying he has just lost his wallet, but he needs to get to work or he will lose his job — then it will be much harder to refuse. This is not because his story is likely to be true, it is less — that so many panhandlers ask for bus money undoubtedly reflects the fact many of them really do need to take the bus. The consequence of a story increases rapidly with its improbability, and one of the things I learned in science is how difficult it is for lay people and scientists alike, to estimate the probability of unlikely events in complex situations.

What this does is to rewards liars. The more elaborate the lie, the more unlikely it is, the more consequential it is, then the more likely the lie will be rewarded (even if not entirely believed); and it doesn't hurt one to put on a good act, tear up a little, say. If he tells you he needs to take the bus to a homeless shelter, he gets nothing; if she gives you a sobbing story about being beaten up and kicked out by her abusive boyfriend and has no place to go, she gets forty bucks so she can "get a room for the night". After a while, no-one believes anything anyone has to say under a similar circumstance, and one of these circumstances will turn out to be true.

Analysis means literally to divide and divide again, to reduce complications into a collection of graspable atoms; what analysis cannot always do is to tell one how to interpret and act on this newly acquired insight. The latter has always required judgment, an ill-defined sense of the right thing to do, regardless what naïve scientific objectivism would have you believe. As for the issue at hand, there is a simple cop out: avoid carrying cash in your wallet if possible; that way, you can tell the guy: "Sorry, can't help you, I don't have any money."

Check out The Swift Report, a newish weblog. Andrew Sullivan, for one, seems a bit miffed by it.

Today is Kurt Vonnegut's 91st birthday, so happy birthday to you, Mr Vonnegut.

Years ago, in high school and the first few years in college, I called Kurt Vonnegut "the greatest living writer". I kept a copy of his essay collection Palm Sunday in my jacket pocket, and read a few pages or more when I had a a bit of unattended time. I knew, or felt I knew, Kilgore Trout, or Eliot Rosewater, as real familiars.

Some of his writing read to me a bit thin now, and some of the commentaries at In These Times are simply cantankerous. But in his best work: the novels Mother Night, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Slaughterhouse Five, Jail Bird, and the essay collection Palm Sunday, with his deeply-felt humanism, and his bitterly flabbergasted sense of modesty and decency, his voice is as tremendously moving now as ever. He got it right where so many more "serious", more self-regarding writers and thinker did not, could not: be embarrassed, be kind, mind your manners, and above all, do no harm — that is what anyone can really do, in this life, to be good, so you might as well give it a try.

Miriam and I, at Sarah's wedding in May.

Tara Leslie, Cary's wife, has been praying for President Bush, too, and now she is saying, "I think it's so important to have a society of moral absolutes."

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"Jobs will come and go. But your character — you have to hang on to that," he [husband Cary Leslie] says. "It's what you're defined by." [Full article from The Washington Post.]

Can governments really deliver economic well-being to the working poor? That it can indeed so deliver has been the central plank of Democratic Party for the past 50 years; I am not sure the Democrats have in fact delivered. At best, the government can open up opportunities — education, financial incentives for savings, job training — for the poor to pulled themselves out of their poverty; but the government can't do the pulling for the poor any more than the poor can be made to disappear by throwing money at them. The Left simply cannot keep on promising the poor a pie in the sky that they can't possibly deliver — that is dishonest and manipulative, and eventually, people won't believe anything you say anymore, even if it is true.

The Republicans can't deliver the poor either, and they don't promise to do so. But at least they offer the frustrated working poor a sense of righteousness and self-esteem; talk is cheap enough.

"Measure in generations, not elections". Well put.

A day late, but here is to my eighteenth year in America. I always thought there is some justice in my landing here on October 31: trick or treat?