Thanks, Alfred for the very kind inquiry.  Unfortunately, the only thing I have that's "public" is my blog.  There's some creative stuff that's in press.  Will blog more when they're finally out.

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In part because I am a teacher and in part because I tend to be judgmental, I automatically size people up.  I realize, of course, that it is sometimes impossible and unfair to judge individuals as "good" or "evil" based on single acts. What I tend to do is to look at trajectories and at habits. 

I have not tried and would not try this myself but I heard that if you toss a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out immediately.  However, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water and then raise the heat slowly, the frog will sit in the water until it boils to death. This metaphor is, to me, representative of how evil works.  It begins with innocent acts that are, in themselves, not wrong.  It progresses to compromises of lesser principles, perhaps in an emotional high or low, when you aren't quite in your normal frame of mind.  It progresses even further to compromising greater principles for the greater good. And before you know it, you've stepped further across the line than you ever thought you could or would. 

It worries me, therefore, when I notice people on a downward spiral--they slip a little, then a little more and so on down the line towards an end that just can't be any good.  Like the frog in the pot, though, they don't realize it's happening.  May people around them, even those closest to them, don't know that it's happening (or perhaps choose not to believe it is happening).  But paranoid doomsayers such as myself worry, especially if these are people we care about.

Related to trajectories are habits.  Aristotle said that we are what we habitually do.  An isolated lapse can be chalked up as a mistake, a moment of weakness, an exception.  A pattern of behavior demonstrates choice, intent, and will. It represents who you are. One episode of Desperate Housewives illustrates this point precisely. Edie makes a hurtful but accurate point to Susan, saying something like people don't help her because they love her; they help her because she's helpless.  We all have our moments when we are needy, hypersensitive, rude, or childish.  That's part of being human. But be that way all the time and it speaks to character. 

So, at least in my case, I do give people a certain amount of room for error.  I start becoming less charitable when patterns begin to emerge.