so why again are we doing the good deeds?

This is an interesting read: Ricky Gervais on god, science, atheism, and being a good person. For a continued conversation the paper added this section: Ricky taking questions from readers.

his name was einar

When I was a kid I read a long series of books that had belonged to my mom. The heroine was a young woman, and the books chronicle her life growing up, getting married, and starting a family. Along the way the readers got a few valuable life lessons. What particularly stuck in my mind was the the idea that if you go out without your wedding band, you have to watch out because men will think you are available and it will be awkward.

It was all steeped in 1940s morals and values, and I gobbled it up.

The main character gets married around book 2 or 3. The courtship is traditional and safe, and she marries someone her family know well and love.

The traditional heroine in those books from when my mom was growing up married her first cousin. So, I've always associated marrying your cousin with safety.

In the US, not so much. From today's New York Times:

WHEN Kimberly Spring-Winters told her mother she was in love, she didn’t expect a positive response — and she didn’t get one.

“It’s wrong, it’s taboo, nobody does that,” she recalled her mother saying.

But shortly after the conversation, Ms. Spring-Winters, 29, decided to marry the man she loved: her first cousin.